Harris A. Eyre, MBBS, PhD is a physician, neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and strategist whose work focuses on advancing the emerging brain economy. He is widely recognized for pioneering the brain economy transition, an economic shift that prioritizes investment in brain capital across the lifespan. Brain capital integrates brain health and brain skills to strengthen societal resilience and support inclusive economic growth, with the potential to unlock an estimated $6.2 trillion in global economic value.
Dr. Eyre serves as Executive Director of the Global Brain Economy Initiative, Co-lead of the Brain and Society Initiative at the Rice Brain Institute, and a member of the Rice Brain Institute Steering Committee.
His work spans research, strategy, movement building, and execution, engaging partners across academia, industry, government, and multilateral institutions.
He was the senior author of the first technical paper on the brain economy published in 2021, he co-led the OECD Neuroscience-Inspired Policy Initiative, and supported the development of the Global Brain Capital Dashboard, published via The Brookings Institution. The work continues to proliferate and mature, and Eyre works across the spectrum of research, to strategy, to movement building, to execution. In 2025, the World Economic Forum launched a Brain Economy Action Forum, the President of Cameroon endorsed The Yaoundé Declaration on the Brain Economy, and multi-national corporations and parliamentarians from various nations are collaborating actively.
Dr. Eyre is the Harry Z. Yan and Weiman Gao Senior Fellow for Brain Health and Society and senior advisor for neuroscience at Rice University's Office of Innovation. He is also a Baker Institute Rice Faculty Scholar and is adjunct with Rice's Neuroengineering Initiative and Psychological Sciences. Beyond Rice, he is a visiting senior fellow at the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative, a senior advisor with McKinsey and Company, and advisor at MD Anderson's Cancer Neuroscience Program.
He is an alumnus of the Forbes 30 Under 30 and the Fulbright Scholar program. He has garnered recognition with the EB1A Green Card, an honor typically reserved for Nobel and Pulitzer prize winners. He has authored over 200 papers and chapters in outlets such as Nature Medicine, The Lancet Neurology, Neuron, World Psychiatry, The Brookings Institution, and was the lead editor of the book 'Convergence Brain Health' (Oxford Press). His work has been covered in Bloomberg, the Financial Times, and the New York Times.
Beyond his professional achievements, Harris has authored a reflective short story titled "My Migraines are a Superpower." In his free time, he enjoys family time and activities such as mountain biking, meditation, and podcasts. He is originally from the Great Barrier Reef region of Australia.