Mac Shine

Associate professor of computational systems neurobiology
University of Sydney

Mac Shine is associate professor of computational systems neurobiology in the Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney in Australia. His lab focuses on mapping mechanistic neurobiological neural models to dynamical network signatures estimated from functional neuroimaging data.

Shine completed his Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Sydney. As a graduate student, he helped to refine the neural mechanisms of non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. As a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University in California, Shine developed innovative approaches for tracking whole-brain network dynamics from noninvasive functional neuroimaging data. In 2017, he returned to the University of Sydney, where he runs a diverse research lab that creates neurobiological models of cognitive function. He is a joint National Health and Medical Research Council/Bellberry fellow.

From this contributor

Explore more from The Transmitter

The relationship between structure and function in cortical networks

Michael Reimann explains how the shape of neurons puts strong constraints on how they are wired in a network, and how this affects their structure-function relationships.

By Gaute Einevoll
28 October 2026 | 1 min read
Stock image of branching dendrites.

How brains prevent ‘catastrophic forgetting’

Dendrite-specific inhibition lets overlapping neuronal assemblies form across brain areas without erasing existing memories, a new modeling study suggests.

By Natalia Mesa
28 October 2026 | 6 min read
Research image of whole-brain 3D visualizations of pixels colored by their corresponding lipizone.

Lipids enter brain mapping limelight

Two new studies, including the first whole-brain lipid atlas in mice, uncover unforeseen complexity and influence during pregnancy and aging.

By Lauren Schenkman
27 October 2026 | 6 min read