Dr.Raymond Chan from the Neuropsychology and Applied Cognitive Neuroscience (NACN) Laboratory, and the CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology has recently received the 2021 Global Schizophrenia Award from the Schizophrenia International Research Society (SIRS). This award is to support a scholar in a low and middle income country to attend the annual SIRS congress. The intent of the award is to widen diversity and to bring a member from under-represented countries to a state-of-the-art meeting to establish collaborations with other SIRS members. The panel of this award recognizes Dr.Chan's substantial contributions to the understanding of psychopathology of schizophrenia spectrum disorders and the successful translation of basic science findings to clinical practice. Dr.Chan will receive this award at the opening virtual ceremony on 17th April 2021.

"Dr.Chan has made substantial contributions to the understanding of cognitive processing and neural mechanisms of anhedonia and amotivation across stages of schizophrenia and in schizotypal disorder. His work on neurological soft signs has also led to development of technology to provide quantifiable metrics at the bedside,"commented by Prof.Christos Pantelis from the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre and Department of Psychiatry of Melbourne University Prof.Pantelis hopes this award will allow Dr.Chan to further promote schizophrenia research in China and facilitate international links relevant to schizophrenia and schizotypy research.

Prof.Til Wykes, Chairperson of the SIRS also comments,"Dr.Chan has recently provided strong evidence that neurological soft signs are not"soft"but relate to brain structural and functional connectivity. These are likely to be particularly useful for developing countries and countries with large populations. His interests also stretch to investigating the neural links, or loss of them, in schizotypy, amotivation and anhedonia."

Dr.Raymond Chan is a recipient of the Distinguished Young Investigator Award of the National Natural Science Foundation China, the Beijing Leading Talents in Science and Technology, the Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, and among one of the highly cited researchers in 2019 by Clarivate Analytics. His recent work has extended to a wider spectrum of neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders including autistic spectrum disorders and Alzheimer's disease.