Zoltan Sarnyai

Prof Zoltán Sarnyai is a medically-trained PhD neuroscientist with an active research program in the neurobiological mechanisms of stress and psychiatric disorders, including drug addiction, schizophrenia and depression. After a postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School he held an independent research position at the Rockefeller University, supported by two prestigious fellowships. Zoltán was involved in setting up a behavioural neuroscience focussed biotech company and later directed its research effort to develop new animal models for psychiatric disorders. Prior to establishing the Psychiatric Neuroscience Laboratory at JCU in 2012 he was a University Lecturer in Pharmacology and Fellow of Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge.

Zoltán has skills and experience in preclinical and clinical stress research as well as in behavioural neuroscience and animal modelling of complex human neuropsychiatric disorders. Zoltán is Head of the Laboratory of Psychiatric Neuroscience within the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine and the Convenor of the Community of NeuroScientists at JCU (CNS@JCU), a network of academics, doctors and other health professionals interested in broadly defined neuroscience and brain research. Zoltán's particular focus is on determining how psychosocial environment shapes the brain through hormones, immune and metabolic factors during the course of the development of neuropsychiatric disorders. He applies basic neuroscience approaches to study disadvantaged and minority populations, including Indigenous Australians, as they are disproportionally affected by mental illness. Zoltán also has a strong interest in the emerging field of nutritional psychiatry and has a number of research projects on dietary factors and mental health.

To date, Zoltán has 130 journal articles and book chapters (h-index 46 [GS]; top 5 papers in the last 5 years have a relative citation ratio [RCR] of 11; and an NIH percentile of 97), and well over $6m in grant funding from USA, UK, EU and Australian funding bodies. He has supervised 5 HDR students to completion at JCU and currently supervises 4 students at HDR level. He is Associate Editor for the journal Nutritional Neuroscience and for the Neuroenergetics, Nutrition and Brain Health Section of Frontiers of Neuroscience. Zoltan serves on the editorial board of Stress, Psychiatry International and the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Heath. He has been symposium organiser, invited speaker, discussant, moderator and panel member at international scientific conferences. Over the years Zoltán has served as consultant for pharmaceutics, biotechnology and venture capital firms and has been invited to review grant proposals worldwide. He was awarded the Curt P. Richter Prize by the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology for his work on neuropeptides and brain function and was a recipient of the prestigious Du Pont Warren Fellowship from Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a Young Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD). In 2019 Zoltan was appointed as the Lady Davis Visting Professor at the Laboratory of Psychobiology, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology for 6 months to study the role of energy metabolism in schizophrenia.

Psychiatric neuroscience

Social and biological determinants of mental health

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and social & emotional well-being

Stress and allostatic load

Behavioural neuroscience

Psychopharmacology

Medical pharmacology

Neuropharmacology

Drug discovery