prediction and learning lab
Curriculum Vitae
Academic
Positions
University of Cambridge
Department of Experimental Psychology
2018 ~ present
Lecturer, Principal Investigator
Royal Society Wellcome Trust Henry Dale Fellow
Autistica Future Research Leader
Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging
University College London
2013 ~ 2017.
Senior Post-doctoral Fellow
Supervisor: Prof Geraint Rees
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN)
University College London
2011 ~ 2013
Post-doctoral Research Associate.
Supervisor: Prof Jonathan Roiser
Education
PhD, MRC – Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit 2006 ~ 2010
Degree conferred: May 2011
University of Cambridge, UK
Supervisor: Dr Andrew Calder
Advisor: Dr Rik Henson
Thesis Title: “The Visual Representation of Cues to Social Attention: behavioural, fMRI and TMS investigations”
BSc/MA (Hons) Psychology/Philosophy 2002 ~ 2006 University of Glasgow, UK
Degree Class: First
Additional
research
Experience
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN)
Summer 2008
University College London
Collaborators: Dr David Pitcher, Prof Vincent Walsh
Visiting Scientist – collaboration using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to investigate the role of occipital and superior temporal face regions in gaze and head direction processing.
York Neuroimaging Centre (YNiC)
Aug 2005 ~ September 2005
Funding provided by the Wellcome Trust.
Supervisor: Professor Andy Young.
Visiting student - research project investigating neural correlates of multisensory face/voice integration using Magnetoencephalography (MEG).
Grants, Awards &
Fellowships
2018: Autistica Future Leader Award (2019-2022)
£100,000 – research grant
“Intolerance of uncertainty in anxiety: towards autism specific interventions”
2018: UCL Neuroscience Early Career Research Prize
2018: Psychopharmacology Award (BAP, junior non-clinical category)
2018: Society for Biological Psychiatry Early Career Investigator Award
2017: Wellcome Trust Henry Dale fellowship (2018-2023)
£ 983,275 – personal fellowship
“Contextual determinants of surprise in health, development and disorder”
2016: Experimental Psychology Society Small Grant
£2500 – sole applicant
“Are high-level visual aftereffects perceptual?”
2015: BAP post-graduate travel bursary - £200 to attend, Bristol, UK.
2014: British Association of Neuropsychiatry, Lishman Prize winner.
2015: Visual Neurosciences Summer School – Rauischholzhausen
Competitive selection: tuition, food and accommodation.
2013: British Association of Neuropsychiatry Conference bursary, waived registration.
2012: BAP Poster Prize - £100 and award.
2012: BAP post-graduate bursary - £200 to attend, Harrogate, UK.
2010: Darwin Travel Grant - £700 to attend VSS, Florida.
2009: Brain Travel Grant - £800 to attend CNS, San Francisco, USA.
2008: EPS Grindley Grant - £200 to attend, York, UK.
2007: Darwin Travel Grant - £500 to attend VSS, Florida.
2006: Medical Research Council Studentship (£81,211)
2005: Wellcome Trust Vacation Scholarship (£2000)
Teaching
2019 ~ present Lecturer, University of Cambridge
Part II/PBS6 - Development and Psychopathology
Advanced Autism x4 lectures (module convenor)
NST Part II – Behavioural & Cognitive Neuroscience
Advances in stress and stress related disorders x 1 lecture
2019 ~ present Clare College (Fellow)
Director of Studies (Psychological and Behavioural Sciences) Supervisions PBS2 – Psychological Enquiry & Methods
2017 ~ 2018 University of Cambridge (Affiliate Lecturer)
Part IB & MVST 2017 – Atypical Psychology
Autism, Schizophrenia, Phobias,
Depression, OCD, Anorexia.
Part II/PBS 8 2017 – Development and Psychopathology
Autism (x 4), Depression, Borderline Personality Disorder
Part IIb/PBS 11 2018 – Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Autism, Adolescence
2016 ~ 2018: UCL Cognitive Neuroscience MSc
“Neurocomputational approaches to autism”
2014 ~ 2016 University of Birmingham
Matlab: “Cogent for stimulus presentation”
2013 ~ 2018: UCL Matlab Course MSc
“Cogent and advanced Cogent for programming experiments”
2008 ~ 2009: University of Cambridge
Undergraduate supervisions (Girton College, Cambridge):
Part IB (2nd year) Experimental Psychology
Graduate
Supervision
University of Cambridge
2020 ~ 2023 Ph.D( supervisor), Timothy Sandhu
“Noradrenaline and learning under uncertainty”
2019 ~ 2022 Ph.D( supervisor) Claudia Lage
“Cognitive Flexibility in atypical development”
2018 ~ 2021 Ph.D (co-supervisor), Nazia Jassim
“Systematising and learning in autism spectrum disorder”
2018 ~ 2019 MPhil. (res), Mandy Lathan
“Perceptual biases in depressive disorder”
University College London
2016 ~ 2017 MSc, Shravanti Shankar
“Divisive computations in autistic visual perception”.
