Academic interests
I am interested in the psychosocial determinants of health and disease, with a focus on how motivation affects pain and quality of life. I am an advocate for women's and children's health, and am keen to better understand individual differences in human responses to stress, pain, and pleasure. At the University of Oslo, I am investigating the human endogenous opioid system by examining how human opioid receptor mutations impact pain, reward sensitivity, stress, and cognition, as well as sex differences in risk factors affecting post-operative health outcomes.
Courses taught
- Neurobiology of Behaviour, Human Biology Department, University of Toronto, 2022-2023; 2023-2024
Background
I obtained my BSc and PhD at the University of Toronto, Canada, in Neuroscience. I completed my PhD under the supervision of Dr. Massieh Moayedi at the Faculty of Dentistry. My dissertation is titled "A value-based framework for pain-cognition interactions" and explores how the salience and motivation of pain affect how much pain interferes with cognition using value-based cognitive tasks, skin conductance, experimental models of tonic pain, and computational modelling.
Awards
- Doctoral Completion Award, 2025; 2024
- Massey Grand Rounds Co-Chair Leadership Award, 2024
- Ontario Graduate Scholarship, 2023-2024; 2020-2021
- QEII/Graduate Scholarship in Science and Technology, 2022-2023
- Lupina Foundation Health & Society Bursary, 2022-2023
- Pain Scientist Scholarship, 2020-2021
- Canada Graduate Scholarship, 2019-2020
Positions held
- Postdoctoral Researcher https://affectivebrains.com/portfolio/georgia-hadjis/
- PhD Candidate https://www.painresearchcentre.org/moayedi-lab-1