Sharon Linda Naismith, BA, PhD

Prof Sharon Naismith, AM, is an NHMRC Leadership II Fellow and the Leonard P Ullman Chair in Psychology at the University of Sydney. She also heads the Healthy Brain Ageing Program at the Brain and Mind Centre, an early intervention research clinic for dementia and leads major national initiatives to improve dementia diagnosis and care. Prof Naismith also leads the NHMRC Synergy Program Synergise, Integrate and Enhance Sleep Research to Transform Brain Ageing (SIESTA), focused on mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. Her program uses gold-standard sleep and circadian assessments to understand how disrupted rhythms contribute to brain ageing and memory decline. She is developing streamlined pathways for integrating sleep evaluation into memory clinics and is building the evidence base for scalable sleep interventions that may reduce dementia risk. In 2025, she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for her contributions to dementia research and neuropsychology.