Professor Anya Hurlbert MD PhD

Anya Hurlbert is Professor of Visual Neuroscience, Director of the Centre for Translational Systems Neuroscience and Dean of Advancement at Newcastle University. She trained as a physicist (BA, Princeton University), physiologist (MA, Cambridge University), neuroscientist (PhD, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT), and physician (MD, Harvard Medical School). After holding a Wellcome Trust Vision Research Fellowship at Oxford University, she moved to Newcastle University, where she co-founded the Institute of Neuroscience in 2003, serving as its co-Director until 2014.

Anya’s research focuses on colour perception and its role in everyday visual and cognitive tasks, as well as applied areas such as digital image processing and novel lighting technologies for enhancing perceptual and affective experiences. She is active in the public understanding of science, and has devised and co-curated science-based art exhibitions, including an interactive installation at the National Gallery, London, for its 2014 summer exhibition Making Colour. She is former Chairman of the Colour Group (GB) and Scientist Trustee of the National Gallery and currently on the editorial boards of Current Biology and Journal of Vision, and the Board of Directors of the Vision Sciences Society.

Funding for her personal research has come from the Wellcome Trust, UKRI (EPSRC/MRC), the European Commission (EU), charities, and industry. She is a PI in the EU H2020 Innovative Training Network “Dynamics in Vision and Touch” and PI on the NIHR AI Award-funded OCTAHEDRON project, applying machine learning techniques to analysis of retinal OCT images for diagnosis of neurodegenerative disease.