MRC Skills Fellowship Award

03 Apr 2017

Caroline Lea-Carnall from the Division of Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology has been awarded a Medical Research Council (MRC) Skills Development Fellowship.

These fellowships are aimed at supporting early career researchers and provide an opportunity for them to explore, consolidate and further their skills in MRC priority areas: mathematics, statistics, computation, informatics, health economics.

Although based in Manchester Caroline will also spend part of the three year fellowship with the Physiological Neuroimaging Group in Oxford and the Centre for Predictive Modelling in Healthcare, at Exeter with whom she has collaborated with her research.

Caroline’s work focuses on neuroplasticity, the ability of the human brain to modify the connections in response to everyday events from basic learning to dealing with physical or psychological trauma.

During her fellowship Caroline will develop the mathematical formulation and computational implementation of a novel model of neuroplasticity, specifically looking at neurotransmitter release, and validate it with real data.

The ultimate goal is use the model to advance current methods of manipulating plasticity in healthy and clinical populations to help maximise patient rehabilitation after brain injury or trauma and minimise treatment times.

Caroline explained: “During my PhD, I have had the opportunity to develop my mathematical and computational modelling skills as well as receive training in a variety of human neuroimaging acquisition and data analysis techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG), fMRI and MRS. I have also had the chance to collaborate with clinicians, neuroscientists and psychologists to apply these skills to current open questions in neuroscience.

“The fellowship will allow me to continue developing this multidisciplinary array of skills at the same time as pursuing my own research questions in collaboration with world-leaders in each field.

“Ultimately, I believe that cross-collaborative research of this kind has the potential to greatly aid medical treatments and interventions in the future. I am particularly interested in the dynamics of cortical networks in both healthy and diseased brains and have successfully applied a combination of quantitative mathematical modelling techniques and neuroimaging data to furthering our understanding in this field.”

Caroline’s supervisor, Professor Wael El-deredy, commented: “We are delighted that Caroline was awarded the fellowship. These are prestigious and highly competitive awards. Caroline is a competent mathematician with a passion for brain function, and the skills development fellowship is a perfect fit to allow her develop her skills as well as pursue an independent research programme.”