Richard Morris is Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh and was, until recently, Director of the Centre for Cognitive and Neural Systems. He read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, and did his D.Phil at the University of Sussex. His early career included a period helping to build an exhibition at the Natural History Museum and a stint working for BBC Television (“Tomorrow’s World”). He also served, by secondment, as Head of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the Wellcome Trust from 2007 to 2010, where he helped to set up the new Sainsbury-Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour at University College London and a new research charity MQ:Transforming Mental Health. His longstanding research interest has been in the neurobiology of cognition, particularly the role neuronal plasticity in memory formation. Most recently he was a co-recipient with Tim Bliss and Graham Collingridge of the international Brain Prize (Lundbeck Foundation, Copenhagen). He was elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1997 and the Academy of Medical Sciences (1999), and of both the American Academy of Arts and Science and Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 2004. He was appointed CBE in 2007.