News — Stephen V. Faraone, PhD, Distinguished Professor at Upstate and a leading researcher on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), has been elected president of the World Federation of ADHD. Faraone will serve a four-year term, which began last month. He previously had served for eight years as vice president.

The World Federation of ADHD, founded in 2008 in Zurich, Switzerland, is an international professional association of clinicians, scientists, and other healthcare professionals who are interested in ADHD and all psychiatric syndromes in which ADHD may be a feature. The federation seeks to support and promote studies and training activities in the field of ADHD, and to support and foster the exchange of information about ADHD among scientists, physicians, organizations and the public.

The World Federation has hosted international meetings on ADHD beginning in 2007 at which researchers from across the globe present research findings related to ADHD. The most recent World Congress on ADHD was held in Lisbon, Portugal last month.

Last November the Federation hosted its first ADHD African Regional Meeting, in partnership with the Ministry of Health from Mozambique, to acknowledge the work being made to improve ADHD assessment and management in Africa.

Faraone is Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Neuroscience and Physiology and Vice Chair for Research in Upstate’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. He also holds appointments as senior scientific advisor to the Research Program Pediatric Psychopharmacology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and as a lecturer at Harvard Medical School.

Faraone’s research on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has brought greater clarity to the heritable nature of the disorder, and he has received numerous national and international awards, honoring his lifetime of influential research in brain sciences and genetics.

Most recently, Faraone has been honored with the Paul Hoch Award from the American Psychopathological Association, which honors a distinguished and currently active investigator who has produced significant, generative research, and the Ming Tsuang Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics for his significant and sustained contributions to the advancement of the field of psychiatric genetics.

He is also a member of the Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Hall of Fame in recognition of outstanding achievement in medicine and education research on attention disorders.