I completed my BSc in Pharmacology at the University of Southampton prior to moving to Imperial for MRes studies in Neuroscience. I stayed at Imperial College to complete my PhD under the supervision of Prof David Dexter, looking at the neuroprotective potential of histone deacetylase inhibitors in Parkinson's disease, using imaging to quantify disease progression in the rodent brain. I then moved to UCL's Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging to lead a collaborative project with Eli Lilly looking to develop imaging strategies to assess pathology in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease. I am currently the recipient of Alzheimer's Research UK and Parkinson's UK reserarch fellowships aiming to understand the involvement of the glymphatic system in neurodegenerative disease.

For my undergraduate degree I went to the University of Portsmouth and obtained First Class Honours in Pharmacology. Here I discovered a passion for neuroscience and research, so I decided to study MRes Translational Research at University College London. My research project was hosted by Ian, and worked to determine if the glymphatic system had a role in the clearance of propagation-prone alpha-synuclein in mice, as a reflection of Parkinson’s disease. I will be returning to Ian’s lab in October 2021 to begin a research assistant role looking Aquaporin-4 (the protein that we believe facilitates glymphatic flow) in post-mortem PD brains and whether this is a viable target for disease treatment. After this position, it is my aspiration to become a PhD candidate and continue with neurodegenerative disease research.

I am currently working on a collaborative project between the Harrison Lab and AstronauTx, a UK-based biotech company, where we are testing a novel small molecule compound to treat neurodegenerative diseases. Previously, I’ve done a postdoc at UCSF with Dr. Dena Dubal – looking to discover novel blood-borne factors that can modulate brain health and function. I completed my PhD at UCL, under the supervision of Prof. Elizabeth Fisher – where I was interested in the genetic mechanisms that regulate cognitive impairment in Down’s Syndrome.  My undergraduate degree was in Neurosciences at Cardiff University, here I spent a research year at Roskamp Institute (Florida), under the supervision of Dr. Joseph Ojo – we were developing novel techniques to model mild traumatic brain injury in rodents.

I am a year 1 PhD student on the CDT of Transformative Pharmaceutical Technologies at UCL, working within the Centre of Advanced Biomedical Imaging and School of Pharmacy. My PhD project focuses on investigating and characterising the mechanisms of nose-to-brain drug delivery and clearance in-vivo, with applying our findings in the context of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). I work under the supervision of Prof Daniel Stuckey, Dr Ian Harrison, and Dr Jenny Lam, with the affiliation of our industrial partners Croda and GSK. Prior to starting my PhD, I completed my MSci (Hons) degree in Pharmacology at UCL (2023), completing my research project under the supervision Prof Frances Edwards. Within this work, I aimed to characterize the electrophysiological and morphological changes at CA1 hippocampal synapses in response to chemical long-term potentiation in a knock-in mouse model of AD. During my undergraduate degree, I also conducted research within the BioTech company AXON Neuroscience that focused on developing tau-targeting therapies for AD, as well as having a research assistant role at the Slovak Academy of Sciences where I was developing a diagnostic method for urinary extracellular DNA detection.

​I completed my BSc in Molecular Medicine at the University of Tuebingen and the Werner Siemens Imaging Centre. As part of my bachelor thesis, I investigated novel in vivo imaging approaches to understand functional and molecular changes of psychedelic compounds in the brain. My passion for combining neuroscience and imaging techniques has led me UCL, where I am now a MSc Neuroscience student. I am particularly interested in deepening my understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the rise and progression of neurodegenerative pathologies. I am excited to be joining the Harrison lab as part of my MSc research project, where I will be evaluating the potential effects of glymphatic modulators on the neuron-to-neuron propagation of alpha-synuclein in mice