Associate Professor Lianne Schmaal

^{Associate Professor Lianne Schmaal}

Associate Professor at Centre for Youth Mental Health and Orygen, Lianne Schmaal, was awarded the Award for Excellence in Internationalisation for establishing and leading the two largest neuroimaging consortia on depression and suicide worldwide. The consortia involved collaborations between over 100 researchers from 40 institutes across 15 countries, and aimed to identify brain, clinical, cognitive and genetic mechanisms underlying depression and suicide that are reliable and replicable across many samples and cultures worldwide.

The award recognises the huge amount of work Associate Professor Schmaal’s team has put into establishing and leading the ENIGMA Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and the ENIGMA Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviours (STB) consortia in the last 7 years. It has also motivated them to keep progressing this work.

Associate Professor Schmaal intended to use the award to host a meeting with key ENIGMA MDD members from around the world to further strengthen collaboration, but unfortunately this had to be postponed due to COVID-19.

I have applied for the University award and this was very easy since the application process was very similar to the Faculty award application, Associate Professor Lianne Schmaal

‘I would highly recommend applying. It can be a bit uncomfortable to promote yourself and your own research in an award application, but it’s a very nice appreciation of the work by you and your team, looks good on your CV when applying for fellowships and promotions, and provides opportunities to network with other awardees and to get more involved on a Faculty level.’