Rate My Professor Deborah Apthorp

Deborah Apthorp serves as Associate Professor and HDR Coordinator in the School of Psychology, Faculty of Medicine and Health, at the University of New England. She earned her PhD in Psychology from the University of Sydney in 2011, Bachelor of Psychology with First Class Honours and University Medal from Macquarie University in 2006, and Diploma of Music Performance from Queensland Conservatorium in 1986. Her professional trajectory encompasses an NHMRC Early Career Research Fellowship at the Australian National University's Research School of Psychology from 2013 to 2017, Senior Research Fellowship at ANU's Research Schools of Psychology and Computer Science from 2017 to 2018, Adjunct Senior Lecturer at ANU from 2018 to 2021, Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Wollongong in 2012, and Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Sydney in 2011. Earlier roles include teaching fellowships and tutoring in psychology and statistics at these institutions.

As a cognitive neuroscientist, Apthorp specializes in the human visual system, multisensory perception, and their alterations as biomarkers for neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis. Her research employs EEG, psychophysics, postural sway analysis, and machine learning to track disease progression and cognitive changes, including effects of sleep on perception and cognition. Notable publications include "Postural sway correlates with cognition and quality of life in Parkinson’s disease" (Apthorp et al., BMJ Neurology Open, 2020), "Which features of postural sway are effective in distinguishing Parkinson’s disease from controls?: A systematic review" (Ge et al., Brain & Behavior, 2021), "Postural sway in first-degree relatives of individuals with schizophrenia" (Bolbecker et al., Schizophrenia Research, 2021), "The role of Weber’s Law in human time perception" (Haigh et al., Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 2020), and "Robust feature engineering for Parkinson disease diagnosis: New machine learning techniques" (Wang et al., JMIR Biomedical Engineering, 2020). She has been awarded the NHMRC Early Career Fellowship, Macquarie University Medal, University of Sydney Postgraduate Publication Prize, and multiple travel awards. Apthorp contributes editorially as a board member for Scientific Reports and PLoS One, and has chaired committees such as UNE's Administrative Processes Review Committee. Her supervision areas cover cognitive neuroscience, Parkinson's biomarkers, visual and multisensory perception, and sleep effects on cognition.