Professor Donna Rose Addis joins Centre for Brain Research Scientific Advisory Board

The Centre for Brain Research is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Donna Rose Addis to our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Addis is a Senior Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Health Sciences and a Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. Until 2018, she was a based in the School of Psychology at the University of Auckland, and was a key member of the Centre for Brain Research from its inception in 2009, playing a major leadership role in the CBR imaging users group as well as CBR Associate Director from 2016. She moved to Toronto in 2018 to take up one of 24 prestigious Canada 150 Research Chairs – hers focusing on the cognitive neuroscience of memory and ageing.

In her research, Professor Addis uses neuroimaging and neuropsychological techniques to understand how we remember our past, imagine our future, and construct a sense of self, and how these abilities change with age, dementia and depression.  

Originally from South Auckland and of Samoan heritage, Professor Addis completed her BA and MA at the University of Auckland, followed by a PhD at the University of Toronto as a Commonwealth Scholar. She did postdoctoral research at Harvard University, before returning home in 2008 to take up a lectureship at the University.

Since then she has had an impressive career trajectory, having supervised over 50 trainees, published 100 papers and chapters with over 15,000 citations, and secured $6 million in research funding as a Principal Investigator. These achievements have been recognised with a number of prestigious awards, including early career awards from international societies such as the Cognitive Neuroscience Society and the Association for Psychological Science, as well as the New Zealand Prime Minister’s Emerging Scientist Prize. She is the youngest-ever fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, elected at the age of 38.

"It is a very special pleasure to welcome to our CBR Scientific Advisory Board one of our own world leading neuroscientists who was nurtured and developed within the CBR and who has achieved international recognition through her recent appointment to a prestigious Research Chair in Canada," says Sir Richard Faull, Director of the Centre for Brain Research.

"Professor Addis will bring a special knowledge of the ethos and vision of the CBR together with her international expertise and leadership in neuroimaging and neuropsychology. It is highly significant that in the year of our 10th Anniversary we are able to appoint to our Scientific Advisory Board a CBR trained neuroscientist who has achieved eminence on the world stage."

Professor Addis replaces the vacant seat on the board left by retiring member Professor Hanns Möhler (University of Zurich).

She joins the following board members:

• Distinguished Julieanne Dorn Professor of Neurology Anne Young of Harvard University (Chair)
• Professor Chris Shaw (Director, Maurice Wohl Clinical Neuroscience Institute, Kings College London)
• Professor Perry Bartlett (Queensland Brain Institute)
• Professor Stephen Davis (Director of the Melbourne Brain Centre)
• Professor Cliff Abraham (University of Otago).
  

With their focus firmly on research, the Scientific Advisory Board aims to inform and guide the science, ethics and offer advice as the search for treatments through research continues.

"It is a great honour for me to be appointed to the Scientific Advisory Board and to have the opportunity to guide the future of a research centre that has been so pivotal in my own career," says Professor Addis.

"To help the Centre for Brain Research fully realise its research goals gives me a real way to contribute back to the CBR, to New Zealand, and to the next generation of scientists. It also presents some exciting prospects, such as forging strong links between the CBR and Canadian neuroscience centres, to the benefit of the researchers and students in both countries, and ultimately our understanding of the brain and brain disease."

The Centre for Brain Research Scientific Advisory Board will next meet in Auckland in December this year to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Centre for Brain Research.