Associate Professor Jeffrey Looi

Associate Professor Jeffrey Looi
Senior Staff Specialist, Older Persons Mental Health Service, Canberra Health Services
Acting Head, Academic Unit Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine
Associate Professor, ANU Medical School
(Personal Assistant: Ms Peggy Craigie E: peggy.craigie@act.gov.au)
MBBS(Syd), MD(ANU), FRANZCP, AFRACMA

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About

Associate Professor Jeffrey Looi is a clinical academic neuropsychiatrist, leading international research networks on mental health services, population mental health, and computational neuroscience of neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disease.

He qualified MBBS (1992), and has been awarded two research higher doctorates, MD (2011) from the ANU and DMedSc (2018) from the University of Melbourne, the highest level of research degree awarded by these Universities. He is board certified as a consultant physician in psychiatry (FRANZCP, 1999) and has qualifications in medical administration (AFRACMA, 2006).

A Foundation Faculty member since 2003, he is an Associate Professor of Neuropsychiatry, Old Age Psychiatry and Psychiatry, and leads the Social Psychiatry and Epidemiology Research Unit, at the Australian National University. He was Discipline Lead/Head from 2016-2025, Academic Unit of Psychiatry & Addiction Medicine, at the Clinical School, School of Medicine & Psychology, the Australian National University. He was appointed as a Clinical Associate Professor at the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, University of Melbourne 2015-2019 and a Visiting Guest Researcher, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden 2006-2016. He works in private clinical practice two days per week.

Professor Looi has received multiple international research and leadership awards, including: a Fulbright Scholarship at the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, UCLA Medical School (2005); Australian Davos Connection Future Summit Leadership award (2006); and a Young Psychiatrist Award from the Pacific Rim College of Psychiatrists (2012). He has been a senior medico-political representative with the Australian Medical Association (awarded Fellowship of the AMA in 2024) and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists for two decades; and is an author/co-author on more than 365 papers and (Google Scholar h-index:36, i10-index:101 citations: 5940 Since 2020 h-index: 22, i-10-index:77 Citations: 2877; m-index: 1.20).

In January 2024, he was appointed as Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed medical scientific journal, Australasian Psychiatry, published by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, through Sage.

He leads AUSSIE, the Australian United States Scandinavian/Spanish Imaging Exchange. This network focuses on mentoring medical researchers in collaborative clinical neuropsychiatry and neuroscience research. A number of collaborators have received local, national and international awards for their research excellence.

In 2020-2021, Professor Looi co-founded with Professors Stephen Allison, Tarun Bastiampillai, and Stephen Kisely, the Consortium of Australian-Academic Psychiatrists for Independent Policy and Research Analysis (CAPIPRA), a virtual mental health research and policy network he coordinates at the the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. The Consortium has published over 150 collaborative papers since inception, influencing public and private sector mental healthcare policy and practice.

Affiliations

Research interests

Neuroscience and neuropsychiatry

  • Neuropsychiatry of movement disorders, cognitive impairment and dementia
  • Structural-functional correlative magnetic resonance neuroimaging in neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disease: endophenotype characterisation
  • Subcortical neuroimaging biomarkers for neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disease
  • Manual and automated segmentation of neuroanatomic structures in brain magnetic resonance images: computational neuroanatomy
  • MRI processing, data analysis and computer visualisation
  • Cognitive neuroscience and neuroanatomy of neurodegenerative disease
  • Translational neuroimaging measures for clinical practice

Mental health, policy, administration, services and epidemiology

  • Mental health services: private and public sector
  • Medicare service data for psychiatrists and allied mental health practitioners
  • Mental health policy, leadership and administration
  • Population mental health & epidemiology
  • Health economics

Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine Medical Education & Vocational Development

  • Medical student teaching and assessment in Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine
  • Strategic research and comprehensive research training in Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine
  • Psychiatrist career and continuing professional development
  • Medico-political professional organisation leadership, structure and function

Location

Building 4, Level 2, Canberra Hospital, Yamba Drive Garran (PO Box 11 Woden ACT 2606)