Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

Please see the <a href = "http://cogneuro.com.au" onclick="target='_blank';">Cognitive Neurology Laboratory website </a> for a list of current projects.

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Personal profile

Biography

I am a neurologist and cognitive neuroscientist based at the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health in Melbourne, Australia. I am currently appointed as an Associate Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience, and lead the Monash Cognitive Neurology Laboratory. I consult at cognitive clinics at St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne and Alfred Health. 

I completed both my undergraduate research training (BMedSc) and medical training (MB,BS) with Honours at Monash University in 2002. I then embarked on my doctoral research with Jason Mattingley at the University of Melbourne, and in collaboration with Nancy Kanwisher at MIT. After being awarded my PhD in 2007, I returned to speciality training in Neurology via St. Vincent's Hospital and The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, and was admitted to Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (FRACP) as a consultant neurologist in 2013. That year, I was awarded an NH&MRC Neil Hamilton Fairley Early Career Fellowship, which I took to Oxford to work with Masud Husain. I returned to Australia in 2015 to the ARC Centre of Excellence for Cognition and its Disorders in Sydney, before establishing my lab at Monash. 

Research Interests

Cognitive impairments affect individuals across a broad range of neurological disease. The Cognitive Neurology Laboratory at Monash University seeks to understand the neurobiology of learning, memory and decision-making in healthy individuals, and how these processes are impacted by neurological illness. 

Our research bridges the domains of basic cognitive neuroscience and clinical cognitive neurology, with the ultimate goal of developing new paradigms that may be translated into the clinical setting to guide the diagnosis and management of cognitive symptoms. 

To accomplish this, we combine insights from psychology, economics and neuroscience, and apply cross-disciplinary methodologies including psychophysics, computational modelling, electroencephalography, structural and functional brain imaging, pharmacological intervention, and brain lesion studies.

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being
  • SDG 4 - Quality Education

Education/Academic qualification

Neuroscience, PhD, University of Melbourne

Award Date: 20 Dec 2007

Medicine, BMedSc (Hons), Monash University

Award Date: 5 Dec 2002

Medicine, MBBS (Hons), Monash University

Award Date: 5 Dec 2002

External positions

Board Director & Chair, Research ('Cure') Committee, FightMND

2018 → …

Senior Staff Specialist, Alfred Hospital

2017 → …

Senior Staff Specialist, St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne

2016 → …

Research area keywords

  • Decision-making
  • Motivation
  • Reward
  • Dopamine
  • Parkinson's disease
  • Effort
  • Fatigue
  • Perception

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

Recent external collaboration on country/territory level. Dive into details by clicking on the dots or