James Boardman
Biography
Professor Boardman aims to develop and evaluate neuroprotective strategies for babies at risk of brain injury and poor neurodevelopmental outcomes, focusing on preterm birth. He researches the role of neonatal quantitative MR imaging to investigate causal pathways to brain injury, the factors that confer risk or resilience to injury, and the relationship between neonatal MRI and outcomes in childhood. He is the scientific director of the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory at the University of Edinburgh/MRC Centre for Reproductive Health and holds a UKRI MRC programme grant.
Martin Dennis
Biography
Martin Dennis trained in General medicine and geriatric medicine, then specialised in stroke medicine. Worked as:
honorary consultant in stroke medicine in Edinburgh from 1990 to 2023; Professor of stroke medicine (2002-present); Founder and inaugural president of the British Association of Stroke Physicians (BASP); Chair of national advisory committee for stroke (2003-2023), Specialty advisor to the CMO (2020-2023) and since the publication of the main trials demonstrating that thrombectomy is highly effective in improving functional outcomes in patients with ischaemic stroke due to large artery occlusion in 2015 he has been involved in planning and rolling out its implementation across Scotland.
Fergus Doubal
Biography
Fergus Doubal is a honorary reader in stroke medicine at the University of Edinburgh, a consultant stroke physician and the MCN Clinical lead for stroke medicine for NHS Lothian. He is past chair (and member) of the BIASP Clinical Standards Committee, co-author of the RCR credentialing guidelines for MT and of international and national guidelines for stroke and developed clinical pathways for the thrombectomy service development in Edinburgh.
Reena Dwivedi
Biography
Reena is a Consultant Neuroradiologist working at NHS Lothian, Edinburgh.
As a Trustee and Educational Lead for the charity Worldwide Radiology, she has been aiming to contribute to improvement in quality, safe imaging and strengthened health systems, predominantly in low resource settings.
Following completion of her fellowship from Oxford in 2015, she opted for a short-term voluntary position as a radiologist in Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, Blantyre, Malawi. She has subsequently worked as a consultant sub-specialising in neuro/head and neck radiology, in Liverpool and Manchester.
Over time, her interest in global health has broadened and she is currently reading for a MSc in Global Health Policy with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Academic and clinical interests in imaging in low resource settings have led to collaborations with research teams based in Sierra Leone, Malawi and Madagascar, in addition to establishing links with radiologists in Ghana.
She has been teaching with Liverpool School Tropical Medicine since 2019, covering neuroimaging for the HIV MSc module. She is also an examiner for the Royal College of Radiologists and has developed modules for neuro/head and neck anatomy for the first cohort of Malawian radiology trainees.
Shawna Farquharson
Biography
Dr Shawna Farquharson is the Senior Scientist and National Coordinator for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) at the Australian National Imaging Facility (NIF). In her current role, she is responsible for providing national-scale project management to ensure coordination and harmonisation across Australia’s advanced imaging network, to improve accessibility for researchers, health professionals, and industry. Prior to this, she served as the Chief MRI Research Radiographer, Facility Manager and NIF Fellow at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Melbourne, Australia for 15 years.
Dr Farquharson is a highly qualified professional, holding a PhD in Neuroscience from Monash University, Australia, a Master of Health Science in Medical Radiation Sciences from the University of Sydney, Australia, and a BSc (Hons) in Diagnostic Radiography from the University of Hertfordshire, UK. Dr Farquharson’s research focus is the application of ‘cutting-edge’ imaging techniques to clinical populations to help understand the structure and function of the brain, and the translation of scientific advances to improve patient care.
In recognition of her exceptional contributions to the field of MRI, Dr Farquharson has received numerous accolades and awards. She was awarded the Distinguished Service Award from the International Society for Magnetic Resonance Radiographers and Technologists (ISMRT), the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health Award for Best PhD – John Milne Prize for Neuroscience, and the Monash Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences – SPAHC Award for Best PhD Thesis. She has also received several awards for her research from the ISMRT.
Dr Farquharson is an active member of the international and national MRI community. Her Executive Board positions include serving as the President of the ISMRT, as well as serving on the Board of Trustees of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) and the ISMRM Affiliated Sections Committee.
Peter Flynn
Biography
Dr Peter Flynn is a 1989 graduate of Queen’s University Belfast. Following MRCP he completed general radiology training in Newcastle upon Tyne followed by dedicated neuroradiology training as the Newcastle fellow. He is now in 25th year as a Consultant Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiologist in the Royal Victoria Hospital and Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children. He is a past chair of the UK Neurointerventional Group and a member of several RCR accredited national committees involved in the roll out of UK thrombectomy.
