Professor Michael Breakspear

Professor Michael Breakspear is Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at the University of Newcastle, where he leads the Systems Neuroscience Group at the Hunter Medical Research Institute — a multidisciplinary team of psychiatrists, physicists, psychologists and neuroimaging scientists. A Chief Investigator on the $18 million Australian Dementia Network, he uses computational and systems-level approaches to understand the brain mechanisms underlying healthy ageing, dementia, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and depression. He trained in Medicine at the University of Sydney alongside degrees in Arts (philosophy and mathematics) and Science (neuroscience and physics), and is a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. He also works clinically as a consultant psychiatrist at the Awabakal Aboriginal Medical Service and within Hunter New England Mental Health Service.