Our team

Frauke Nees is Director of the Institute of Medical Psychology and Professor of Medical Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich (since 2025) and was before (2020-2025) Director of the Institute of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology, University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein and Professor for Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology, Kiel University. She did her PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) at the University of Trier (fellowships from the Nikolaus-Koch-foundation and a

Since 2024, Beke Seefried is a researcher at the Institute of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology, University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein. She has a degree in Mathematics and Language Sciences from the University of Bremen. During her studies, she worked as a student assistant in several linguistic research projects and focused on interdisciplinary approaches and data processing.

Rieke Aden has been working as a research assistant at the Institute of Medical Psychology and Sociology at the University Medical Centre Schleswig-Holstein since the beginning of 2024. She studied psychology (B.Sc. and M.Sc.) at Kiel University. During this time, she worked as a student and research assistant in clinical psychology. In spring 2024, she began training as a psychotherapist specializing in systemic therapy.

Karina Janson is a doctoral researcher at the Central Institute of Mental Health (CIMH) in Mannheim, working within the Clinical Neurophysiology and Child and Adolescent Psychology research group. She holds a bachelor's degree in psychology (B.Sc.) from the University of Mannheim and a master's degree in Cognitive Science (M.Sc.) from the Technical University of Kaiserslautern.

From 2018 to 2022, she worked as a research associate at the CIMH, where she was involved in studies on stepped-care approaches for ADHD treatment across the lifespan and on optimizing prevention and therapeutic strategies for affective dysregulation. Additionally, she has teaching experience in Medical Psychology and Sociology at the Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg (2022-2023).

Her earlier research experience includes a research internship at the Otto-Selz Institute, Mannheim, focusing on clinical psychological diagnostics (2016), and work as a student assistant at the CIMH in child and adolescent psychology (2016-2018).

Since May 2024, she has been working at the Institute of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology (IMPS) in Kiel.

Maja Neidhart is a PhD student at Charité University Clinic Berlin and a research assistant at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim and Institute of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology, University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein working within the EU-project „environMENTAL“. She has bachelor degree (B.A.) from IB Hochschule Berlin in applied psychology and a master degree in psychology (M.Sc.) from University of Cologne.

Nathalie Holz is a Professor of Developmental Neuroscience at the Central Institute of Mental Health (CIMH). She earned her PhD in 2015 from the Medical Faculty of Mannheim/Heidelberg University. Following her doctoral studies, she became Co-Head of a research group and established her own research group in 2018 within the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at CIMH. 

She pursued postdoctoral research at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour in Nijmegen as a Radboud Excellence Initiative Research Fellow (2021–2023). Additionally, she held a postdoctoral position at the Institute of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology, University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein, Kiel University, from 2022 to 2023.