Johanna Montgomery

Johanna Michelle Montgomery is a New Zealand academic, and is professor of physiology at the University of Auckland, specialising in synaptic plasticity in brain cells. She also works on nerve cells in the heart associated with atrial fibrillation.

Academic career
Montgomery was born and raised in New Zealand. She completed a PhD titled Neural influences on the regulation of acetylcholine receptor expression at the University of Otago in 1998. She spent five years as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, investigating the plasticity of neurons in the hippocampal region of the brain. Montgomery joined the faculty of the University of Auckland in 2004, rising to associate professor in 2014 and full professor in 2023. Her research investigates the connections between neural cells, and how these change, including their formation and elimination (synaptic plasticity). She also investigates how synaptic dysfunction may relate to autism, as part of the Mind for Minds research network.

Awards and honours
In 2005 Montgomery won the Eppendorf and Science Prize for Neurobiology, becoming the first southern hemisphere winner. She was awarded a Kellaway Medical Research Fellowship in 2015,the Royal Society London Colin Pillinger International Exchanges Award in 2016 and the Physiological Society of New Zealand's Excellence in Research Award in 2019.

In 2021 she was awarded a James Cook Research Fellowship to study clusters of nerve cells, called ganglionated plexi, in the heart. Montgomery's research investigated the mechanisms by which these plexi control heart rhythm, and involved measuring signals from these nerve cells in human patients during open heart surgery, the first time such measurements had been done on humans. The research aims to shed light on the role of ganglionated plexi in atrial fibrillation, with has relevance for stroke, dementia and heart failure research.