Rate My Professor Juanita Todd

Professor Juanita Todd serves as Pro Vice-Chancellor Research at the University of Newcastle since August 2023, where she leads strategic support teams for research advantage, ethics, integrity, performance, graduate research, and innovation initiatives aligned with the university's Strategic Plan and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. She also holds the position of Interim Deputy Vice-Chancellor - Research and Innovation. A Professor in the School of Psychological Sciences, Todd earned her PhD, Master of Psychology (Clinical), Bachelor of Psychology (Honours), and Bachelor of Science from the University of Western Australia, complemented by a Company Directors Course from the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Her career at the University of Newcastle includes a range of research and leadership roles following her postdoctoral fellowship from 2004 to 2006. She is a co-founder of HunterWiSE, which supports women and girls in STEM through educational programs and networking.

Todd's research investigates how perception and cognition are constrained by neural processes and individual differences, with a focus on schizophrenia and normal brain function. Utilizing clinical, neuropsychological, psychophysical, pharmacological, and neuroimaging methods, including mismatch negativity (MMN), she explores auditory processing, predictive inference, relevance filtering, and perceptual learning. Her contributions include highly cited works such as 'Deviant matters: duration, frequency, and intensity deviants reveal different patterns of mismatch negativity reduction in early and late schizophrenia' (Biological Psychiatry, 2008), 'Making sense of mismatch negativity' (Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2020), 'Duration mismatch negativity in biological relatives of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders' (Biological Psychiatry, 2002), 'Duration and frequency mismatch negativity in schizophrenia' (Clinical Neurophysiology, 2000), and 'Gray matter deficits, mismatch negativity, and outcomes in schizophrenia' (Schizophrenia Bulletin, 2011). She has garnered awards including Distinction to her PhD Thesis (University of Western Australia, 2001), UWA Convocation Medal (1990), Dux (1990), and Best Debut Oral Presentation Awards (1999 and 1997 from the Australasian Society for Psychiatric Research).