We are delighted to announce that our first-year Ph.D. student, Morfeas Koumas (BSc, MSc), has been awarded the FENS/IBRO-PERC Fellowship to conduct a six-week research exchange at the University of Barcelona. Morfeas will train under the mentorship of Dr. Jordi Bonaventura, an expert in addiction neuroscience and behavioral pharmacology.

This fellowship represents a crucial step forward for both Morfeas’s doctoral training and our lab’s research capabilities. During his stay in Barcelona, Morfeas will receive intensive hands-on training in intravenous self-administration protocols, a gold-standard technique for studying substance use disorders and relapse behaviors in preclinical models.

While our lab recently acquired ten IVSA chambers, this specialized expertise is not currently available in Cyprus, making this international training opportunity essential for advancing our research program. By acquiring this expertise, Morfeas will establish our lab as the first in Cyprus with operational IVSA capabilities, enabling us to conduct high-translational addiction research and strengthen our competitiveness for future collaborative projects across Europe.

We are immensely proud of Morfeas’s achievement and look forward to the new research directions this training will enable.