About me

I am currently a Senior Research Fellow at the CoNI Lab, University of Nottingham, funded by the ERC. My primary research interest is in developing robust methods for estimating structural brain connectivity across individuals and species, and in MRI harmonisation.

I graduated from my PhD in August 2021, supervised by Prof. Stamatios Sotiropoulos and funded by the MRC IMPACT DTP. During my PhD I developed FSL’s XTRACT for the standardised and automated extraction of major white matter fibre bundles in the human and macaque brain. XTRACT now supports the human neonate and several non-human species.

I am also interested in exploring differences in structural connectivity across individuals, relating to behaviour and/or disease, and have explored the stability of multivariate statistical techniques applied to brain-behaviour associations using large cohort datasets, including the Human Connectome Project (HCP) UK Biobank.

More recently, I have curated a resource for MRI harmonisation. “ON-Harmony” is a travelling-heads multi-modal brain MRI dataset consisting of eight 3T scanners across the three major MRI vendors with 20 participants scanned on six different scanners.

Prior to my PhD, I completed the Scientist Training Programme (STP) at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust leading to state registration as a Clinical Scientist. During my STP, I specialised in Imaging with Non-Ionising Radiation and completed a part-time MSc in Clinical Sciences (Medical Physics) at the University of Newcastle. My MSc dissertation focused on using MRI-derived measures of brain lesion volume and atrophy to better characterise Multiple Sclerosis. In addition, during the STP, I was involved in a project investigating the use of tissue equivalent test objects (TETOs) in ultrasound imaging quality control and how environmental conditions affect measures of image quality and scanner performance. In the final year of my STP, I completed an elective placement at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tianjin University, China where I focused on image segmentation of CT lung data, contributing to the development of a semi-automated CT-guided brachytherapy system. Prior to this, I completed a BSc in Physics at the University of Leicester.