Scott MacKey

Background

About Scott MacKey

I have always liked solving problems. Wherever it takes me. Especially complex problems that require moving past uncertainty or ambiguity. I enjoy the creativity involved. At this stage in my career, I would like to move beyond academia to explore work in the private sector. Reach out to me if you have problems that would be amenable to my skill set. It’s always a pleasure talking with new and interesting people! For the last 20 years, I have channeled my passion for problem-solving into the realm of cognitive neuroscience, mapping the functional units of decision-making on to the brain, and in the process drawing on a broad range of experimental techniques (e.g. neuroimaging, immunohistochemistry, behavioral testing and questionnaires, statistical prediction modelling, genetic analysis) in humans and non-human models. My capacity to manage complex projects has grown from successfully completing individual research initiatives to supervising teams of research trainees resulting in 60+ high-impact publications and 90+ presentations at major national and international conferences. I have built and led an international imaging genetics collaboration, the ENIGMA Addiction Working Group which leverages shared datasets to interrogate the neural and genetic basis of substance use disorders. ENIGMA Addiction includes 95 member sites worldwide which collectively possess neuroimaging and genetic data on 23,432 individuals. The working group database and computing framework already supports 42 independent scientific projects -18 completed and 24 in progress- and continues to grow. Among other topics, projects are investigating the disruption of addiction related decision-making with targeted magnetic pulses, biotyping the heterogeneity of substance use disorders to inform individualized precision medicine, and identifying brain regions implicated in the genetic risk for adult substance use disorder to develop better interventions for adolescents.