Announcement: Dr. Julio Martinez-Trujillo re-appointed Provincial Endowed Academic Chair in Autism
Dr. Julio Martinez-Trujillo
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. His renewed term will be effective January 1, 2025, to December 31, 2029.
The Provincial Endowed Academic Chair in Autism is dedicated to advancing the understanding of abnormal brain development in autistic children, uncovering the causes of the disorder, and developing more effective treatments and interventions.
Dr. Martinez-Trujillo earned his MD from the University of Havana in 1991 and completed his residency in Clinical Neurophysiology at the Cuban Neuroscience Center. From 1993 to 1996, he practiced clinical medicine in Bogotá, Colombia, focusing on children with epilepsy and developmental disorders such as Autism and ADHD. He pursued his MSc and PhD at the University of Tübingen, Germany, completing them in 1998 and 2000, respectively. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at York University, in 2004 he joined McGill University as an Assistant Professor and Tier II Canada Research Chair in Visual Neuroscience. In 2014, he joined Schulich Medicine & Dentistry as a Full Professor in the Departments of Physiology, Pharmacology and Psychology.
Dr. Martinez-Trujillo's research explores the mechanisms underlying cognition and social behaviour in both healthy and diseased brains. Among his significant contributions is the isolation of neural correlates and mechanisms of feature-based attention, published in Nature (1999). His work is internationally recognized, with over 6,800 citations and numerous articles in leading journals such as Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Neuron, and PNAS. He leads a multidisciplinary team at Schulich, leveraging cutting-edge technologies like high-yield electrophysiological recordings in animal models, human studies, and stem-cell-derived brain networks and organoids.
Dr. Martinez-Trujillo holds funding from prominent organizations, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Canada (JDRF), Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Brain Initiative, and the Simons Foundation.
Dr. Martinez-Trujillo’s extensive service includes reviewing grants for national and international agencies such as the Canada Research Chair Program, CIHR, NSERC, and several European and Asian research councils. He has served as an associate editor for esteemed journals and contributed to committees for organizations like the Vision Sciences Society (VSS) and the Society for Neuroscience. He is also a member of the Developmental Disabilities Division Advisory Board of Southwestern Ontario and co-director of the Translational Neuroscience Group at Western University.
Please join me in congratulating Dr. Martinez-Trujillo on this well-deserved re-appointment.
John Yoo, MD, FRCS(C), FACS
Dean, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry
Western University
