Scott Waddell studied biochemistry as an undergraduate at the University of Dundee, and researched cancer biology for his Ph.D. at the University of London. After postdoctoral study in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology he spent 10 years leading a research group in the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Scott moved to Oxford as a Professor of Neurobiology and founding member of the Centre for Neural Circuits & Behaviour in November 2011. His group has studied neural circuit properties of memory-directed behaviour in the fruit fly since 2001.
Scott is a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow in Basic Biomedical Science, a member of EMBO, and was awarded the 2014 Liliane Bettencourt Prize for the Life Sciences.