Barbara Franke

Barbara Franke is a Full Professor of Molecular Psychiatry at Radboud University and Principal Investigator at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour. She heads the Division of Genome Research and leads the Radboud Research Theme Neurodevelopmental Disorders. With joint affiliations between the Department of Human Genetics and Department of Psychiatry, she directs the Research Lab for Multifactorial Diseases. Elected to prestigious academies including Academia Europaea (2015) and Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2017), she holds honorary professorships at Aarhus University and Goethe University Frankfurt.

Her research focuses on genetic mechanisms underlying neurodevelopmental psychiatric disorders, especially ADHD and comorbidities. She employs multidisciplinary approaches including bioinformatics, neuroimaging genetics, small animal models, and induced neurons to map biological pathways from genes to disease manifestation. Key research areas span human genetics, multifactorial inheritance patterns, psychiatric disorders, neuro-development, ADHD/autism spectrum, and cognomics.

Professor Franke leads major international initiatives including the EU-funded PRIME consortium and co-founded the ENIGMA neuroimaging collaboration. She coordinates the International Multicentre persistent ADHD Collaboration (IMpACT) and the ECNP Network 'ADHD across the Lifespan'. As senior-lead of ENIGMA's ADHD Working Group and co-leader of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium's ADHD group, she drives large-scale genetic studies.

• Expertscape Top-10 ADHD Expert (2020)
• Knighthood in Order of Netherlands Lion (2019)
• Clarivate Top 1% Cited Researcher (2018)
• NWO Vici Grant - €1.5M (2013)
• Honorary Skou Professorship (2019)
• Honorary Adjunct Professorship at Goethe University (2019)

She has secured substantial research funding including leadership of EU consortia (Aggressotype, MiND, PRIME, CoCA, Eat2beNICE). Her laboratory focuses on translating genetic findings into biological mechanisms through integrated genomics and neuroimaging approaches.