NEUROSCIENCE - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Senior Postdoctoral Research Scientist
After completing a BSc in Biology at Imperial College London, Alun gained a PhD in Neuroscience from the Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester. Following a career development fellowship at the Mammalian Genetics Unit, MRC Harwell, he joined the University of Oxford in 2009. Currently he is a Senior Postdoctoral Researcher in a group dedicated to finding new treatments for blindness, particularly in patients with incurable retinal diseases, through clinical and laboratory research.
My research is eclectic, covering cognitive and behavioural testing, MRI, remote monitoring and big data, and qualitative research. Rather than specializing in a given area, what excites me is to drive collaborations, and thereby be part of the teams that represent interdisciplinary (and often widely international) innovations in research science. As an extension of this I've become increasingly interested in the synergies that are possible between the private and public sectors, and also in pre-competitive industry consortia; these projects can result in uniquely exciting possibilities for the development of treatments and interventions for mental health issues.
I completed my DPhil in Experimental Psychology at the Department of Psychiatry and worked as a post doc there for 5 years (2011-2016), on a number of projects which broadly focused on mood instability. In 2016 I moved to work at P1vital Ltd, an enterprise with close connections to the Department of Psychiatry, and where I manage a small scientific team. My current work involves the leveraging of 'experimental medicine' approaches in the development of new pharmaceutical compounds for a range of psychiatric disorders, and biomarker development, for example in the PRISM project. I am also part of the team testing a novel smartphone application to improve treatments for depression, in the PReDicT project. The clinical areas I have conducted research in include depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and more recently schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease.
Job Titles:
- Career Development Lecturer
Job Titles:
- Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience / Head of Behavioural Neuroscience Unit
Job Titles:
- NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer
- Res )
Job Titles:
- Post - Doctoral Researcher
Job Titles:
- a / Professor of Clinical
Job Titles:
- Professor
- Professor of Neuroscience / Group Leader, Department of Pharmacology
Job Titles:
- Professor of Experimental Neuropathology
Job Titles:
- Professor of Behavioural
- Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience / Head of Behavioural Neuroscience Unit
Job Titles:
- Emeritus Professor
- Emeritus Professor / Research Groups
Job Titles:
- Professor of Neurology and Neurobiology
- Professor of Neurology and Neurobiology / Head of the Division of Clinical Neurology
Job Titles:
- Royal Society University Research Fellow
Job Titles:
- Bishop / Emeritus Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology
Job Titles:
- Translational Neuroscience Research Portfolio Manager / Research Coordinator / Department of Experimental Psychology
David Beeson graduated from Magdalene College, Cambridge. He did his PhD with Professor Eric Barnard at Imperial College, London focusing on the first cloning of muscle acetylcholine receptors. Before completion of his PhD in 1987, he joined the Group of John Newsom-Davis and Angela Vincent to work on disorders of neuromuscular transmission; this was first at the Royal Free Hospital, London and then in 1988 he moved with them to the Neurosciences Group at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford. In 1998 he won an MRC Senior Non-Clinical Fellowship, which was renewed in 2003. In 1995 he was made an Honorary University Lecturer, and in 2004 was awarded a personal chair.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Translational
Esther graduated from the University of Amsterdam cum laude with a MSc degree in Medical Biology in 2000. She then joined the Biomedical and Biological Sciences program at Harvard University, where she performed her PhD training with Azad Bonni. Her work as a graduate student has made significant contributions to our understanding of the specific signaling mechanisms that regulate cell death in the nervous system, particularly in the developing cerebellum. For her graduate studies, Esther was awarded a PhD Fellowship from the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds and an Albert J. Ryan Foundation Fellowship.
After completing her PhD in 2006, Esther joined Kay Davies' group in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, having been awarded a Human Frontier Science Program Fellowship and later an OXION Training Fellowship. In 2010, Esther was awarded a prestigious Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellowship from the Royal Society to establish her own research programme, focussing on the genetic and molecular underpinnings of cerebellar ataxia in mice and humans. Esther joined the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences in 2020. She is also Co-Director of the Oxford Interdisciplinary Bioscience Doctoral Training Partnership and Vice President and Official Fellow (Cellular Life) at Reuben College.
Frances Ashcroft held the title of Royal Society GlaxoSmithKline Research Professor at the University Laboratory of Physiology, Oxford and is a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. She holds BA, PhD and ScD degrees from Cambridge University and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1999. Her research focuses on ATP-sensitive potassium (K ATP) channels and their role in insulin secretion, in both health and disease. She is interested in how K ATP channel function relates to channel structure, how cell metabolism regulates channel activity, and how mutations in K ATP channel genes cause human disease. The ultimate goal is to elucidate how a rise in the blood glucose concentration stimulates the release of insulin from the pancreatic beta-cells, what goes wrong with this process in type 2 diabetes, and how drugs used to treat this condition exert their beneficial effects. She has written a text book "Ion Channels and Disease" and is Director of OXION, a training and research programme on the integrative physiology of ion channels, funded by the Wellcome Trust.
Job Titles:
- Post Doctoral Research Scientist
I am currently investigating sleep and emotional processing in individuals with eye disease, those born without eyes (congenital bilateral anophthalmia) or those who have lost their eyes later in life (acquired bilateral anophthalmia).
I am also working with a group of staff and patients in a secure mental health unit to understand more about sleep and light in this context.
Job Titles:
- Postdoctoral Researcher in the FMRIB Analysis Group
Job Titles:
- Post - Doctoral Research Assistant
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Clinician
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- Leverhulme Early Career Fellow & Associate Professor of Experimental Psychology
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- Post - Graduate Research Assistant
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- Senior Clinical Research Fellow
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- University Research Lecturer
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- Departmental Lecturer in Perception and Psychophysics
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- Professor of Anatomical Neuropharmacology
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- Professor of Computational
Rodríguez Cruz PM. et al, (2020), Hum Mutat, 41, 619 - 631
Job Titles:
- Honorary Senior Research Associate
Job Titles:
- Post - Doctoral Researcher
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Cognitive Neuropsychology
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- Post - Doctoral Research Assistant
Job Titles:
- Bishop / Senior Research Fellow ( ERC Consolidation Grant )
Job Titles:
- Honorary Clinical Research Fellow
Job Titles:
- Professor of Computational
Job Titles:
- Professor of Neurosurgery
Job Titles:
- Postdoctoral Research Associate
Job Titles:
- Clinical Fellow and DPhil Candidate