Professor Trevor Robbins

Professor Trevor Williams Robbins (CBE FRS FMedSci) is a former Head of the Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, a recipient of many contribution awards, and one of the most influential brain scientists of the modern era (1, 2). Professor Robbins is an Emeritus Fellow of Downing College, where he formerly held the Angharad Dodds John Fellowship in Mental Health and Neuropsychiatry.

In 1997, Trevor Robbins became the first academic in Cambridge to be appointed as a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, retaining this position as Emeritus Professor today. He was Chair of Experimental Psychology and Head of the Department from 2002 to 2017.

For over 10 years Professor Robbins was director of the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, - a collaborative project involving different Schools and multiple Departments within the University of Cambridge funded between 2003 and 2015. The extensive work of the Institute renders publications to this day. See Research below for more.

In February 2024, the Department of Psychology launched a new communal space for psychophysiological research, - a common experimental area named after Professor Robbins to commemorate his academic legacy of promoting inter-school collaboration and translational science. For more visit Trevor Robbins Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratories.

In 2025, Trevor Robbins is still continuing his academic work.  

His lifetime track record includes multiple memberships, presidencies, and awards. 

Professor Robbins was President of the European Behavioural Pharmacology Society from 1992 to 1994. A year later, in 1995 he chaired Neurosciences and Mental Health Board for the Medical Research Council and remained in this position until 1999. 

From 1996 to 1997, Trevor Robbins was President of the British Association of Psychopharmacology. 

2002 through to 2017, Professor Robbins was Chair of Experimental Psychology and Head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. 

In 2003, Trevor became Director of Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, University of Cambridge, which continued to be funded until 2015. 

See the full list of Prof Robbins’ appointments and awards below: 

1980 – joined the editorial board of Psychopharmacology 

1990 – appointed Fellow of the British Psychological Society 

1995 – joined the Medical Research Council  

1997 – appointed Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge 

2000 – received the inaugural Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from European Behavioural Society 

2000 – joined the Academy of Medical Sciences 

2001 – received the inaugural Distinguished Scientist Award from EBPhS 

2003 – joined the editorial board of Science 

2005 – joined the Royal Society 

2005 – received IPSEN Foundation Neuroplasticity prize 

2011 – received the Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award from the American Psychological Association (jointly with B.J.Everitt) 

2012 – appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to medical research 

2014 – received the Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Prize for outstanding contributions to European neuroscience (jointly with S.Dehaene and G. Rizzolatti) 

2015 – received the Robert Sommer Award for research in schizophrenia (jointly with BJ Sahakian) 

2016 – received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the British Association for Psychopharmacology 

2017 – received the Gold Medal from the Society of Biological Psychiatry 

2017 – received the Patricia Goldman-Rakic Award for Cognitive Neuroscience 

2017 – joined British Pharmacological Society 

2018 – appointed Honorary Professor at Fudan University, Shanghai 

2021 – received the William James Fellowship Award of the Association of Psychological Science 

Professor TW Robbins has been included on a list of the 100 most cited neuroscientists by the Institute for Scientific Information, has published nearly 1000 full papers in scientific journals and has co-edited 10 books: 

• Psychology for Medicine (1988); 

• The Prefrontal Cortex: Executive and Cognitive Functions (1998); 

• Disorders of Brain and Mind, Volume 2 (2003); 

• Drugs and the Future (2006); 

• The Neurobiology of Addiction (2010); 

• Decision-Making, Affect and Learning: Attention and Performance (2011); 

• Cognitive Search: Evolution, Algorithms, and the Brain (2012); 

• Translational Neuropsychopharmacology (2016); 

• The Neurobiology and Treatment of OCD: Accelerating Progress (2021); 

• The Frontal Cortex: Organization, Networks, and Function (2024). 

Trevor was recently ranked as "the 4th most influential brain scientist of the modern era" by Semantic Scholar and recently topped world-wide as well as national lists for both Psychology and Neuroscience according to the 3rd edition of Research.com ranking.  

In 2024, the Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge named a new common experimental area after Trevor Robbins. The space (TRCNLabs) promotes collaborative culture in academia and provides Department’s students and other members with facilities and equipment for psychophysiological research.