Biography & Research:
Nicole Kochan is a registered Clinical Neuropsychologist with 17 years of clinical experience in assessment of age-related cognitive disorders and dementia, and is Senior Research Fellow at The Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA), Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health, UNSW Sydney. She has been leader of the Neuropsychology Group at CHeBA since 2005, and is a core investigator of the Sydney Memory and Ageing Study, the Sydney Centenarian Study and the international consortia - COSMIC project. She is neuropsychology consultant on three large randomised controlled trials for the prevention of cognitive decline. She leads the NHMRC-funded CogSCAN Study validating four computerised neuropsychological instruments in older adults.
Nicole's research focuses on improving the early detection of cognitive decline and dementia using sensitive neuropsychological measures including computerised testing, developing normative data and refining diagnostic classifications. An important research aim is to develop fair cognitive assessments for individuals from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.