Dr. Adam J. Woods
- Dean of the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
- Aage and Margareta Møller Distinguished Professor in Behavioral and Brain Sciences
UT Dallas Professor Aage R. Møller and his wife, Dr. Margareta Møller, established the professorship in November 2009 to support the research activities of a faculty member in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
“As our thinking and memory skills decline as we age, the rate of functional dependence, mortality and acute illness requiring hospitalization increases. Increased rates of cognitive and functional decline associated with dementia represent a growing concern for our rapidly aging population. My work demonstrates that combining treatments like cognitive training with noninvasive brain stimulation facilitates neuroplastic response, improves cognitive abilities and leads to long-term improvement.”
Dr. Adam J. Woods, a cognitive neuroscientist and leader in neuromodulation research, is focused on finding noninvasive methods for remediating age-related decline in thinking and memory. Collectively, his work is aimed at slowing the effects of cognitive aging and the onset of dementia without relying on invasive approaches.
His most recent research has involved refining the methods behind transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), which delivers a low electric current via electrodes on the scalp to modulate cortical excitability. Woods has led large-scale clinical trials toward establishing reproducible, precision dosing and clinically meaningful applications of tDCS.
His work uses modern multimodal neuroimaging, artificial intelligence and electrophysiology recording to identify mechanisms underlying improvement and to optimize treatment effectiveness.
He is an accomplished educator, researcher and administrator with more than a decade of experience, which began in 2013 when he joined the University of Florida (UF) College of Medicine’s department of aging and geriatric research. In 2016 he moved to the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions’ (PHHP) Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, where he was associate chair for research and head of cognitive and emotion neuroscience. In 2022 Woods was named associate dean for research at PHHP and then co-director of the university’s Center for Cognitive Aging and Memory Clinical Translational Research the next year. He joined the UT Dallas faculty in fall 2024 as BBS dean and professor of behavioral and brain sciences.
Woods has been a principal investigator (PI) or co-PI on more than $30 million of National Institutes of Health-funded clinical trials and computational grants focused on identifying and investigating novel neuromodulation approaches for improving thinking and memory in later life and potentially preventing dementia.
His published research work includes more than 160 peer-reviewed articles, a textbook on tDCS and some 50 book chapters. He is an associate editor for Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience and Bioelectronic Medicine.
Woods received a Bachelor of Science in psychology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a PhD in psychology with a focus in cognitive neuroscience from The George Washington University. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania.