Our Supervisors

Prof Carsten Murawski
Carsten Murawski is the academic lead of the Bonn and Melbourne Research and Graduate School of Decision Neuroscience. He is a professor in the Department of Finance and is the co-head of the Brain, Mind and Markets Laboratory at the University of Melbourne. Professor Murawski uses laboratory experiments in his research to study individual decision-making, in particular its neurobiological basis. The focus of his work is on determining in what ways information processing constraints in the brain affect decision-making, how they can explain the use of heuristics and emergence of cognitive biases, and in what ways mental illness impairs information processing and decision-making.

Prof Chris Davey
Chris Davey is a psychiatrist and researcher and is Head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne. Professor Davey’s research focuses on studying effective treatments for mood disorders, and he has led large NHMRC-funded multicentre clinical trials. He is interested in using brain imaging to examine depression and social-affective processes.

Prof Dr Ulrich Ettinger
Ulrich Ettinger is the Bonn Academic Lead for the pilot International Research Training Group. He is the Head of the Section of Cognitive Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Bonn. His research interests include inhibition and impulsivity, oculomotor control, experimental psychopharmacology as well as the schizophrenia spectrum. Professor Ettinger is the lead University of Bonn supervisor for two of the four research projects within the pilot IRTG.

Prof Ben Harrison
Ben Harrison is Professor of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience and holds dual appointments in the Department of Psychiatry and Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre. Over the past decade, Ben has established the ‘Depression and Anxiety Neuroscience’ program: a research group devoted to the neuroscience of cognitive and affective processes and their role in mood and anxiety disorders – the most common form of mental illness.His team conducts experimental functional neuroimaging research in healthy and clinical populations and has a primary interest in the development of treatment-oriented imaging biomarkers.

Prof Christos Pantelis
Christos Pantelis is Foundation Professor of Neuropsychiatry and Scientific Director of the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre at the University of Melbourne (www.mncresearch.org). He leads a team of over 60 clinical and research scientists and students that have been undertaking neuroimaging and neuropsychological work in schizophrenia and psychosis, and other psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders since 1993 in Australia. Professor Pantelis established some of the first studies on cognition in psychosis, and first studies on neuroimaging in pre-psychosis individuals. His group was first to describe progressive brain structural changes at psychosis onset. He has a strong track record in establishing cross-disciplinary collaborative research and has received major funding from Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). He is a Thompson Reuters highly cited researcher since 2014. Recent work examines the neurobiology of schizophrenia in clinical and preclinical studies. Relevant to the collaboration with Bonn, he has established cognitive and neuroimaging work in childhood schizotypal disorder.

Prof Dr Alexandra Philipsen
Alexandra Philipsen is a Professor of psychiatry and psychotherapy at the University of Bonn and the director of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the University Hospital Bonn. Prof Philipsen has her main research focus in the field of clinical psychopharmacological and non-pharmacological trials in adult ADHD and psychiatric disorders with emotion dysregulation. She has led or has been involved in several clinical trials (including the “COMPAS” study). She also has comprehensive experience in conducting experimental neuropsychological studies using functional brain imaging methods, and has developed novel medical technologies for the assessment and treatment of adult ADHD (virtual reality scenarios, wearables). Her recent research includes experimental studies on the effects of physical exercise on cognitive functioning in ADHD.