Researcher profile

Kristina Adorjan

Professor Kristina Adorjan (University of Bern, Switzerland): Prof. Kristina Adorjan is Full Professor and Director of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (UPD), Director of Teaching and Research (UPD), and Vice Dean for Internationalization and National Networking (a.i.), Faculty of Medicine, University of Bern. Trained in medicine, economics, and political science, she combines these fields to improve mental health care across low- and high-resource settings. Her commitment to sustainable development, particularly in African countries, includes establishing biological research projects, advancing laboratory methods, and fostering high-level education through PhD and Master’s training, alongside strengthening mental health services through new professions and rehabilitation facilities. Her research focuses on psychiatric genetics, schizophrenia neurogenetics, and gene–environment interactions, with a particular emphasis on psychosis in underrepresented populations such as Ethiopia. She integrates biological psychiatry, epidemiology, and global mental health to examine trauma and substance abuse as key risk factors. As lead applicant and overall project coordinator, she is responsible for study design, genetic analyses, international data-sharing, ethical compliance, and dissemination. She is active in numerous international associations (e.g. WPA, WFSBP) and represents the Swiss Brain Health Plan at the UN General Assembly (2024/2025). She publishes African related research in high–impact factor journals, including World Psychiatry. In 2019, she received the DGPPN Award for Outstanding Research on Mental Health in Africa, awarded by the German Association for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics (DGPPN).