Join The Hynes Lab
The Hynes Lab investigates how motivation, learning, and brain chemistry interact to shape vulnerability to addiction. Using cutting-edge biotechnologies to probe the living brain, the lab explores how sex differences and cellular interactions influence these processes with aims of guiding the development of more effective and personalised treatments for substance use disorders.
Our Team
The Hynes Lab is built on a foundation of curious, creative, and collaborative people. We value diversity, acceptance, and imagination, recognising that the best science emerges from a community where every perspective is heard and respected. Our team is hard-working, dedicated, and gritty, united by a shared drive to push boundaries and build something meaningful together.
Dr Tristan Hynes
Principal Investigator
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Simon Fraser University
Dr Hynes is a behavioural neuroscientist who studies why some brains are more vulnerable to addiction than others. His research explores how motivation, learning, and brain chemistry interact to drive the emergence and persistence of addiction
By uncovering how neurobiology and biological sex contribute to addiction, Dr. Hynes aims to change how we understand the disorder. His work reframes addiction as a condition rooted in learning and biology rather than willpower. He connects fundamental discoveries about brain function with the urgent need for more effective and personalised treatments for addiction.
Before joining Simon Fraser University, Dr. Hynes was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge, where he worked with Professor David Belin to reveal new roles for astrocytes in shaping the neurochemical pathways that underlie compulsive opioid seeking. He earned his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of British Columbia with Professor Catharine Winstanley, where he investigated how dopamine and reward cues influence risky decision-making.
Dr. Hynes’s long-term goal is to advance a science of addiction that accounts for individual differences in biology, psychology, and social experience, paving the way toward more precise and compassionate approaches to prevention and treatment.
You belong here.
The Hynes Lab is recruiting AT ALL LEVELS.
Postdoctoral researchers: we will support applications to CIHR, NSERC, and other external postdoctoral fellowships.
Graduate students: fully-funded PhD and MA studentships are available in both the experimental and clinical psychology streams.
Undergraduate research assistants: work+learn funded and volunteer positions are always available