Profile

I was born in a village called Hetton-le-Hole but I now live in a studio in the middle of Newcastle. I’ve been at Newcastle University for almost 5 years now, having previously done my undergraduate degree here, and I love the university. I had originally planned to study medicine but realised I was more interested in the science behind things.

I chose to go into my field of research as I have always been interested in the brain and neuropsychology and I strongly believe that as a society we need to do more for those with mental illnesses. In general I believe more mental health support needs to be provided to everyone.

My interests include movies and literature (though I don’t read as much as I should nowadays!), and my lifelong-favourite TV show is Buffy the vampire slayer. My pronouns are he/his and I identify as bi/pansexual.

Stress is known to have major impacts on the brain, both during development and during adulthood, and has been linked to mental illnesses such as depression.

My project involves MRI scanning awake macaques in order to use this data to build up brain networks (imagine a 3D map of how different areas of the brain talk to each other).

We also collect hair and blood samples, and record the behaviour of the macaques. Analysis of this additional data should allow us to determine how stressful the different things each macaque experiences are. We can then look at the effects of these different experiences on the brain networks of the macaques, in order to investigate the impacts of stress on brain networks.

It is then hoped that comparison of our results to brain networks of patients will allow us to learn more about brain networks in depression. This should provide an avenue to improve current depression treatments.

If you want more depth on my project or the scientific background it is based on please just ask!

At the moment my day usually starts at around 9/9:30am, and the first thing I will normally do is check my emails and then plan out what I want/need to get done that day. I usually spend my mornings analysing data or trying different coding solutions, and then I will often attend talks and have meetings in the afternoon. Usually I head home sometime between 5 and 6pm. As we record the macaques’ behaviour I quite often will have to go down to the animal facility at some point during the day to fix one of our very temperamental cameras!

During periods where we are scanning the macaques I will often spend a few mornings a week carrying out MRI scans, and a couple of days every 6 months I spend collecting blood and hair samples from the macaques. Occasionally I will spend either a morning or an afternoon as a demonstrator in one of the undergraduate lab practicals.