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.