Ashleigh Smith

Associate Professor Ashleigh Smith is Deputy Director of ARENA and a Dementia Australia Research Fellow. Her multidisciplinary program investigates how 24-hour activity compositions influence brain health across the lifespan.

Research pillars:

• Lifestyle optimization for dementia risk reduction
• Neurophysiological responses to exercise
• Time-use analytics for cognitive protection
• Environmental enrichment mechanisms

Her work establishes relationships between EEG biomarkers and cognitive aging, while developing novel interventions for neurodegenerative protection. Publication themes include neuroplasticity induction through exercise and multidimensional lifestyle assessment.

Awarded national fellowships for dementia prevention research, she leads trials examining activity/diet compositions and mentors emerging researchers in exercise neuroscience.