Amy Orben

Biography

Amy is a Programme Leader Track Scientist at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge and a Fellow at St. John’s College, University of Cambridge. She leads the Digital Mental Health programme at the MRC CBU.

Her programme’s research examines how digital technologies affect adolescent psychological well-being and mental health. She is particularly interested in the potential cognitive, biological and social mechanisms that underlie this link in both non-clinical and clinical populations, and the influence of individual differences. To study such research questions, Amy’s team uses innovative and rigorous statistical methodology, secondary datasets, and Open Science approaches. Their results, in turn, shed new light on pressing questions debated in policy, parenting and mental health, having informed advice given by national and international experts such as the UK Chief Medical Officers and the US Surgeon General.

Amy’s work is supported by key national and international funders, charities and foundations, and she advises governments, health officials and public servants around the world, holding appointments on the UK government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology College of Experts and the British Academy Public Policy Committee. She has received a range of prestigious awards including the Medical Research Council Early Career Impact Prize (2022), British Psychological Society Award for Outstanding Contributions to Doctoral Research (2019), Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science Mission Award (2020), British Neuroscience Association Researcher Credibility Prize (2021) and UK Reproducibility Network Dorothy Bishop Early Career Researcher Prize (2022).

Previous to joining the MRC CBU, Amy completed an MA in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge before joining the University of Oxford to obtain her DPhil in Experimental Psychology, for which she was awarded the BPS Award for Outstanding Doctoral Research 2019.