On April 11, 2009 Dr. Thomas Insel, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), NIH, USA visited ION. Accompanying him were Dr. Richard Nakamura, Scientific Director of NIMH and Dr. Bai Lu, Associate Director of Molecular Neurobiology, GCAP, NIMH. They met with ION faculty members in the morning, introducing the institutes to each other and exchanging ideas about future collaborations.

Following visits to several laboratories and lunch with students, Dr. Insel gave a talk entitled "Rethinking Mental Illness", where he discussed challenges facing studies of mental health issues worldwide and introduced his ideas for ways of moving forward. He saw the translation between the bench and the bedside not as a one-way street, but as a cyclic progress. With the large number of mental disease associated genes being identified through large scale screens in human patients, there is much work that needs to be done at the bench identifying the function of these genes using animal models and the wide array of techniques available to modern neurobiology today. He believes that the coming years will be a very exciting stage for the study of mental health issues where major breakthroughs are likely. He strongly encourages the young people in the audience to pursue their very important basic research studies in the context of the bigger picture. The talk generated much interest and enthusiasm among the audience, as the lecture room was jam packed, and there was a full 30 minutes of questions following the talk.