Lianne Schmaal

Lianne Schmaal is an Associate Professor and leads the Mood Disorders research program at the Centre for Youth Mental Health, The University of Melbourne. She is an NHMRC Career Development Fellow and a 2020 Dame Kate Campbell Fellow for Research Excellence. She completed her PhD (2013) at the University of Amsterdam with a cum laude distinction. In the last 7 years, she has been leading a research program focused on investigating the neurobiological mechanisms underlying depression and suicidal thoughts and behaviours, their treatment and their course. A key focus of her research program is addressing the heterogeneity of depression by defining profiles or subtypes of depression and suicidal behaviours. Her work also focuses on developing prediction algorithms for depression onset, treatment response and suicide attempts by integrating clinical, psychosocial, neurobiological and genetic data through computational modelling and machine learning methods. She established and leads the two largest international consortia focused on brain abnormalities in depression, i.e. the ENIGMA Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) consortium, and suicide, i.e. ENIGMA Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviours (STB).These international consortia pool neuroimaging and clinical data from >20,000 people from ~50 research institutes in 14 different countries worldwide. Within the 7 years since obtaining her PhD, she has attracted ~$32M in competitive funding as CI (including ~$5M as (co-)principal investigator). She has produced 95 publications, including 85 journal articles (21 as first and 20 as senior (second/last) author). 

A/Prof. Schmaal also (co-)leads the two largest neuroimaging consortia on depression and suicidal behaviours worldwide, i.e. the ENIGMA Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) consortium and the ENIGMA Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviours consortium. 

 Her experience and skills in leading, supervising and completing the design, execution and management of studies investigating mechanisms underlying suicide, make CI Schmaal uniquely placed to lead, coordinate and ensure the successful completion of this project. CI Schmaal will take overall responsibility for the planning, management and administration of this project, its funds, staff, and the co-operation of its investigators. She will ensure its timely completion and will assume the lead role in the communication of results. No salary is requested. She has continued funding through fellowships until 2024.