Directory

I am a medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai specializing in functional neurosurgery for psychiatric disorders. Within Sinai’s Center for Advanced Circuit Therapeutics (C-ACT), my research explores neuromodulation at the molecular, circuit, and clinical levels. As a Gates Cambridge Scholar, I will work with Professor Valerie Voon to identify neural biomarkers of compulsivity—a transdiagnostic trait underlying conditions such as OCD, substance-use, and eating disorders—using high-fidelity recordings from the live human brain. These biomarkers could inform novel neuromodulation targets, advancing precision treatments for compulsivity-driven disorders.

Previous Education

Stanford University Computational Biology
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Medicine

My name is Luning Sun. Lu and Ning stand for the two provinces where my parents come from. I was born in Qingdao, China, a beautiful city along the coast. I stayed in a boarding school for three years, before I was admitted into Chuko Chen Honors College, Zhejiang University. I spent one semester as an exchange student in Germany, and I enjoyed my time there very much. I furthered my study in Munich after college, where I worked as a research assistant at a psychiatric hospital and got involved in various research projects, including both clinical studies on patients and behavioral experiments with normal participants. Based on my interests in psychological testing, I applied for a PhD position at the Psychometrics Center, Cambridge. Fortunately, I got the offer together with the Gates Cambridge Trust. Now I am working as a research associate, working on the ICAR project. I am interested in test development for educational, occupational as well as clinical assessment.

Previous Education

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität

In college my research culminated in a philosophical and historiographical investigation of the teleology at work in evolutionary theory. Recently I've become more interested in a different branch of my discipline – the philosophy of psychiatry and psychology, particularly contemporary clinical treatment and diagnostic practices.

I was born in Prague and grew up in Geneva. Following a BSc in Mathematical Physics at the University of Edinburgh, I undertook an MSc in Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London. During my MSc project, I became fascinated by the connectome – a holistic description of brain connectivity, which can be studied using complex network theory. Subsequently, I obtained a research assistant position at the University Hospital of Lausanne in Switzerland to study connectome alterations in psychiatric disease. Although most psychiatric disorders emerge in adolescence, our limited understanding of brain development during this period hinders our ability to identify maturational aberrations. This has motivated my desire to undertake a PhD in Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, to study development of the connectome in adolescence using complex network theory.

“If brain regions were filed under literary genres, the frontal lobes would surely be found in the Fantasy section.” My journey with this fantasy began at University College London during my undergraduate studies in Neuroscience. I became particularly drawn to the complexity of emotions and the prefrontal cortex, a heterogeneous and intricate region that remain understudied. I was motivated to explore how abstract emotional experiences can be grounded in distinct patterns of prefrontal circuit activity. My curiosity also extends to situations in which these processes go awry, particularly in psychiatric disorders, where disruptions in the prefrontal cortex can have profound consequences. Now continuing this journey through my PhD, I intend to investigate the functional asymmetry between the left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, examining whether they differ in processing emotional valence and functional connectivity. Beyond theoretical research, I also hope to translate my findings into refined therapeutic strategies. In many ways, I feel I am charting my own story through the brain’s Fantasy section, seeking to decode some of its most intricate and compelling narratives.

Previous Education

University College London Neuroscience

While an undergraduate at Lee University, I was introduced to anthropology as a powerful tool of insight and understanding. During my M.Sc. in Social Anthropology at the University College London, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork among Pentecostal Christians in Appalachia who practice a century-old tradition of handling venomous snakes in the context of worship. During my research, a death in the serpent-handling community captured public interest leading to the community’s engagement with journalists who often framed the community as 'backwards' or 'crazy.' I watched as the church community tried to counter the public narrative surrounding their religious practice. My experiences teaching anthropology at Western Wyoming Community College and at Lee University has only further reinforced my belief that understanding human differences and similarities is invaluable in breaking down barriers of fear and prejudice. Having worked in refugee and migrant communities in India, Egypt and Tennessee, I have seen how fear of differences can ostracize the imaginary ‘other.’ During my Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at Cambridge, my research has focused on the ethnographic study of values and the role of hope in motivating action among asylum seekers waiting on asylum procedures in the Aegean. It is by focusing on the values of hope and of an ideal 'good life' that some insight might be gained which situates refugees not as political nor as suffering strangers, but as morally evaluative humans distinctly and deeply informed by their unique cultural experiences.

