Dr. Sofie Valk

Max Planck Insti­tute for Human Cogni­tive and Brain Sciences

Dr. Sofie Valk is Profes­sor for Trans­la­tional Psychi­a­try across the Lifes­pan at the Univer­sity of Zurich, leader of the Lise Meitner research group at the Max Planck Insti­tute for Human Cogni­tive and Brain Sciences, research group leader at INM‑7 (Brain and Behav­ior) at Forschungszen­trum Jülich, and at the Insti­tute for Systems Neuro­science at Heinrich Heine Univer­sity Düsseldorf.

Together with her team, she connects biology with social context. They combine multi­scale and compu­ta­tional approaches to under­stand how the brain adapts across the lifes­pan within the constraints of our biology, shaping our mental health. In doing so, she aims to bridge basic and applied under­stand­ing of brain and mind, and ultimately to help people strug­gling with their mental health.

She was awarded the Otto Hahn Medal for her doctoral thesis. She also received the award of the German Society for Psychophys­i­ol­ogy and its Appli­ca­tion (DGPA) and is a scien­tific fellow of the Jacobs Research Foundation.