UCL Institute of Neurology

Congratulations to Dr David Carmichael of the Department of Clinical and Experimental Epilepsy  who has won the first Sir Peter Mansfield Prize for technical developments in the field of Magnetic Resonance and Biology.  The Sir Peter Mansfield Prize is awarded by the British Chapter of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine  for outstanding research on innovative technical developments in the field of magnetic resonance in medicine and biology submitted to their Annual Scientific Meeting. 

To achieve this has required the support of a large team across departments both within the IoN, NHNN and the National Society for Epilepsy MRI Unit including Andrew McEvoy (Victor Horsley Department of Neurosurgery, NHNN) John Thornton and colleagues (Lysholm Department of Radiology, NHNN), Phil Allen, Matthew Walker and Beate Diehl and colleagues (Telemetry Unit, NHNN and Department of Clinical and Experimental Epilepsy, IoN) and the EEG-fMRI team colleagues (Department of Clinical and Experimental Epilepsy, IoN and the National Society for Epilepsy MRI unit). We have also benefited from collaboration with the physics and methods groups within the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging the department of Medical Physics at UCL and Prof Jeff Hand (Imperial College London, Radiological Sciences Unit).

This work was funded by an MRC program grant G0301067 (PI Louis Lemieux).

David said" ‘I was honoured to be the first recipient of this prize - in particular because it was presented by Sir Peter Mansfield after whom the prize is named after and is a Nobel prize winner for his innovations in MRI. He is also my PhD grandfather as my former PhD supervisor (Prof. Roger Ordidge) was his student 30 years ago!’

Congratulations also go to Rebecca Cleary, Research Psychologist at the National Hospital and MPhil/PhD student in the Department of Clinical and Experimental Epilepsy who has won the 2010 International League Against Epilepsy UK Chapter Gowers' Health Professional Award. Rebecca  will be presenting her winning dissertation entitled "Psychiatric Co-morbidities in Epilepsy – Neglected For Far Too Long?" and collecting her prize at the UK Chapter Annual Scientific Meeting, in Brighton in October.

Rebecca said "I am thrilled to receive this award as it serves to demonstrate that there is interest in this field.  I hope that my ongoing research will make a positive contribution to the lives of people with epilepsy and their families."