Alan C Evans, PhD

Professor Alan Evans did his PhD in biophysics at Leeds University in the UK, studying 3D protein folding. He spent 5-year at Atomic Energy of Canada as a PET physicist. In 1984, he moved to the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill where his research interests include multi-modal brain imaging with PET or MRI, structural network modeling and large-scale neuroinformatics.

He has published 720 peer-reviewed papers (Google h-index =205) and has been recognized as a Highly Cited Scientist (top 1%) for Neuroscience and Behaviour (177,703 citations, Google Scholar) from 2014-2021. He was ranked #6 by Science magazine in its list of most influential brain scientists of the modern era. Currently, he is ranked #39 in a list of the world’s top 100 scientists in Medical and Health Sciences. He has held numerous leadership roles, notably Director of the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre (BIC) during the 1990’s. He headed the Data Coordinating Center for the NIH-funded multi-center MRI Study of Normal Pediatric Development. He is a founding member of the International Consortium for Brain Mapping (ICBM). He was one of the founders of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM), serving in numerous leadership positions on the OHBM Council since 1995. He chaired the 4th international OHBM conference in 1998 and was appointed OHBM Chair in 2017.

He has received numerous awards in recognition of his work. In 2003 he received a CIHR Senior Scientist Award. In 2014, he was awarded the national Margolese Prize for Research into Human Brain Disorders and the Vezina Prize for Québec Neuroradiology. In 2015, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and, in 2016, he was awarded the Prix du Québec (Wilder Penfield). In 2017, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and awarded the Senate of Canada 150 Medal. In 2018, he was awarded the Heinz Lehmann Prize for services to Neuropsychopharmacology, the Victor Dahdaleh Chair in Neurosciences and the Club de Recherches Clinique du Québec Mentorship Prize. In 2019, he was awarded the OHBM Glass Brain Award, its highest honour for career contributions to the field of brain mapping. In 2020, he received the Izaak Walton Killam Prize for lifetime achievement. In 2021, he received the Royal Society of Canada McLaughlin Medal for important research of sustained excellence.

He is currently Co-Director of both the Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics and Mental Health and the Helmholtz International BigBrain Analytics Learning Laboratory (HIBALL). He is Scientific Director of McGill’s $84M CFREF project “Healthy Brains, Healthy Lives” (HBHL) and Scientific Director of the Canadian Open Neuroscience Platform (CONP). The technical infrastructure underpinning CONP includes a multi-modal databasing system (LORIS) and an international grid-processing portal (CBRAIN), both developed in Evans’ MCIN lab. These platforms also support international brain networks, notably the Canada-China-Cuba Axis and the Global Brain Consortium, both co-chaired by Evans. Furthermore, Evans was named the Victor Dahdaleh Chair in Neurosciences in October of 2022.

Finally, he is a Founder of Biospective Inc., a Contract Research Organization that offers 3D image analysis for clinical/pre-clinical pharmaceutical studies.