Konstantinos Diskos is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Crete, Department of Biology, under the supervision of Professor Kyriaki Sidiropoulou of the Neurophysiology and Behavior Laboratory. Konstantinos completed his B.Sc. degree in Biology from the University of Crete in 2019, and his M.Sc. in Molecular Biology and Biomedicine in 2021 at the University of Crete/ Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology. His passion about psychiatric disorders led him to pursue his Ph.D. in neuroscience. His research focuses on deciphering adaptations early in development in an animal model of schizophrenia with the aim to identify targetable mechanisms that will help minimize or prevent the emergence of schizophrenia-related symptoms prior to their emergence. To this end, he has identified significant adaptations in the GABA neurotransmitter system of the prefrontal cortex - a brain region significantly affected in schizophrenia - starting in the neonatal and adolescent periods in the MAM model of schizophrenia established at the laboratory of Prof. Sidiropoulou. Given that schizophrenia has a significant genetic component, Konstantinos aims to include in his Ph.D. a well-validated genetic animal model for schizophrenia, in which the genes affected exhibit high penetrance in the human population.

As a Fulbright Visiting Research Student, Konstantinos will visit the laboratory of Prof. Joseph A. Gogos at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for Precision Psychiatry & Mental Health at Columbia University. There, he will conduct a portion of his doctoral research aiming to investigate the excitation and inhibition balance in the prefrontal cortex during early development in a robust genetic animal model for schizophrenia. The findings from the work at the Gogos lab will allow Konstantinos to assess whether the changes in the GABA neurotransmitter system in the prefrontal cortex early in development can be generalized to more than one schizophrenia animal models, significantly complementing his Ph.D. thesis. The results from this work could open new avenues for understanding the disease and applying new therapeutic strategies that are targeted to specific developmental periods.