Biography
I am a Michael Uren Foundation and British Heart Foundation-funded PhD student supervised by Dr Samuel Barnes and Dr David Owen. My PhD investigates endothelial cell 18kDa Translocator Protein (TSPO) as a target to improve vascular function and synaptic density in Alzheimer’s disease. I first joined the Barnes lab in July 2024 as an undergraduate student, studying the effect of molecular diversity on synaptic plasticity.
Research interest
Before my PhD, I worked as a research technician in Dr Johanna Jackson’s lab at the UKDRI at Imperial College London. I characterized blood-based synaptic biomarkers for Alzheimer’s in humans and mice, with the goal of making early diagnosis more accessible.
I started my research journey by joining Imperial’s 2022 iGEM team (International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition), bioengineering a sustainable fungicide to address food insecurity. This was an exciting introduction not only to working in the lab, but also stakeholder outreach, science communication and fundraising. I also completed a placement year at Harvard Medical School. There, I studied the neuronal circuitry underlying sleep homeostasis in fruit flies at Prof Dragana Rogulja’s lab.