Meet Our Editorial Board Member Current Drug Therapy, 2016, Vol. 11, No. 1 1 Meet Our Editorial Board Member Dr. Eduard Vieta Bipolar Disorder Unit, Institute of Neuroscience, Hospital Clinic University of Barcelona, IDIBAPS, CIBERSAM Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain Eduard Vieta, M.D. and Ph.D., was born in 1963 in Barcelona and received his medical degree at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and his Ph.D. with Extraordinary Doctoral Award at the University of Barcelona. Over the past 25 years, he and his team have made outstanding contributions to the understanding of the neurobiology, diagnosis, and treatment of one of the most common and disabling mental disorders, namely bipolar disorder. In fact, Dr. Vieta is currently ranked as the number 1 worldwide expert in this field by resources using objective ranking methods, such as www.expertscape.com. His contributions add up to 2500 impact factor points, more than 22.500 citations and H index of 77. But beyond those figures, Dr. Vieta and his team’s contributions have made a real impact on many patients’ lives. Not only by means of providing top-quality clinical care at the Bipolar Unit of the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona, but also by the many educational activities for the general public, mental health professionals and trainees, that have expanded the knowledge and management skills that come up from their research, which is extremely translational and oriented toward clinical practice. Examples of this are the impact of “Psychoeducation” [1], a specific therapy for bipolar disorder that emerged from their work, and which is nowadays the standard of care on top of medication for the management of the disease, as recognized across international treatment guidelines worldwide. Another example is the huge contribution to the identification of neurocognitive impairment patterns [2], their genetic and neuroimaging correlates [3], and innovative therapies such as functional remediation [4], an area where Dr Vieta and his team have made seminal and outstanding contributions that have changed the view on this disorder [5]. Moreover, Dr. Vieta and his research group have greatly contributed to increase the availability of novel drug therapies for bipolar illness, by means of the design and performance of clinical trials that have facilitated the introduction of new approaches to the pharmacological management of the disease [6]. Dr. Vieta is currently the Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychology at the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona and full professor of Psychiatry at the University of Barcelona. He is also the lead investigator of the Bipolar Disorder group at the Institut d’Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi I Sunyer (IDIBAPS) and the scientific deputy director of the Centro de Investigación En Red de Salud Mental (CIBERSAM). He has received several awards, including the Aristotle Award (International Society of Brain & Behaviour, 2005), the strategic research price from the Spanish Society of Biological Psychiatry in 2009, the Mogens Schou Award (International Conference on Bipolar Research Award Disorder, 2007), the award from the College of Physicians of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands (COMB) for Professional Excellence in Research for his outstanding contributions to the understanding of bipolar disorder in 2011, Colvin Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Mood Disorders Research and Clinical Neuroscience Lilly Award of the International College of Neuropsychopharmacology (CINP) in 2014. That same year, he was ranked number one among all psychiatrists in Spain by the “Monitor de Reputación Sanitaria”. Dr. Vieta is in the very restricted list of "most influential scientists" by Thompson Reuters, given the high number of citations of his research contributions. Furthermore, he was "invited lecturer" at Harvard University during the 2007-2008 academic year and he was named Neuroscience Scientific Advisor for the European Union in 2011. Dr. Vieta has recently received a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Valencia. Finally, he is a member of several scientific societies, including the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP), where he acts as treasurer, and he is an Associate Editor of The American Journal of Psychiatry, European Neuropsychopharmacology, and the Revista de Psiquiatría y Salud Mental. He is the editorial board member of 20 more scientific journals. REFERENCES [1] Colom F, Vieta E, Martinez-Aran A, Reinares M, Goikolea JM, Benabarre A, Torrent C, Comes M, Corbella B, Parramon G, Corominas J. A randomized trial on the efficacy of group psychoeducation in the prophylaxis of recurrences in bipolar patients whose disease is in remission. Arch Gen Psychiatry 2003; 60(4): 402-7. [2] Martínez-Arán A, Vieta E, Reinares M, Colom F, Torrent C, Sánchez-Moreno J, Benabarre A, Goikolea JM, Comes M, Salamero M. Cognitive function across manic or hypomanic, depressed, and euthymic states in bipolar disorder. Am J Psychiatry 2004; 161(2): 262-70. [3] Phillips ML, Vieta E. Identifying functional neuroimaging biomarkers of bipolar disorder: toward DSM-V. Schizophr Bull 2007; 33(4): 893-904. [4] Torrent C, Bonnin Cdel M, Martínez-Arán A, Valle J, Amann BL, González-Pinto A, Crespo JM, Ibáñez Á, Garcia-Portilla MP, Tabarés-Seisdedos R, Arango C, Colom F, Solé B, Pacchiarotti I, Rosa AR, Ayuso-Mateos JL, Anaya C, Fernández P, Landín-Romero R, Alonso-Lana S, Ortiz-Gil J, Segura B, Barbeito S, Vega P, Fernández M, Ugarte A, Subirà M, Cerrillo E, Custal N, Menchón JM, Saiz-Ruiz J, Rodao JM, Isella S, Alegría A, Al- Halabi S, Bobes J, Galván G, Saiz PA, Balanzá-Martínez V, Selva G, Fuentes-Durá I, Correa P, Mayoral M, Chiclana G, Merchan-Naranjo J, Rapado- Castro M, Salamero M, Vieta E. Efficacy of functional remediation in bipolar disorder: a multicenter randomized controlled study. Am J Psychiatry 2013; 170(8): 852-9. [5] Kirby T. Eduard Vieta: unravelling bipolar disorder's mysteries. Lancet Psychiatry 2015; 2(4): 299. [6] Grande I, Berk M, Birmaher B, Vieta E. Bipolar disorder. Lancet 2016; 387(10027): 1561-72. .