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Professor Kia Nobre, Head of the Department of Experimental Psychology has been appointed Chair of the Oxford Neuroscience Strategic Oversight Committee.  The appointment was announced by Alastair Buchan at the Medical Sciences Division Retreat on the 14th September.  Kia, who has been Head of Department since March 2016, takes over the role from the outgoing Chair Christopher Kennard who will retire as head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the end of the month.

Chris Kennard is credited with creating a forum in which collaborative links between both basic scientists and clinical researchers have been able to thrive.  It is this environment that has undoubtedly contributed to significant major strategic funding awards being made to Oxford.  Alastair Buchan commented ‘Professor Kennard embodies the Oslerian ideal of the clinician-scientist-teacher. Thanks to his integrative leadership as Head of a university department and Director of a hospital division, all strands of the tripartite mission of academic Neurosciences have grown from strengths to strength, and for the first time in Oxford’s history he has managed to seamlessly integrate research, education and patient care at the University/NHS interface for the benefit of our patients, students, and a wider scientific community’.

Anna Christina (Kia) Nobre grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and then completed her university education in the United States. She obtained her PhD (1993) and carried out postdoctoral research at Yale University, supervised by Gregory McCarthy. She then became an instructor at Harvard Medical School, working with Marsel Mesulam at the Behavioural Neurology Unit of Beth Israel Hospital. She moved to Oxford in 1994 to take up a McDonnell-Pew Lectureship in Cognitive Neuroscience and a Junior Research Fellowship at New College. Prior to her current position, Kia was a university lecturer (Reader 2002-2006, Professor 2006-2014) at the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford, and was Tutorial Fellow at New College, Oxford (1996-2014).

Kia is the first person to hold the chair in Translational Cognitive Neuroscience at Oxford, held jointly between the Departments of Psychiatry and of Experimental Psychology. She is a Professorial Fellow at St Catherine's College. She is also Adjunct Professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, USA, where she is a member of the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Centre (CNADC). Kia directs the Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity (OHBA) and heads the Brain & Cognition Lab.

Chris Kennard welcomed Kia’s appointment saying ‘I am delighted that Kia will be taking over the chair of NSOC. She already straddles the basic/clinical neuroscience divide with her joint Professorial position in EP and Psychiatry and has wide-ranging interests in neuroscience.  Her leadership skills are well known and with other members of NSOC I look forward to seeing many new neuroscience initiatives taking place over the next few years.’