Trevor W. Robbins is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute. He received his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in psychology from the University of Cambridge. He is a Fellow for the Royal Society.

Dr. Robbins’ research integrates approaches from cognitive and behavioral neuroscience with psychopharmacology. In a multi-disciplinary research program involving both experimental animals and human patients, he has defined cognitive and behavioral functions of neural networks linking the frontal lobes to other regions of the brain, such as the striatum, in control of action and thought, as well as motivation. He has been especially interested in the way chemical systems, including dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, and acetylcholine, mediate states such as mood and alertness to influence the functioning of these networks. He also has pursued possible drug treatments for cognitive enhancement in patients with psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders ranging from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and schizophrenia to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

His interest in translational research began with his co-invention of the CANTAB computerized neuropsychological battery, which correlates measures of cognitive function with neural networks, and is currently used in more than 700 institutes and clinical centers worldwide. Among several awards, Dr. Robbins was the co-recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award for 2011 from the American Psychological Association and recipient of the Gold Medal of the U.S. Society for Biological Psychiatry in 2017. In 2014 he shared the “Brain Prize” of the Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Foundation.

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