2015 ~ 2016 MSc, Jan Grohn
“Cross-cultural effects of context sensitive vision”. *Dean’s list of top performance
2014 ~ 2015 MSc, Ainslie Johnson
“Perceptual confidence in autism spectrum disorder”. *Shallice Prize winner
2013 ~ 2014 MSc, Mitch Mantella
“Low-level visual gain control mechanisms in autism”.
2012 ~ 2013 MSc, Jess Aylward
“Adaptive coding mechanisms in adults with autism”.
2011 ~ 2012 MSc, Charlotte Rae
“Adaptive coding mechanisms and autism spectrum traits”.
Awards, Travel and Prizes
2019: Autistica Future Leaders Award
2018: UCL Early Career Neuroscience Prize (£750)
2018: Psychopharmacology Prize (junior; non-clinical category £250)
2018: Society for Biological Psychiatry Early Career Researcher Award ($2000)
2015: BAP post-graduate travel bursary - £200 to attend, Bristol, UK.
2014: British Association of Neuropsychiatry Lishman Prize.
2015: Visual Neurosciences Summer School – Rauischholzhausen
Competitive selection: tuition, food and accommodation.
2013: British Association of Neuropsychiatry Conference bursary, waived registration. 2012: BAP Poster Prize - £100 and award.
2012: BAP post-graduate bursary - £200 to attend, Harrogate, UK.
2010: Darwin Travel Grant - £700 to attend VSS, Florida.
2009: Brain Travel Grant - £800 to attend CNS, San Francisco, USA.
2008: EPS Grindley Grant - £200 to attend, York, UK.
Grants
&
Funding
2019-2022: Autistica Future Leaders Fellowship
£100,000 – sole PI
“Intolerance of Uncertainty: towards autism specific interventions for anxiety”
2017-2023: Wellcome Trust Henry Dale fellowship
£ 983,275 – sole PI
“Contextual determinants of surprise in health, development and disorder”
2016-2018: Experimental Psychology Society Small Grant
£2500 – sole PI
“Are high-level visual aftereffects perceptual?”
2006: Medical Research Council Doctoral Studentship (£81,211)
2005: Wellcome Trust Vacation Scholarship (£2000)
Selected Invited
Talks
“Prediction, perception and computational psychiatry”, Chaucer Club, CBU, Cambridge, UK, 2019 “Introduction to Computational Psychiatry”, Royal College of Psychiatrists, Luton, UK, 2019
“Prediction and Learning in Autism Spectrum Disorder”, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, 2019 “
A more precise look at “context” in autism spectrum disorder”, Hokkaido, Japan, 2019
“Learning to build expectations in neuropsychiatric disorders”, Osaka Institute of Technology, Japan, January 2019
“Getting Computational about Context in Autism”, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience Seminar, University College London, October 2018
“Modelling cortical gain in autism (without any neuroimaging)”, Zangwill Talk Series, Dept of Psychology, University of Cambridge, October 2018
“Computational and pharmacological mechanisms of surprise”, British Association of Psychopharmacology Meeting, London, July 2018. *Prize talk
“The probabilistic brain in autism”, UCL Neurosciences Symposium, London, July 2018. *Prize talk
“Sensory adaptation, sensory sensitivity and autism enabled environments”, June 2018, Autistica Summit, London.
“The probabilistic brain in autism”, Durham University, Durham, UK, March 2018
“Modelling cortical gain in autism”, Affective Brain Seminar Series, UCL, February, 2018
“Learning to be surprised in autism”, BCCCD symposium on Predictive Processing in ASD, Budapest, Hungary, January 2018
“High-resolution imaging at 3Tesla”, Cognition and Brain Sciences Methods Day, Cambridge, UK, December 2017
“Weighing the past against the present: Bayesian approaches to autism”, Autism Research Centre, Cambridge, UK, July 2017
“Weighing the past against the present: learning and uncertainty autism”, University of York, York, August 2017.
“Learning to be surprised and expecting the unexpected in autism”, Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford, UK, June 2017.
“Confidence and Uncertainty in autism spectrum disorder”, International Symposium on Developmental Neuroscience and Robotics, Osaka, Japan, December 2016
"Contextualising context in autism spectrum disorder” IoPPN Kings College London, November 2016.
"How important is the top-down contribution to vision?” University of Cambridge, October 2016.
"Visual perception in autism spectrum disorders", Goldsmiths University London, October 2015.
"An aberrant precision account of autism", Birkbeck Computational Psychiatry Journal Club, Birkbeck University, London, May 2015.
"Toward a neurocomputational understanding of autism spectrum disorder", UCL Computational Psychiatry Workshop, London, April 2015.
"Evidence for deficient precision setting in autism; behaviour, Bayesian modelling and noradrenergic function", KU Leuven, Predictive Coding in Autism Workshop, Belgium, March 2015
"Habenula Responses in Major Depression: A High-Resolution fMRI Study", Society for Biological Psychiatry, San Francisco, USA, May 2013.
“Autism Spectrum Traits and Adaptive Coding Mechanisms”, Autism Journal Club, SGDP, Kings College London, November 2013
"The visual representation of human body orientation", Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Tea Time Talk, UCL, London, July 2010.
"Neural representation of Human Bodies", E1 Meeting, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, December 2008.
"Adaptation of Visual Cues to Social Attention", MRC CBU, Cambridge, May 2008.