Natasha Fullerton
Biography
Natasha Fullerton is a Consultant Diagnostic Neuroradiologist at the Institute of Neurosciences, Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Glasgow, and an Honorary Professor in the School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of Glasgow. Following an intercalated pharmacology degree at Glasgow University, Natasha obtained her medical degree from the University of Valencia, Spain. After returning to Glasgow, where she graduated with a PhD, she completed her Radiology and Neuroradiology training in the West of Scotland.
Natasha regularly takes neuro-oncology and epilepsy MDTs, and has a special interest in advanced MRI imaging, and in Neuro-SPECT and PET imaging also. She has been involved with the 7T MRI scanner at the Imaging Centre of Excellence, ICE, on the QEUH site since its installation, being responsible for 7T neuroimaging. She is involved in various research projects at ICE.
Jeroen Hendrikse
Biography
Dr. Jeroen Hendrikse is a Professor in neuroradiology and chair of the Imaging and Oncology division at the University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands. His research focus on optimizing and clinical use of brain MRI methods including intracranial vessel wall imaging, arterial spin labeling (ASL) perfusion MRI and high resolution 7T MRI of brain parenchyma. Prof. Dr. Jeroen Hendrikse has supervised 30 PhD students, published more than 300 scientific articles and is the principal investigator of national and European grants. Finally he has written books for the general public including: ‘This is our brain’ about brain and spine imaging and recently a book about ‘Job crafting in healthcare’.
Claudia F.E. Kirsch
Biography
Dr. Kirsch is a Professor of Neuroradiology, Yale Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging in Neuroradiology and a Fellow in the American College of Radiology and American Society of Functional Neuroradiology. She is also a PhD candidate with neopath.org at the University of Sheffield School of Clinical Dentistry on “Viral mediated disease in the skull base, head and neck”, utilizing artificial intelligence and high resolution 7T MRI at the BioMedical Engineering and Imaging Institute (BMEII) at Mount Sinai Medical Center, researching viral SARS-CoV-2, EBV, and HPV pathophysiology in the skull base. Her advisors Dr Ali Khurram PhD, Senior Honorary Consultant Pathologist, Professor Daniel Lambert Ph.D. Chair Molecular Cell Biology, Dr. Harpret Hyare at UCL, expert in viral prion disease and at the 7T MRI laboratory under Priti Balchandani PhD, Professor and Director Advanced Neuroimaging Research Program (ANRP), BioMedical Engineering and Imaging Institute (BMEII) at Mount Sinai Medical Center, NIH grants, NIH R21NS122389, NIH R01CA202911.
Dr. Kirsch received the American Society of Neuroimaging Oldendorf award for MRI 2COSY of spinal cord trauma and has received numerous research and teaching awards. In addition to international awards for Primal pictures anatomy.tv award-winning educational interactive 3-D software of head and neck anatomy. She is on the Editorial board of Clinical Imaging and Frontiers and is a multiple time recipient of the RSNA Editor’s Recognition award. She has numerous peer-reviewed publications and is former Vice-Chair of Expert Panel on Neuroimaging for the American College of Radiology Appropriateness Committee, and American Society of Neuroradiology Collaborative Committee for Practice Parameters in Computed Tomography of the Head and Neck. In 2022 she was elected to the American Society of Head and Neck Radiology (ASHNR) Executive Committee as the Senior Member at Large and is the former Chair of the ASHNR Research Committee. She is part of the Association of University Radiologists (AUR), Leaders in Advocating Diversity & Inclusion in Radiology (LADIR) Special Interest Group (SIG), dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and Program Committee, Value Based Healthcare Committee and Research Committee of the North American Skull Base Society (NASBS). She has served and continues to serve on Educational, Program and Research Committees for the ASNR, ASHNR, Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), American Society of Functional Imaging, American Association of Woman Radiologists, and is Past President of the Eastern Neuroradiological Society.
