Rate My Professor Michael Breakspear

Professor Michael Breakspear is Professor in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Newcastle, where he joined in early 2019 to establish a new brain imaging group at the Hunter Medical Research Institute’s neuroimaging facility. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy, Bachelor of Science (Medical) with Honours, Bachelor of Arts, and Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, all from the University of Sydney. As Group Leader of the Systems Neuroscience Group, he directs a multidisciplinary team employing computational models, advanced statistics, neuroimaging, and behavioral observations to study brain function from neurons to networks and individuals. His research specializations encompass computational neuroscience, including modeling of brain dynamics via nonlinear systems theory, stochastic processes, and network science; neuroimaging and connectomics with applications to psychiatric and neurological disorders; brain disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Alzheimer’s disease, and epilepsy; and neurotechnology utilizing machine learning and generative modeling for imaging biomarkers, disease prediction, and patient stratification. Fields of research allocation include Psychiatry (40%), Cognitive neuroscience (30%), and Neurosciences (30%).

Breakspear’s career trajectory features Principal Research Fellow with the National Health and Medical Research Council, Senior Scientist and Head at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Adjunct Professor at the University of Sydney School of Physics and University of Queensland School of Psychiatry, Associate Professor at University of Western Sydney School of Psychiatry, Post-doctoral Research Fellow at University of Sydney School of Physics and University of Western Sydney School of Psychiatry, and clinical psychiatry roles including Advanced Trainee at the Black Dog Institute, Senior Registrar at St Vincent’s Hospital, and Registrar at South East Sydney Area Health Service. Awards include the HMRI Research Excellence Award (2022) and Senior Researcher Award for brain network disturbances in affective disorders (2017, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry). Key publications feature highly cited papers such as “Network structure of cerebral cortex shapes functional connectivity on multiple time scales” (2007, 2108 citations), “The connectomics of brain disorders” (2015, 2048 citations), “Small-world networks and functional connectivity in Alzheimer’s disease” (2007, 1609 citations), “Dynamic models of large-scale brain activity” (2017, 1540 citations), and “Graph analysis of the human connectome: promise, progress, and pitfalls” (2013, 919 citations).