Mark Williams

Dr Mark has worked with thousands of students, teachers, health professionals, and company directors keen to understand how their brain works, how to perform optimally and maintain a healthy brain. He regularly runs programs on the neuroscience of learning, the neuroscience of emotions, how to hack your habits, how our brains create our reality, and the impact of modern technologies on our brains. Dr Mark’s book The Connected Species: How understanding the evolution of our brain can change the world will be published internationally in 2023.

Dr Mark has an extensive academic background in brain research and teaching. He is a professor of cognitive neuroscience, with over 25 years of experience conducting behavioral and brain imaging research focusing on how we interact with each other, how we learn, and how we think. He has taught the fundamentals of neuroscience to thousands of undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as publishing more than 70 articles in high-impact international journals and co-editing a book. He is an editorial board member of several international journals, has been awarded numerous high-profile fellowships and grants, and has worked at MIT in the USA and multiple universities in Australia.

Not a typical ‘academic’, Dr Mark comes from a disjointed family background. He hated school and experienced first-hand the challenges of getting ahead in a small town in Victoria. To describe these years as ‘colorful’ is an understatement. Aged 25, something changed. Mark returned to learning, completed his HSC, and began what became a rapid rise to academic achievement, including being awarded both the CJ Martin and the Queen Elisabeth II Fellowships. He became fascinated with how we interact, learn and think. Mark went on to study brain plasticity, attention disorders, autism, prosopagnosia (face blindness), dementia, and eating disorders. He has been at the cutting edge of developing computational brain imaging analysis and the adoption of new technologies like virtual reality in research.

Dr Mark draws on his extensive scientific background to work with schools, companies, and the public to develop evidence-based practices using neuroscience to enhance our education, work, and personal lives. His work has been highlighted in the media internationally including in The Guardian, The New York Times, and the Economist, and he is involved in several popular science documentaries.