Her PhD focus, current research and publications are on skull base and viral mediated pathology in the head and neck and risk factors including obesity leading to Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension (IIHT). She is using AI to assess Human Papilloma virus (HPV), Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) and SARs-CoV-2 and is a co-investigator on a Foundation Government Clinical Trial assessing Phase III trials in head and neck cancer, with prior grant funding analyzing IIHT, and received an ASHNR Core Curriculum Grant on swallowing in the head and neck. She is an invited speaker nationally and internationally on skull base, head and neck imaging and pathology, including a TEDx talk imaging of cancer “hitchhiking” via perineural invasion in the skull base. As a Neuroradiologist and PhD research candidate in AI, she believes in positive teaching, collaborative and inspiring environments that lead to improved patient outcomes, innovative teaching and research, and scientific advancement.
Malcolm Macleod
Biography
Malcolm Macleod FRCP FMedSCi is Professor of Neurology and Translational Neurosciences and Academic Lead for Research Improvement and Research Integrity at the University of Edinburgh. With Howells he co-founded the CAMARADES collaboration in 2005. He was Academic Coordinator of the European Quality in Preclinical Data IMI consortium and of the Guarantors of EQIPD. He was a lead author in the Lancet Series on Research Waste in 2014, and served on the UK MHRA Commission for Human Medicines from 2014 to 2022. He is a member of the UK Reproducibility Network steering committee.
His current research interests relate to providing evidence for the effectiveness (or not) of strategies which might be adopted by funders, journals and institutions to improve the quality of their research; and to the creation of systematically curated, automatically updated living evidence summaries of evidence to inform translational research. He leads the University of Edinburgh Research Culture Survey.
David Nutt
Biography
David Nutt is currently the Edmond J Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology and Director of the Centre for Psychedelic Research in the Division of Psychiatry, Department of Brain Science, Imperial College London and also CRO of Awaknlifesciences. He is also visiting professor at the Open University in the UK and Maastricht University in the Netherlands.
After 11+ entry to Bristol Grammar he won an Open Scholarship to Downing College Cambridge, then completed his clinical training at Guy’s Hospital London. After a period in neurology to MRCP he moved to Oxford to a research position in psychiatry at the MRC Clinical Pharmacology Unit where he obtained his PhD. On completing his psychiatric training in Oxford, he continued there as a lecturer and then later as a Wellcome Senior Fellow in psychiatry. He then spent two years as Chief of the Section of Clinical Science in the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in NIH, Bethesda, USA. He returned to England in 1988 to set up the Psychopharmacology Unit in Bristol University, an interdisciplinary research grouping spanning the departments of Psychiatry and Pharmacology. After a period as head of Psychiatry and then Dean of Clinical Medicine in 2009 he moved to Imperial College London where he leads a similar group with a particular focus on brain imaging, especially Positron Emission Tomography and fMRI in addictions and depressive disorders.
David has held many significant scientific leadership positions – including Presidencies of the European Brain Council, the British Neuroscience Association, the British Association of Psychopharmacology and the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology as well as Chair of the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He is a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians, of Psychiatrists the Academy of Medical Sciences and British Pharmacological Society. He is also the UK Director of the European Certificate and Masters in Affective Disorders courses and a member of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy. He edited the Journal of Psychopharmacology for over thirty years and acts as the psychiatry drugs advisor to the British National Formulary. He has published over 500 original research papers, a similar number of reviews and books chapters, eight government reports on drugs and 37 books, including seven for the general public, including ‘Drugs Without the Hot Air’ (which won the Transmission book prize in 2014 for Communication of Ideas), “Brain and Mind Made Simple”, and his autobiography ‘Nutt Uncut’. His latest book is one for the general public on psychedelics will be published in June 2023. His work on psychedelics has been made the subject of a play “All you need is LSD” and several documentaries including “the psychedelic drug trial” for the BBC
David’s research has been published in many of the leading journals including Nature, Cell, PNAS, Lancet, JAMA psychiatry and the New England Journal of Medicine. These papers define his many landmark contributions to psychopharmacology including GABA and noradrenaline receptor function in anxiety disorders, serotonin function in depression, endorphin and dopamine function in addiction. Most recently he has focused on the neuroscience and clinical utility of psychedelic drugs with resulting papers in PNAS, Lancet Psychiatry and the first ever comparison of a psychedelic with an SSRI was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2032994
In 2009 he founded the charity Drug Science (previously the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD) a charity that tells the truth about drugs and with which he runs a popular podcast on matters of drug science and policy https://www.drugscience.org.uk/latest/blogs/drugsciencepodcast/. He broadcasts widely to the general public both on radio and television; highlights include being a subject for many BBC programmes including The Life Scientific, Hard Talk, On the Ropes, A Good Read and Private Passions.
