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About the ECN Forum

The ECN Forum was established in late 2010, with the aim of identifying and engaging more actively with early career neuroscientists from across the UCL Neuroscience Domain. The ECN Forum is supported, administratively and financially, by the UCL Neuroscience Domain Steering Group and its establishments is specifically aligned to the domains key strategic goal to Educate, develop, recruit and retain outstanding neuroscientists trained in multiple disciplines.

The ECN Forum encourages interaction and mentoring by organising career-advice seminars and grant writing workshops. A networking event follows all activities to encourage greater interaction between speakers, delegates and committee members. Although, the initial focus was on postdocs and junior PIs, the Forum also recently hosted a PhD specific event, and now welcomes PhD students to all events. Past seminars/workshops have included Applying for Fellowships, Improve your Grant/Fellowship Writing Skills, Grant writing workshops, Starting up and Independent Career, What can UCL do for you?, How to prepare for Grants, Fellowship and Job Interviews, What to do after you get your PhD? and Alternative Careers for Scientists.

ECN Committee Members

	Rachael Pearson UCL Institute of Ophthalmology ECN Committee Chair Email Profile	Rachael Pearson completed her PhD in developmental neuroscience in 2003 in the Department of Physiology (now part of NPP), UCL. As is often the way, Rachael's research really got going in the last few months of her PhD so she stayed for a further year and a half as a post-doc, before moving to the Institute of Child Health for 2 years. She is now in her 5th year a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, where she is investigating the potential for repairing the degenerate retina by photoreceptor transplantation. Rachael's work is funded by the MRC, the Wellcome Trust, the BBSRC and British Retinitis Pigmentosa Society.
	Lorenzo Fabrizi Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology Email Profile	Dr Lorenzo Fabrizi is currently employed as a postdoctoral research scientist in the department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology at University College London in Professor Fitzgerald’s group. In 2012, Lorenzo was awarded the UCL Early Career Neuroscience prize for his work on the development of nociception in human premature infants. He graduated in Biomedical Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano University and in 2008 completed his PhD in Medical Physics and Bioengineering at UCL under the supervision of Professor Holder. His research interest lies in the analysis of bioelectrical signals and functional neuroimages, with a particular application focus on the maturation of human brain functions and the emergence of sensory discrimination.
	Jonas Hauser Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience Email	Jonas Hauser studied biology in the University of Lausanne, during which he focused on neurosciences and performed a year of research on the impact of thyroid hormone on peripheral nerve regeneration in the University Hospital of Lausanne. Jonas then did his PhD in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) on the long-term effects of prenatal dexamethasone in rodents and primates. From 2007 to 2009, he worked as postdoctorat collaborator in the Laboratory of Behavioural Neuroscience ETHZ on the impact of viral mediated glycinergic mediated sensitization of hippocampal NMDA receptors in learning and memory function. To further elucidate the function of memory, Jonas moved to the field of in vivo electrophysiology in the laboratory of Dr. Cacucci in UCL. There he is establishing simultaneous optogenetic inactivation and in vivo electrophysiological recordings in rats.
	Tassos Georgiadis UCL Institute of Ophthalmology Email Profile	Tassos Georgiadis started his career with a BSc in Genetics from Queen Mary University and an MSc in Human Molecular Genetics from Imperial College University. He continued his study on molecular genetics and gene therapy with a PhD focusing on virally-mediated RNA interference in the retina. He has been working in gene therapy research for more than a decade particularly on viral gene therapy for the treatment of retinal degeneration. He is currently concentrating on the use of AAV or lentiviral vectors as RNA interference mediators for allele-specific and allele non-specific knockdown of dominant gene mutations in the retina causing retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration. He’s also working on other projects studying the miRNA transcriptome in the retina as well as  optimising AAV clinical trial vectors for treating patients with Leber’s congenital amaurosis.
