Rate My Professor Suzie Lavoie

Associate Professor Suzie Lavoie serves as a Senior Research Fellow and Associate Professor at Orygen, the National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, affiliated with the University of Melbourne's Centre for Youth Mental Health in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. She obtained her PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Lausanne in 2007, following a Master's at the Center for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine, Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal (2001-2002), and a postdoctoral position at the Center for Psychiatric Neurosciences, University of Lausanne (2003-2009). Joining Orygen as a Fellow in 2009, she advanced through roles to her current positions, where she leads the Research Enablement and Management Team—developing methods and processes to enhance research outcomes—and heads the Orygen Electroencephalography facility, supporting all EEG-based research conducted there. Since 2003, Lavoie has contributed to research projects and clinical trials focused on young people experiencing mental ill-health.

Lavoie's research centers on youth mental health, leveraging neuroscience and EEG to identify biomarkers such as mismatch negativity and erythrocyte glutathione levels that predict transition to psychosis in ultra-high risk individuals. Her expertise includes psychopathology, neuroimaging, reactive oxygen species, neuropsychiatry, clinical assessment, adolescent psychiatry, clinical psychiatry, and psychopharmacology. Key publications encompass "Glutathione precursor, N-acetyl-cysteine, improves mismatch negativity in schizophrenia patients" (2008), "Erythrocyte glutathione levels as long-term predictor of transition to psychosis" (2017), "Impaired mismatch negativity to frequency deviants in individuals at ultra-high risk for psychosis" (2017), "Harmonised collection of data in youth mental health: Towards large datasets" (2020), and "The electroencephalography protocol for the Accelerating Medicines Partnership Schizophrenia Program: Reliability and stability of measures" (2025). With over 70 publications and approximately 2,950 citations, her contributions extend to major initiatives including the NEURAPRO trial, PRESCIENT network, and Accelerating Medicines Partnership Schizophrenia program, advancing prediction models, clinical staging, neurophenomenology of basic self-disturbance, and early intervention strategies.