His research has been featured in many tv programmes the BBC Horizon and the Channel 4 documentaries Ecstasy and Cannabis -live. His research has been the subject of the films Magicmedicine https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8661404/ The psychedelic drug trial https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000w7bq/the-psychedelic-drug-trial and the play ‘All you need is LSD’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1wNRzUAIPY .
He is much in demand for public affairs programs on therapeutic as well as illicit drugs, their harms and their classification and the relationship between scientists and government. He also lecturers widely to the public as well as to the scientific and medical communities, e.g. at the Cheltenham Science and How the Light Gets In Festivals, Café Scientifiques and Skeptics in the Pub. In 2010 The Times Eureka science magazine voted him one of the 100 most important figures in British Science, and the only psychiatrist in the list. In 2013 he was awarded the Nature/Sense about Science John Maddox prize for Standing up for Science. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Bath in 2017 for his work bringing evidence to bear on drug policies.
Tom Oxley
Biography
Associate Professor Thomas Oxley MBBS BMedSc FRACP PhD is a vascular and interventional neurologist and world expert in brain computer interfaces. He is Associate Professor and Laboratory Head of the Vascular Bionics Laboratory, University of Melbourne, Australia, as well as Clinical Instructor, Attending in the Department of Neurosurgery, Mount Sinai Hospital.
Dr Oxley has performed over 1600 endovascular neurosurgical procedures, including cerebral aneurysm coiling and clot retrievals in acute stroke. Dr Oxley has published over 100 internationally peer reviewed articles in journals including JAMA Neurology, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Biomedical Engineering, New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet.
Dr Oxley is the founding CEO of Synchron, a clinical-stage implantable brain computer interface (BCI) company. Since 2012, the company has been developing a BCI platform that avoids the need for open brain surgery by using a minimally-invasive procedure to unlock solutions for previously untreatable conditions. The Synchron Switch™ BCI received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation in 2020, and is currently in human clinical trials in the US and Australia. Synchron has been published in multiple peer-reviewed journals including Nature Biotechnology, Nature Biomedical Engineering and JNIS. Synchron is based in Brooklyn, New York with R&D facilities in Melbourne, Australia. For more information, visit www.synchron.com. Follow them on Twitter @synchroninc.
Neil Rane
Biography
Neil Rane is a Consultant Neuroradiologist and Honorary Lecturer, at Imperial College London NHS Trust and Department of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London.
He trained in Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology in Oxford, after which he spent time at DCN in Edinburgh and a further neurointerventional fellowship at Royal Melbourne Hospital, Australia, where he gained experience in Mechanical Thrombectomy. He has been a Consultant at Imperial since 2015 and has been performing 24-7 thrombectomy for North West London since 2019.
Daniel Rueckert
Biography
Daniel Rueckert is Alexander von Humboldt Professor for AI in Medicine and Healthcare at the Technical University of Munich. He is also Professor of Visual Information Processing in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London. He received a PhD from Imperial College in 1997. He has published more than 500 journal and conference articles in the area of medical image computing. He served as associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging and is a member of the editorial board of Medical Image Analysis. In 2014, he has been elected as a Fellow of the MICCAI society, and in 2015 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and of the IEEE. More recently he has been elected as Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2019), as fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2021) and as member of Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Sciences (2023).
Marion Smits
Biography
Marion Smits is full professor, Chief of neuroradiology, and Chair of the neuroradiology fellowship programme at Erasmus MC – University Medical Centre Rotterdam (NL). She combines research with clinical work as a neuro- and head & neck radiologist, with a particular focus on neuro-oncology in the Brain Tumour Centre at the Erasmus MC Cancer Institute, Rotterdam (NL). Marion also holds an honorary appointment as Professor of Neuroradiology at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) Faculty of Applied Sciences, as well as a Medical Delta Professorship with the aim to advance technological innovations in healthcare.
Marion is dedicated to breaking down the boundaries between the research arena and clinical practice and vice versa, by disseminating knowledge and insight gained from her research and by clinical implementation of physiological MR neuroimaging through her numerous teaching activities and leadership positions.
In 2021, Marion was named ‘most influential radiology researcher’ by AuntMinnie Europe. Marion is honorary member of the ASNR, fellow of ESMRMB and senior fellow of ISMRM
for her pioneering work at the interface of technical innovation and clinical neuroradiology.
