Professor Phil Winn

Personal statement

Professor Phil Winn’s research interests are in brain–behaviour relationships. Careful examination of behaviour is important because many brain disorders are described in terms of altered behaviour. Changes in the quality of movement or changed patterns of action are often the first signs of brain dysfunction, whether in an obvious movement disorder like Parkinsonism or psychiatric states such as schizophrenia or depression. Phil’s particular focus has been on structures deep in brain, developing the general hypothesis that relatively high order cognitive processes are present much lower in the brain than generally supposed.

Phil is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce, and the Association for Psychological Science in the USA. He began his career at St Andrews, becoming Dean of Science and then a Vice Principal. He joined Strathclyde in January 2010 as a Deputy Principal with a brief to develop the University Strategic Plan, after which he served as Head of SIPBS, changing and developing its organization and strategy. He is currently Chair of Medical Research Scotland, and is a Board member of both the UK Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) and the Quality Board for Higher Education in Iceland, where he also chairs the Research Evaluation Advisory Committee. At Strathclyde, he chairs the University Ethics Committee.