People

Current team

Susie has extensive experience in driving translational research from concept to clinical adoption across a range of modalities and disease areas. This includes early-stage target identification and validation in neurological and rare diseases as a senior scientist at GSK, clinical delivery of medical devices and advanced therapies in oncology and haematology as a Clinical research and trial manager in both industry and non-commercial trials, and academic translation of health and life science innovations—from digital health and medtech to small molecules, biologics, and beyond.

Contact Susie to:

• Explore whether your science has unmapped translational opportunities. This applies to any neurological disease, in any area of neuroscience and modality-agnostic: advanced therapies (gene and cell therapy), biologics (antibodies, ASOS, RNAi…), devices (apps, biomarkers, software development, assays...), drug repurposing, small molecules, regenerative medicine (biomaterials)
• Understand where your research sits along the translational path and what to do to progress to the next phase(s)
• Identify funding opportunities via grant applications or with commercial partners (in collaboration with the UCL Translational Research Office)
• Protect your ideas by filing a patent or understanding licensing opportunities (with UCL tech transfer office “UCLBusiness”)
• Consider forming a spin-out company to accelerate innovation (with UCL Tech Fund)
• Facilitate the communication with key stakeholders for observational or clinical trials (with the Joint Research Office and Research Services)
• Explore careers outside academia

• Donate to Queen Square Institute of Neurology.

   

Professor Dimitri Kullmann, Deputy Director Enterprise, Translation & Advanced Therapeutics

d.kullmann@ucl.ac.uk  

Dimitri Kullmann is a Professor of Neurology at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, in the Research Department for Clinical and Experimental Epilepsy. He studied medicine in Oxford and London, and completed a DPhil in Oxford.

Following postdoctoral research in San Francisco, he established a laboratory at the Institute of Neurology and completed his neurology training at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, where he continues to practise.

His research interests include the fundamental mechanisms of synaptic transmission, neurological channelopathies and gene therapy for epilepsy.

Together with colleagues at UCL he recently co-founded a spinout company that aims to bring gene therapy to the clinic. He was previously the Editor-in-Chief of the neurology journal Brain, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

As Deputy Director for Enterprise, Translation and Advanced Therapies, he is working with Dr Susie Maier to facilitate the translation of discoveries made by researchers at the Institute of Neurology for patient benefit. 

Previous team members

Dr Eleonora Lugarà, Senior Translational Research Manager 

e.lugara@ucl.ac.uk, 

Teams: +44 (0) 20 3108 9108

Eleonora obtained her PhD in Neuroscience from UCL, where she carried out research on both basic science and gene therapies for epilepsy. She is a co-leader investigator in the VIBES clinical study funded by ERUK in collaboration with Imperial College London to detect biomarkers of seizures. Before re-joining UCL, Eleonora worked for UCB pharma company in gene therapy development and early phase drug discovery where she was part of the epilepsy team.

Together with Professor Dimitri Kullmann (Deputy Director for Enterprise, Translation and Advanced Therapies), Eleonora facilitated the activities around translational research for all investigators at the Institute of Neurology.

Internship position: Dr Joanna Bartkiewicz

Joanna is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Queen Square Institute of Neurology at the Department of Clinical and Experimental Epilepsy, Neuropathology. Currently, she mainly works on immunohistochemistry and spatial transcriptomics. Joanna obtained her PhD in Clinical Neuroscience at Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences at Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich Germany, where she developed a diagnostic method using Diffusion Tensor Imaging.  As part of the UCL Discipline Hopping Scheme, Joanna worked under the mentorship of Eleonora Lugara' at the Translation and Enterprise Group, evaluating the translational potential of new projects and supporting business development activities.