Our Webinars

Anthony T Barker PhD, FIET, FIPEM. Tony retired from the U.K. National Health Service in 2015 after 38 years in the Sheffield Department of Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering.  An engineer by training, he led the group that invented the technique of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, now widely used for basic research, diagnosis and therapy. He has also worked on other effects of electromagnetic fields on the body, ranging from the possible health effects of mobile phones and overhead powerlines to their claimed therapeutic effects as well as many other areas of technology applied to medicine.
Tony has an active interest in the public understanding of science and has given many named and public lectures including the Faraday lecture series, the Silvanus P Thomson series and a Royal Institution Discourse. He is an honorary Professor at the University of Sheffield, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine. He received the inaugural International Brain Stimulation Award in 2017 for ‘outstanding and transformative contributions to the field of brain stimulation’.

Mark S. George, MD received his medical degree from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston in 1985, where he continued with dual residencies and board certification in both neurology and psychiatry. He completed serial research fellowships focusing on brain imaging (PET, SPECT, MRI) and the then new field of brain stimulation. In 1990 at Queen Square London, he wandered into John Rothwell’s laboratory, after hearing about transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) from a patient in the elevator. Later while at the Biological Psychiatry Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, MD he performed pioneering imaging, healthy volunteer and patient studies with prefrontal TMS, launching it to its now widespread research and clinical use. Specifically, in 1993 while at the NIMH, he discovered that daily prefrontal rTMS over several weeks could treat depression and ever since he has worked to grow the science of TMS, both in terms of how it works in the brain, and in critically evaluating its therapeutic applications, especially in treating depression. He returned to MUSC in 1996 and started the research imaging centre, which he led until 2007. In June 1998 at MUSC, he also helped pioneer another new treatment for resistant depression, cervical vagus nerve stimulation (VNS). This was FDA approved in 2006. Dr. George is a world expert in brain imaging and brain stimulation. He is the editor-in-chief of the journal Brain Stimulation and he has published over 500 scientific articles or book chapters, and has written or edited 6 books, several with multiple editions. He has been continuously funded by NIH and other funding agencies since his fellowships and has received many international awards.