Katrin Amunts is a German neuroscientist, and well known for her work in human brain mapping. In order to better understand the organizational principles of the human brain, she and her team have created the cytoarchitectonic Julich Brain Atlas. Katrin Amunts is a full professor for Brain Research, and director of the C. and O. Vogt Institute of Brain Research, Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf (since 2013), and director of the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Research Center Juelich. Since 2023, she is the Joint Chief Executive Officer of EBRAINS AISBL, Brussels, Belgium.
She did a postdoctoral fellowship at the C. and O. Vogt Institute of Brain Research at Duesseldorf University, Germany, and the set up a new research unit for Brain Mapping at the Research Center Juelich, Germany. In 2004, she became professor for Structural-Functional Brain Mapping, and in 2008 a full professor at the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics at the RWTH Aachen University as well as director of the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1) at the Research Center Juelich. From 2016 until 2023 Katrin Amunts was the Scientific Research Director of the EU flagship project “The Human Brain Project” (HBP).
Katrin Amunts is speaker of the Helmholtz Joint Lab Supercomputing and Modelling for the Human Brain (SMBH) and coordinates the topic Decoding Brain Organization and Dysfunction of the Helmholtz Association, Germany. Since 2017 Katrin Amunts is co-speaker of the graduate school Max-Planck School of Cognition. Since 2018 she is a member of the International Advisory Council Healthy Brains for Healthy Lives, Canada. In 2016 she became a member of the National Academy of Science and Engineering, Acatech, in 2017 of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Arts and in 2023 of the Leopoldina German National Academy of Science.
Katrin Amunts received the prestigious 2021 Hector Science Award as well as the Order of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany. Maastricht University awarded an honorary doctorate to Prof. Katrin Amunts in recognition of her outstanding and inspiring scientific achievements.