Professor Sharon Naismith is a Clinical Neuropsychologist, National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Leadership Fellow and holds the Leonard P Ullman Chair in Psychology at the University of Sydney. Her work focuses on the mechanisms by which modifiable risk factors for dementia including depression, sleep disturbance, and cardiovascular disease impact on the brain and how best to treat them.
She has authored more than 350 papers and has made new discoveries regarding key brain changes that underpin sleep disturbance and depression in older people. Her cognitive training work is now being implemented in memory clinics across Australia. Her work has attracted awards from the Society of Mental Health Research, Australian Psychological Society and the International Neuropsychological Society.
She leads the NHMRC ‘Centre of Research Excellence to Optimise Sleep in Brain Ageing and Neurodegeneration (CogSleep)’, a new NHMRC ‘SIESTA’ Synergy Grant, focused on sleep and Alzheimer’s disease. She also co-leads the Australian Dementia Network Memory Clinics Initiative, aiming to improve equity of access and improved health services for older Australians experiencing cognitive decline.
