FRACP, MBChB
HOLDER OF CHRISTOPHER WELCH SCHOLARSHIP IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
- Clarendon Scholar
- DPhil Candidate
- Neurology Clinical Fellow
RESEARCH INTERESTS
After completing my undergraduate medicine studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand, I worked as a doctor in Melbourne, Australia, before undertaking advanced training in Neurology. I was awarded an ANZAN overseas training fellowship to complete my Neurology training at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, UK and finished this in mid 2014. Throughout my training I have had the opportunity to treat, and the share the experience of, a broad range of people suffering from different neurological disorders. The myriad of problems these people experience give us insight into the normal functioning of the brain, and understanding these processes in turn allows us to develop treatments for these problems.
An important and unanswered question is why many people with neurological diseases lose their motivation, and my research is attempting to understand the underlying causes for this. I am focusing on how people integrate potential rewards and effort costs into their decisions and translate this into goal directed behavior, and how this normal process is affected by damage to basal ganglia and frontal brain regions.
I have been fortunate to be awarded both a Christopher Welch Scholarship in Biological Sciences, and a University of Oxford Clarendon Scholarship to assist me with this research.