Announcement: Dr. Julio Martinez-Trujillo re-appointed as Provincial Endowed Academic Chair in Autism

 I am pleased to announce that Dr. Julio Martinez-Trujillo has been re-appointed as the Provincial Endowed Academic Chair in Autism at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Western University, effective October 1, 2020 to December 31, 2024.

The purpose of the Provincial Endowed Academic Chair in Autism is to examine abnormal brain development in autistic children, understand the cause of the disorder and develop more effective treatments and interventions.

Dr. Julio Martinez-Trujillo completed his medical degree at the University of Havana in 1991, and completed his residency training in clinical neurophysiology at the Cuban Neuroscience Center. He practiced clinical medicine in Bogota, Colombia from 1993 to 1996,  treating children with epilepsy and developmental disorders such as autism and ADHD. He completed his MSc and PhD in Neurobiology at the University of Tübingen in Germany in 1998 and 2000, respectively. His postdoctoral fellowship was completed at York University, and in 2004, he became an Assistant Professor and Tier II Canada Research Chair in Visual Neuroscience. In 2014, Dr. Martinez- Trujillo joined Schulich Medicine & Dentistry as a Professor in the Departments of Physiology and Pharmacology, and Psychology.

Dr. Martinez-Trujillo’s research aims to understand the mechanisms of cognition and behaviour in the healthy and diseased brain, focusing on how the brain transforms visual signals into coordinated behaviour and how this process is influenced by cognitive functions such as attention and memory. His work on the physiological mechanisms of attention is internationally recognized and has produced more than 4,000 citations.

He holds multiple grants from Healthy Brains for Healthy Lives, BrainsCAN, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the German Research Council (DFG). He has reviewed grants for the Canada Research Chair program, CIHR, NSERC, DFG, Hong Kong Research Council, European Science Foundation, National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health (USA). He currently is a member of the Developmental Disabilities Division Advisory Board of Southwestern Ontario, and the non-human primates subcommittee of the Canadian Council of Animal Care.

Please join me in congratulating Dr. Martinez-Trujillo on his re-appointment.

John Yoo, MD, FRCS(C), FACS
Dean, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry
Western University