Dr. Eric J. Nestler is the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, where he also serves as Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Vice President of the Mount Sinai Health System. He received his B.A., Ph.D., and M.D. degrees, and psychiatry residency training, from Yale University. He served on the Yale faculty from 1987–2000 where he was the Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobiology and founding Director of the Division of Molecular Psychiatry. He moved to Dallas in 2000 where he was the Lou and Ellen McGinley Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center until moving to New York in 2008. Upon recruitment to Mount Sinai, Dr. Nestler was Chair of the Department of Neuroscience (2008-2016), founding Director of the Friedman Brain Institute (2008-2025), and Dean for Academic and Scientific Affairs (2016-2025) prior to his being named Dean in July 2025. Dr. Nestler is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2025) and National Academy of Medicine (1998) and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2005). He is past President of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (2011) and the Society for Neuroscience (2017). He is a founder and SAB chair for PsychoGenics and Coreterra. Dr. Nestler also chairs the SABs for One Mind and the Hope for Depression Research Foundation. With more than 775 publications and five books, Dr. Nestler’s research studies the molecular basis of drug addiction and depression.

Dr. Brent R. Stockwell is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Biological Sciences and Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, with additional appointments as Professor of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences, and Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
He is internationally recognized for his discovery, conceptualization, and naming of ferroptosis, an iron-dependent, oxidative form of regulated cell death driven by lipid peroxidation, which he described in a series of papers from 2003-2012. This discovery has fundamentally reshaped the understanding of cell death mechanisms and therapeutic strategies in diverse cancers and degenerative diseases.
Dr. Stockwell was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Medicine in 2023. He has consistently ranked among the world's top 1% of highly cited researchers.