Profile

I live in leafy Crouch End in North London with a clever partner and 2 very curious girls who are 8 and 11. I was lucky to grow up in Rome, Italy, and after my Physics degree I spent 3 years doing Chemistry in Chicago before landing in London in year 2000.

I love hiking and walking and during the lockdown I have been doing a lot of exploring of the beautiful parks in North London.

For my PhD at University College London in 2000-2003 I worked on an MRI scanner with the highest magnetic field in Europe at the time. I focused on finding new ways to obtain brain images with higher detail and resolution than routinely available

After finishing my PhD in 2003 I started working as an NHS hospital scientist at UCLH in London. I spent a lot of my time working with neonatologists. We worked on collecting detailed MRI images of newborn babies brains. We also explored new methods to reduce brain damage following transient episodes of oxygen deprival during birth. One such method involves cooling the baby by a few degrees for a few days and is now widely recommended for certain infants.

In 2008 I moved to the Neuroradiology Department of the National Hospital of Neurology and Neurosurgery. There I was involved in research and support of clinical MRI scanning in relation to many movement disorders and neurodegenerative diseases such as Dementia, Multiple Sclerosis,  or Huntington’s Disease.

I work as an Academic at King’s College London since 2017 in a particularly beautiful location. St Thomas hospital, with Westminster and the Big Ben just across the river.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is one of the most powerful techniques used in hospitals for diagnosis.

MRI machines, called ‘scanners’ are very expensive, and MRI examinations can take up to an hour.

However MRI has no harmful side effects, is very flexible and can tell doctors a lot about an organ, whether there is a problem with it, and what may have caused the problem.

My work aims to engineer new techniques to make MRI images better.

Better can mean sharper pictures (with more ‘pixels’).

Or it can mean good pictures can be acquired in shorter times, so that patients don’t need to lay in the scanner for too long -which may be uncomfortable.

The work often involves collaborating with Engineers, Computer Scientists and Doctors, and sometimes talking to patients as well.

MRI scientists often specialise in imaging a particular part of the body. I focus on the brain.

One of my areas of interest and expertise is imaging brain ‘perfusion’. In other words, visualising how much blood arrives to the different parts of the brain.

Recently I worked on better visualising the flow of blood to the placenta, the organ where oxygen and nutrients pass from mother to the growing fetus in her belly during pregnancy.

My current work focuses on finding a way to be able to measure the chemical content of the fetal brain during pregnancy, with a method called Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy. It will help better diagnose and treat pregnancy complications.

I also direct a Master’s course for Physicists and Engineers that will eventually go and work in hospitals across the UK.

My office has glass walls. It’s in an open area with desks for PhD students and Postdocs. On the 3rd floor of the North-East (Lambeth) Wing of St Thomas’ Hospital. Facing the Houses of Parliament across the river. In central London.

It’s part of the School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences at King’s College London.

I prepare, and give, lectures and talks, for students and fellow researchers.

I speak to students that I tutor and supervise.

I meet other scientists to compare and share ideas and imagine how we can design new methods that can lead to better diagnoses of disease.

I perform MRI scans.

I analyse and process imaging data. And I advice in analysing data.

I sit down to write grant proposal, to get money to continue my research

I also have meetings to discuss how to make the working and learning environment within our School more friendly and open to people with different backgrounds, disabilities, gender and sexual identities.

There are also meeting on policies regarding the Master’s degree I direct, research students, funding…

Lots of work gets done on the computer, but I hate to sit, so I now have a standing desk that I am planning to transform into a treadmill desk, so I can walk or run whilst working!