In addition to his role at Center for BrainHealth, Dr. Ian Robertson is professor emeritus and fellow at Trinity College Dublin and served as founding director of the Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin and of the Global Brain Health Institute.
Robertson's 600+ scientific papers on cognitive neuroscience have been cited more than 43,000 times. His most recent popular science book is How Confidence Works (Penguin) and his forthcoming book Brainspan (Orion/Hachette) will be published in early 2027. In 2024 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science and an honorary MD by Trinity College Dublin. He is a member of the Academia Europaea and the Royal Irish Academy.
An eminent neuroscientist and founder of the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Dr. Robertson has authored many books based on the pressures of everyday life – his 2016 book, The Stress Test, has been sold widely across the world.
He contributes regularly to Nature and the Journal of Neuroscience.
In 2019, Dr. Ian Robertson, Professor Emeritus in Psychology in Trinity College Dublin and Co-Director of the Global Brain Health Institute, presented the 27th Carmichael Lecture for the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.
Titled "The Era of the Mind," Dr. Robertson's talk addresses the topic of human potential, and proposes that information and technology, tools dominated by the human mind, are emerging as the currency of a new era.
A neuroscientist and trained clinical psychologist, Ian Robertson is Professor of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin, and formerly Fellow of Hughes Hall, Cambridge. His research focusses on the neuropsychology of brain rehabilitation and attention and he is passionate about improving independent living in older people by delaying dementia. A former science writer for the London Times and author of popular-science books Mind Sculpture, The Mind's Eye, and The Winner Effect, Robertson is also a Science Gallery Leonardo and was a curator for PAY ATTENTION and HAPPY?
Suppose we discover something that could make us richer, healthier, longer-living, smarter, kinder, happier, more motivated and more innovative. Ridiculous, you might say … but, in fact, we already have. What is this elixir? Confidence. If you have it, it can empower you to reach heights you never thought possible, but if you don’t, it can have a devastating effect, despite your objective achievements. Confidence affects every emotion and thought in our mind, every neuron in our brain, every ounce of our motivation and each action in our daily life. Above all, confidence is about predicting success – whether that is in sinking a putt at golf, giving that public talk or re-calibrating one’s life after an unhappy breakup. And here is the good news: confidence can be learned.