	Sandrine Geranton Cell and Developmental Biology Email Profile	Sandrine Géranton studied organic chemisty and biochemistry at the “Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Montpellier” in France. She first came to the UK as an Erasmus student and obtained an MSc in biotechnologies at the University of the West of England. After a short visit to the Complutense University in Madrid, Spain, where she acquired basic molecular techniques, Sandrine joined UCL where she carried out a PhD in the then department of Pharmacology (supervised by Dr. Clare Stanford; awarded in 2003). Then she went on learning about pain mechanisms with Pr. Stephen Hunt (CDB) as a post-doctoral researcher. Sandrine is currently the recipient of a New Investigator Research Grant (NIRG) from the MRC that she uses to investigate the role of epigenetic mechanisms in the development of chronic pain states.
	Hannah Levis UCL Institute of Ophthalmology Email Profile Website Twitter @DrHJLevis	Hannah Levis started her scientific career with a BSc in Neuroscience at the University of Nottingham, which included a one-year lab project at the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Melbourne University, Australia. She then continued her study at the University of Nottingham with a PhD focusing on neural stem cells of the cerebellum. During her PhD she was awarded a grant that enabled her to spend 6 months learning new stem techniques at the Wallenberg Neuroscience Center, Lund University, Sweden. Following her PhD she took up a short post-doctoral research associate position studying retinal stem cells at the Gavin Herbert Eye Institute University of California, Irine, USA, her first foray into the world of eye research. In 2009 she joined the Cells for Sight Transplantation and Research Programme at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, headed by Professor Julie Daniels. She completed a 3-year Technology Strategy Board funded post-doctoral research associate position at the end of 2011 and has another 3 years of funding to continue her research at IoO focussed on tissue engineering the cornea.
	Patrick Lewis UCL Institute of Neurology Email Profile	Patrick Lewis studied biochemistry at the University of Manchester, during which he conducted a year of research at the Mayo Clinic in Florida. Here he investigated cellular dysfunction linked to mutations in the amyloid precursor protein and presenilin 1 associated with familial Alzheimer's disease. Patrick then moved to the MRC Prion Unit at UCL, where he carried out graduate studies into the molecular mechanisms of scrapie gaining his PhD in 2005. From 2005 to 2007, Patrick  was a visiting fellow in the Laboratory of Neurogenetics at the National Institute of Aging in Bethesda, mentored by Mark Cookson. It was here that he first started working on LRRK2, a protein which has been the object of his affections ever since. He returned to UCL in 2007 as a Brain Research Trust senior research fellow in the Department of Molecular Neuroscience and has continued his research into the basis of Parkinson's disease linked to mutations in LRRK2. Patrick is currently a Parkinson's UK research fellow.
	Tobias Nolte Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology Email	Tobias Nolte, MD studied medicine in Göttingen, Germany and obtained an MSc in Psychodynamic Developmental Neuroscience from UCL in a combined program with the Yale Child Study Center, funded by the DAAD. He is currently working as a Clinical Research Fellow in Read Montague’s Computational Psychiatry group at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL and as Senior Researcher at The Anna Freud Centre, London.
	Mala Shah UCL School of Pharmacy Email Profile	Mala Shah completed a Ph.D. at the Department of Pharmacology (UCL) and then obtained a Wellcome Trust International Prize Travelling Research Fellowship (WTIPTRF) to work in Prof. D. Johnston's laboratory (Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, USA). She returned to the Department of Pharmacology (UCL) as a Senior Research Fellow funded by the WTIPTRF and went on to obtain an Epilepsy Research Foundation project grant and an MRC New Investigator Award. Mala subsequently received a lectureship at UCL School of Pharmacy where she is currently a Reader in Neuroscience.  The primary focus of her research group is to better understand the role of voltage-gated ion channels in particular neuronal compartments (axons, dendrites, soma and synaptic terminals) on neuronal excitability. The group is currently funded by research grants from the European Research Council, the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society.
	Nikolina Skandali UCL Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging Email	Dr Nikolina Skandali obtained her MSc degree in Clinical Neuroscience from the Institute of Neurology in University College London in 2012. She completed her undergraduate medical studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, where in parallel she worked as a research assistant in the Laboratories of Pharmacology and Physiology. She is currently employed as a clinical research associate at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging in Professor Dolan's group.