Previous Education

Lee University
University College London

For most of us, reaching for an object, such as an apple or a pen, is something done seamlessly without requiring much thought. However, carrying out a voluntary movement requires a stream of intricate computations in the brain for planning, initiating, and executing even a simple action. Many neurological and psychiatric disorders – and also healthy ageing – can all influence these computations. My research interests lie in understanding these changes that occur across the lifespan and in cases of disease. I use behavioural tasks that tap into principles from computational neuroscience: for example the integration of different sources of information for performing an action. I combine these tasks with brain imaging methods, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, which allows me to examine the activity and connectivity of brain networks. My ongoing research following my PhD at Cambridge looks at the effect of age on the brain's motor system. Ageing is typically associated with increased variability in performance across individuals. My research endeavour, therefore, is to find the markers that not only predict healthy ageing, but also those that identify the brain changes that put people at risk to their well-being. Alongside research, I work in clinical psychiatry at Cambridge and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust.

Links

http://www.neuroscience.cam.ac.uk/directory/profile.php?nw305
https://psyact.org
https://www.linkedin.com/in/noham-wolpe-51577472

I grew up in southern California and attended Duke for my undergraduate studies. I started out in biology, researching the genetic regulation of skin cancer and spending my summers with kids affected by cancer. I transitioned to philosophy out of a desire to explore, not just the functioning of disease, but also the nature of our attempts to mitigate it. My PhD examined one such attempt, the early detection of cancer though screening, an issue that cuts across public health ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of medicine. We can ask of screening: what are the benefits and harms, and how can we distribute them justly throughout the population? What sorts of ethical obligations shape how we communicate about cancer? What are the ultimate aims and limits of medicine? Answering these questions is central to developing ethically sound and effective health policies. Apart from research, I competed for the Cambridge University water polo team, and co-captained the team in 2016-2017. After Cambridge, I attended medical school at Brown, and am currently a Psychiatry resident at the Brigham and Women's Hospital / Harvard Medical School program.

Previous Education

Duke University
University of Cambridge

Michael J. Young is an M.D. candidate at Harvard Medical School and a Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University. His current research examines the ethical dimensions and philosophical framework underlying standards of care in medicine and public health. Michael is also a co-investigator in the Central Nervous System Metastasis Program at Massachusetts General Hospital in collaboration with the Broad Institute, studying genomic drivers of brain tumors. Michael completed an M.Phil in philosophy from the University of Cambridge (Trinity College) as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, where he focused on philosophical issues relating to medicine and the mind. His work has appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, AJOB Neuroscience, Critical Care Medicine, Nature Immunology, Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, BMC Psychiatry, and Medicine, Healthcare and Philosophy.

Nutrition during pregnancy is perhaps the most influential non-genetic factor for fetal development and lifelong health thereafter. Global rates of obesity are increasing at an alarming rate and with that, an increase in obesity during pregnancy. Children of obese mothers have an increased lifetime risk of developing cardiometabolic problems and psychiatric disorders. My PhD work will explore how maternal obesity affects immune activity to disrupt nutrient partitioning capabilities in the placenta. Through this, I hope to elucidate the mechanisms by which maternal obesity impacts fetal growth and offspring metabolism in order to develop targeted interventions for affected children. Developmental programing, reproductive health, and diet during pregnancy as a modifiable risk factor are internationally relevant science communications and public health issues. Knowledge must move from the laboratory into policy in order to reach health services. What’s more, relevant audiences have to understand and correctly apply this information. For these reasons, I am an active proponent to improving scientific literacy and access to education and dedicate my community development initiatives to creating such educational resources.

Previous Education

University of Toronto Reproductive Physiology 2020
University of Western Ontario Medical Sciences 2018