Professor Robert Sanders
Professor Robert Sanders, BSc, MBBS, PhD, DABA, FRCA, undertook a BSc in Neuroscience and MBBS (medicine) followed by specialist training in Anaesthetics. During that time, he continued to perform basic neuroscience research in the laboratory of Professor Mervyn Maze. Spurred by those discoveries, he was awarded a Medical Research Council (UK) Clinical Training Fellowship funding his PhD in Biological Sciences. At that time he described a Cognitive Disintegration model of delirium (2011).
In 2012, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, University College London. In addition, he completed a Neuroanaesthesia fellowship at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, London. He subsequently became an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin, USA (2014). There, Professor Sanders founded the Interventions for Post-Operative Delirium studies.
In 2020, Dr. Sanders was awarded the Macintosh Professorship by the Royal College of Anaesthetists, UK. In the same year, he also received the American Society of Anesthesiologists Presidential Scholar Award. Professor Sanders then relocated to the University of Sydney in 2020 as the Nuffield Chair of Anaesthetics.
Professor Sanders is currently funded by the NIH and NHMRC to conduct clinical trials in postoperative delirium. His research focuses on illuminating the pathogenesis of delirium and identifying novel therapies for a condition that is currently bereft of treatments.