Of Samoan descent, she earned the title of full Professor at the University of Auckland[1] before moving to Toronto in 2018 as the Canada 150 Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory and Aging at the University of Toronto[2] and a Senior Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute in Baycrest Hospital.
[3] She retains an appointment at Aukland on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Centre for Brain Research in the School of Psychology.
[4] Addis went to Aorere College in Auckland, and her bursary marks made her New Zealand's top all-round scholar of Pacific Island descent.
[5] After an undergraduate at the University of Auckland Addis won a commonwealth scholarship to the University of Toronto for a PhD titled 'Terms of engagement: investigating the engagement of the hippocampus and related structures during autobiographical memory retrieval in healthy individuals and temporal lobe epilepsy patients' and a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University.
[6] Addis's research is on memory, future thinking,[7] depression[8] brain scans,[9] and related areas.