Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Matthew Rushworth has been newly elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society along with five other Oxford academics.
Matthew is based in the Decisions and Actions research group in the Department of Experimental Psychology, where his principal area of investigation has been the neural basis of how the brain makes decisions. This research is vital in not only understanding the decision making process, but as decision making is a key function, it may have further implications in understanding psychological conditions and how to treat them.
The Royal Society is a self-governing Fellowship made up of the most eminent scientists, engineers and technologists from the UK and the Commonwealth. Fellows and Foreign Members are elected for life through a peer review process on the basis of excellence in science. Each candidate is considered on his or her own merits and can be proposed from any sector of the scientific community. Every effort is made to encourage nominations of women candidates and candidates from the emerging disciplines.
There are approximately 1,600 Fellows and Foreign Members, including around 80 Nobel Laureates. Each year up to 52 Fellows and up to 10 Foreign Members are elected from a group of around 700 candidates who are proposed by the existing Fellowship.
Mathew's thoughts on this incredible achievement: “I am very pleased about the fellowship and the interest it demonstrates in cognitive and behavioural neuroscience”.
Other Oxford academics elected in this round include Véronique Gouverneur and Anant Parekh