The Team

Professor Cathy Price
Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow & Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience 
PLORAS Chief Investigator 

Cathy is an expert in the neuroanatomy of language processing in healthy and neurologically impaired patients.

Rachel Bruce 
PLORAS Deputy Lead / Clinical Translation Manager

Rachel works with the Chief Investigator to ensure successful management of the project. She manages the Patient Team, who undertake participant recruitment, neuropsychological and neuroimaging data collection/processing/analysis, engagement and clinical collaboration. She is also responsible for ongoing work towards translating the project for clinical implementation. 

Rachel has an MSc in Speech and Language Therapy and a BA(Hons) in English Language. She has worked clinically as a specialist speech and language therapist, with experience in stroke rehabilitation and neurosciences. 

Dr Tom Hope 
Senior Research Fellow

Dr Tae Twomey
fMRI Data Analysis Manager 

Tae oversees the integrity of the fMRI database. As well as running fMRI data analyses, she is responsible for creating an analysis pipeline, supervising and quality controlling all ongoing fMRI data analyses. 

Professor David Green
Emeritus Professor in Experimental Psychology, UCL

David is a long-term collaborator with expertise in the neural bases of language control and representation in speakers of more than one language.

Professor Howard Bowman

Howard contributes on the methods side to the PLORAS project. He has expertise on statistical methods and machine learning applied to neuroimaging data. He is particularly interested to make the classifications and predictions arising from machine learning more transparent to carers, clinicians and patients. 

Howard’s appointments straddle psychology, computer science and neuroscience, reflecting his research interests.

Shamima Khan
Recruitment & Imaging Data Collection Manager 

Shamima manages recruitment processes and approvals for the study. She is responsible for coordinating our NHS study sites, ensuring ethical research standards are met, information governance and maintaining study documentation. She also leads the collection of functional MRI scan data, which involves accompanying volunteers throughout their scan and processing the data.

Shamima has a BSc (Hons) in Psychology and a background working in mental health. She is also a qualified user of the MRI scanning facilities at our research centre.

Hayley Woodgate
Behavioural Data Collection Manager

Hayley is responsible for coordinating neuropsychological and demographic participant data collection (e.g. Patient-Reported Outcome Measures, formal language assessments, patient questionnaires). She manages a small team of speech and language therapists collecting behavioural data. In addition, she is involved in the development and testing of language assessments, including online versions. 

Hayley qualified as a speech and language therapist in 2011. She has worked clinically in both paediatric and adult services and has extensive experience working with people with aphasia.

Sophie Roberts
Research Assistant

Sophie is involved in behavioural data collection and analysis. She also develops projects questionnaires and testing materials, and coordinates collaborations between the PLORAS study and other research projects. Sophie is also completing her PhD within the Language Group. Her research focuses on understanding how speech and language therapy influences language recovery in the context of other individual patient factors.

Sophie completed a BA in Modern Languages and Linguistics before qualifying as a speech and language therapist.

Kate Ledingham
Research Assistant

Storm Anderson
Research Assistant

Storm is responsible for processing and analysing hospital CT and MRI brain scans, administering language assessments, and assisting with fMRI scans at our research centre.

As a speech and language therapist, Storm has predominately treated adults affected by stroke and other acquired brain injury in the acute hospital and community settings. Storm has completed her BSc in Speech Language Pathology and MSc in Stroke Medicine, and is currently undertaking her PhD at UCL using the PLORAS data set.

Sophie Clark
Research Assistant

Sophie works in the Patient Team and assists with collecting self-report data from stroke survivors about their language. She also assists with a range of PLORAS projects. Sophie’s main area of expertise is in Communication Partner Training. 

Sophie has an MSpeechPath in Speech Pathology and a BA in Linguistics from the University of Melbourne. She has worked clinically as a neurological rehabilitation Speech Pathologist in hospital and community settings. Sophie is a Certified Trainer of Supported Conversations with Adults with Aphasia(TM).

Danielle Trout
Research Assistant

Danielle is responsible for the recruitment aspects of the study which involves processing participant information, collecting scan data and liaising with health professionals/research practitioners. As a point of contact for our research network, Danielle also deals with general queries from NHS sites and assists with administrative duties.  

Danielle is a qualified Psychotherapist with a BSc in Counselling Psychology and an MSc in Psychological Therapies.

Douglas Neville
Research Assistant

Douglas assists in the collection of (functional) research and (structural) clinical imaging data as well as developing techniques of brain image analysis and overseeing lesion segmentations. His current research focuses on the heterogeneity of lesions responsible for selective repetition impairments.

Douglas has a BSc in Psychology, an MSc in Clinical Neuroscience, and has previously worked in neurorehabilitation as a support worker and honorary assistant psychologist. 

Ruben Lourenço Pereira
Research Assistant

Ruben assists in the processing of clinical scans, using both manual and semi-automated tools to create lesion segmentations to be used in data analysis. Ruben is also working towards a fully-automated system able to process scans from start to finish, using the integration of software and AI tools.

Ruben has a BEng in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering and previously worked at an AI start-up that focused on speech transcription and image processing.