Stavros Stivaros
Biography
Stavros Stivaros is Director of Imaging at the University of Manchester, UK and Co-Director of Imaging at the Geoffrey Jefferson Brain Research Centre. As Professor of Paediatric Neuroradiology he heads Paediatric Neuroimaging at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, one of Europe’s largest children’s hospitals and a major paediatric trauma centre. He also directs the North of England and Northern Ireland Children’s Epilepsy Surgery Services, commissioned across both the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool. He is imaging lead for the Paediatric Neuroimaging components of the first UK Paediatric Proton Beam Therapy Service, at The Christie Hospital. He sits as the current chair of the NIHR BRC Imaging Network.
His work on artificial intelligence techniques to fuse and analyse multiparametric imaging in specific disease groups, such as children’s brain tumours and Neurofibromatosis, has won international recognition at both the Children’s Tumour Foundation as well as the International Society of Paediatric Neuro-oncology. This is work he first began in the Decisions Systems Group at Harvard in 1996, under the leadership of Bob Greenes.
More recently he was joint senior author on the BSNR/American Society of Pediatric Neuroradiology sponsored global consortium, that first identified and described the imaging phenotype of children suffering from encephalopathy related to SARS-CoV-2 infection. In addition, he was first author on a multi-centre UK study on rates of inflicted trauma in children during the first covid lockdown period. He has given evidence to the Family and Criminal Courts in over 250 cases of suspected inflicted traumatic injury to children and has also appeared in the High Court in such matters. He is part of the President of the Family Division’s working party on medical evidence in non-accidental injury in children and as part of the Family Justice Council’s medical expert working group.
Gerry Thompson
Biography
Gerry Thompson is a Senior Clinical Lecturer in Radiology in the Centre of Clinical Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh and an Honorary Consultant Neuroradiologist for the Department of Clinical Neurosciences in NHS Lothian. He obtained his PhD in advanced imaging biomarkers of glioma at the University of Manchester and completed Neuroradiology Specialist Training the north west of England before moving to Edinburgh. His research covers translational imaging biomarker development and validation in brain tumours and neurodegenerative conditions which are his main areas of clinical interest.
Gerry combines MRI and PET in rodents, livestock, and humans with state of the art tissue characterisation to better understand the biological phenotypes and physiological states/processes which are captured by imaging. He is also interested in widening access to expert neuroradiologist assessment in clinical trials, and helps to design tools which streamline or assist existing evidence-based expert reports, while providing ground truth for complementary machine learning approaches. He is a co-investigator for the Tessa Jowell BRAIN MATRIX clinical trials platform, curriculum advisor for the imaging component of the Tessa Jowell Fellowships, and a member of the Brain Tumour Charity Scientific Advisory Board.
Adam Waldman
Biography
Adam Waldman is Chair of Neuroradiology at Edinburgh University and Visiting Professor at Imperial College London. He gained a PhD and undertook post-doctoral research in biophysics before training in medicine at Cambridge, then in Internal medicine followed by Radiology and Neuroradiology in London. He was previously Consultant Neuroradiologist and Research Director for Radiology at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Adam has previously held the Royal College of Radiologists Roentgen Professorship and medal, and has been BSNR Academic Chair and du Boulay Travelling Professor. His main research interests are in quantitative and physiological neuroimaging, and he leads experimental and translational imaging programmes in neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative disease and neuro-oncology.
Joanna Wardlaw
Biography
Professor Joanna Wardlaw, CBE, MD, FRSE, FMedSci, is Professor of Applied Neuroimaging at the University of Edinburgh, Foundation Chair in the UK Dementia Research Institute, and Consultant Neuroradiologist for NHS Lothian. Her work focuses on understanding the brain and its blood supply, and on treatments to improve blood flow to the brain, including thrombolytic drugs that are now in routine use to treat stroke, and more recently on treatments for small vessel disease and dementia. Working with many colleagues, she has been instrumental in advancing understanding of the causes of cerebral small vessel disease and is now testing promising treatments in clinical trials. She has set up national research imaging facilities, co-ordinated international research networks, advanced stroke care worldwide and published over 1000 papers. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the UK’s Academy of Medical Sciences, she was awarded the American Heart Association’s Feinberg Award for Clinical Advances in Stroke in 2018, the European Stroke Organisation President’s Award (2017), the Karolinska Stroke Award (2018), the British Neuroscience Association Award for Outstanding Contribution to Neuroscience (2021), and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to Medicine and Neuroscience in 2016.