INCF Secretariat Staff

The Secretariat has the following staff:

Jan Bjaalie, M.D., Ph.D, Executive Director jan.bjaalie@incf.org
Jan Bjaalie was appointed Executive Director of the INCF and Director of the INCF Secretariat in April 2006. He took up the position full time in September 2006. Working closely with the INCF Governing Board, he is responsible for the operations of the INCF. Dr. Bjaalie has broad experience as a Professor from the University of Oslo with development of neuroinformatics tools, including tools for visualization, quantitative analyses, and digital brain atlasing. His research group has studied sensory map transformations in major brain pathways, has contributed to the use and introduction of small animal MR and PET techniques at The Medical Faculty, University of Oslo, and has developed advanced database applications for experimental data. Dr. Bjaalie has been a partner and coordinator of projects funded by the European Union, coordinator of a Norwegian High Performance Computing grant for medical applications, and group leader responsible for neuroinformatics at a Norwegian Center of Excellence funded by The Research Council of Norway. He has management experience from both University departments and independent organizations.

Hui Wang, M.D., Ph.D, Deputy Executive Director hui.wang@incf.org
Hui Wang joined the INCF in October 2007. Working closely with the Executive Director, Dr. Wang will manage business aspects of the Secretariat as well as global operations of the INCF. He will also be responsible for the management of selected program areas. Dr. Wang has an M.D. degree from Peking University Medical School, China, and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Oxford, UK. He has experience from neuroscience research as a postdoctoral fellow in the United States (Harvard Medical School, Boston, and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore) and as group leader at the Institute for Cellular Biochemistry and Clinical Neurobiology, University of Hamburg, Germany. He has been Scientific Secretary to the European Medical Research Councils at the European Science Foundation, Strasbourg, France, associate editor of Nature, and Editorial Director for Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishing at John Wiley and Sons, Beijing Office, China.

Mikael Naeslund, M.Sc., Executive Advisor mikael.naeslund@incf.org
Mikael Naeslund joined the INCF in January 2007 and has primarily a management advisory role, also working with partnership development, recruiting, strategic procurement, organizational issues, and program activity support. Mikael Naeslund is an M.Sc. with multiple specializations including medical engineering from The Royal Institute of Technology where he received awards for creativity and excellence for his diploma works. He has a background as a technology entrepreneur with more than 13 years of management experience from IT and Life Science industry as well as Academia. His technical competence profile includes active presentation, image processing, data mining, statistical analysis and database technology.

Raphael Ritz, Ph.D., Scientific Officer raphael.ritz@incf.org
Raphael Ritz joined the INCF as Scientific Officer part-time in December 2006 and took up a full-time position in April 2007. In close collaboration with the Executive Director and Executive Advisor, he is responsible for setting up a platform for research oriented services directed towards the neuroinformatics and broader neuroscience research community world-wide. Dr. Ritz is a physicist by training and has experience from computational neuroscience (Salk Institute for Biological Studies, San Diego), advanced data analysis techniques, and web portal developments (Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin). He is a member of the framework team of the Plone Foundation.

Pontus Holm, Ph.D., Program Officer pontus.holm@incf.org
Pontus Holm started as Program Officer at the INCF Secretariat in August 2007. He manages programs and projects operated by the INCF, including follow up versus external contractors and INCF National Nodes. Pontus Holm is a Ph.D in molecular neurobiology from Karolinska Institutet. He has been EMBO post doctoral fellow at the GSF Institute of stem cell research, Munich, and post doctoral fellow at the Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute. He also has experience as project leader at the Lund Stem Cell Center.

Elli Chatzopoulou, Ph.D.,
Scientific Information and Public Relations Officer elli.chatzopoulou@incf.org
Elli Chatzopoulou took up the position as Scientific Information and Public Relations Officer in August 2007. In close collaboration with the Executive Director, she manages the information and PR activities of the INCF. She is also responsible for communication with INCF National Nodes concerning the promotion of their activities and integration in the overall INCF activities. Elli Chatzopoulou is a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI). She has received additional training in professional integration, including communication.

Jeanette Hellgren Kotaleski, Ph.D.,
Professor of Computational Neuroscience jeanette.hellgren@incf.org
Jeanette Hellgren Kotaleski is a researcher in the field of computational neuroscience at The Royal Institute of Technology and Karolinska Institutet. She has taken up a position presented to the INCF by The Royal Institute of Technology, as Professor of Computational Neuroscience. She serves as an adviser to the INCF on matters related to infrastructure for modeling of brain function.

Ylva Lillberg, M.Sc., Usability and Requirements Analyst ylva.lillberg@incf.org
Ylva Lillberg joined the INCF as a Usability and Requirements Analyst on the development team in April 2007. Mrs. Lillberg is an M.Sc. from the Royal Institute of Technology, specialized towards medical engineering. Her professional experience includes project management and product development in life science industry, where she has worked with usability and design issues as well as product requirements and research oriented pre-development feasibility studies.

Anders Larsson, M.Sc., System Developer and IT Administrator anders.larsson@incf.org
Anders Larsson joined the INCF as a System Developer and IT Administrator in May 2007. Mr. Larsson has more than seven years of experience from industrial development of professional web services such as project management and CRM tools, and also from genomics analysis and databasing projects in academia. Mr. Larssons technical skills includes general programming in several environments, web technology, database technology and production level IT systems operation.

Ulf Larsson, Controller ulf.larsson@incf.org
Ulf Larsson is Master of Science in Business Administration and Economics. He works for Poolia Professionals and is hired on a contract to the INCF with the task of establishing an international economy reporting system. Ulf Larsson has worked as a controller for companies based in several countries.

Linda Flodin, Administrative Assistant linda.flodin@incf.org
Linda Flodin joined the Secretariat in May 2007 as an Administrative Assistant responsible for internal business administration and for providing administrative support to the Director and staff as well as to external persons in contact with the Secretariat. Mrs. Flodin has a background from working in administrative and executive assistant roles in several professional environments.

Sonia Olsson, Administrative Assistant sonia.olsson@incf.org
Sonia Olsson joined the Secretariat in September 2006 and is employed in a part-time position. She is responsible for the logistics of the INCF workshop series, and also, as an experienced assistant, contributes to the general administration of the Secretariat.