Dr Rico Lee is an NHMRC / MRFF Emerging Leadership Senior Research Fellow. At the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences (MSPS), Rico leads the Stress & Addiction Lab in understanding the cognitive-affective mechanisms driving addiction and mental disorders. His research investigates how emotional and cognitive control mechanisms predispose and perpetuate addictions, and how chronic and current stress interacts with these abilities. He has a special interest in the impact of childhood adversity - in LGBTQ+ and CALD communities - on the development of attachment style, emotional regulation, and executive control, and how these have downstream effects on resilience, coping, and alcohol / drug addiction. Flagship projects currently being conducted include:

The KARAOKE virtual reality study (to examine alcohol use disorder phenotypes in a virtual reality cue-exposure paradigm following stress induction)
The Q-ACE cohort study (to understand the impact of LGBTQ+ / racial adversity on emotion regulation and addictive disorders in adulthood), including qualitative substudies on Sexual and Gender Minority-Adverse Childhood Experiences (SGM-ACEs) and addiction, including problematic chemsex behaviours
The EMPOWER clinical study (to investigate the efficacy of neurocognitive-motivational feedback plus harm reduction psychoeducation in substance use disorder)

Rico was trained in clinical neuropsychology at Macquarie University and has been a registered psychologist for 15+ years. Dr Lee spent his formative years at the Brain and Mind Centre (University of Sydney) with Professor Ian Hickie. Under a postdoctoral fellowship in NHMRC CRE Optymise, where he modelled the neurocognitive and clinical phenotypes driving functional outcomes in adolescents and young adult outpatients with severe mental illness (eg, Headspace Sydney and Campbelltown). He was recruited to Monash University to spearhead the BrainPark Assessment Cognition (BrainPAC') project with Professor Murat Ycel, working with industry to build mHealth technology to assess addictive disorders. At BrainPark, he was the head of the Decision-Making Group, focussed on the cognitive-affective mechanisms of addictive and compulsive disorders.

He has received over $2.5 million of research funding as a named investigator. He has served multiple times on the NHMRC Grant Review Panel for project grants (Mental Health, Psychology, Psychiatry panel) and has been an external assessor for peak national (eg, NHMRC Program Grants) and international funding bodies (eg, UK MRC).

Dr Lee has supervised to completion 6 PhD students (primary, Dr Teresa Lee, Dr Erynn Christensen, Maja Brydevall, Lara Piccoli; associate, Dr Catherine McHugh and Dr Chang Liu), 4 masters students (Ms Sophia Bogaty, Mr Adam Curley, Ms Tess Copeland, Dr Joe Brewer) and numerous psychology honours students (Louisa Detez, Kimberly Daniels, Rachel Ham, Lena Wilkinson, Alexandria Anthony, David Luong, Daniel Koay, Emma Moon, Sashka Samarawickrama, Hanbing Wu, Bianca Mangion, Tsion Tedla). He currently supervises a team of PhDs, masters and honours students and research assistants. He is available to discuss potential postgraduate research opportunities.

Rico teaches into second- and third-year undergraduate psychology, where he has a regular human psychopharmacology lecture series on neurotransmitter systems and alcohol / drug addiction, as well as a semester-long research seminar on LGBTQ+ / racial trauma and addiction. He also currently serves on the university's human research ethics committee.

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Rico Lee

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Rico Lee

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