An award-winning and influential behavioral scientist, Dr Adrienne O’Neil is Director of Heart and Mind Research and Deputy Director of the Food and Mood Centre. Both organizations are based at the iMPACT Institute Deakin University, Melbourne.

Dr O’Neil’s expertise lies with the relationship between mental and cardiovascular health. Her work investigates how lifestyle can affect both the onset and outcomes of mental illness and cardiovascular disease, with a focus on depression, trauma, gendered violence and stress.

Her work with the Food and Mood Centre sees her applying research from cardiology and chronic disease prevention to psychiatry.

Dr O’Neil is also a provisional Men’s Behavior Change Practitioner, which has seen her work with groups of men who use family violence.

She completed her post-doctoral training at Stanford University, has over $8 million in grant funding and has authored over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles.

She has first author publication in journals as prestigious as the Lancet, Circulation and BMC Medicine and has given various national and international invited plenaries and presentations.