DoctorRichard Watts

I am an MRI physicist/data scientist with a broad background in MRI data acquisition and analysis, statistics, and machine learning. In 2007 I was appointed the inaugural Director of MRI for the Van der Veer Institute for Parkinson’s Disease in Christchurch, New Zealand, leading research on the first 3T MRI in the country. After moving to the University of Vermont, in 2013 I was appointed co-director of the UVM MRI Center for Biomedical Imaging. At UVM, I was the primary physics lead for the three Philips MRI sites in the $300 million NIH-funded Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, a longitudinal development study of more than 10,000 participants. From 2018 to 2023 I was Director of MRI for the Yale Faculty of Science Brain Imaging Center. Since 2023 I have been an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Health at the University of Canterbury.