Emma Burrows

Dr Emma Burrows leads a research team at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Melbourne, the largest brain research group in the Southern Hemisphere, which aims to understand the neurobiology underlying cognitive disorders such as dementia, schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder. After completing her PhD in 2011, Emma received a Victoria Fellowship in 2013 and travelled to Cambridge, UK, where she learned to develop new cognitive tests for rodents using touch screens. Continuing this research at the Florey Institute, Emma is training mice to nose-poke stimuli on touch-sensitive screens for a sweet reward, and then scaling the complexity of these tasks to assess their memory and attention. Once established, this testing platform can be translated from mice to human patients using iPad interfaces—and may uncover new treatments.