People
I joined the team as a Research Assistant in October 2024. After graduating in Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, I completed my MRes in Cognitive Neuroscience course at UCL in 2024. My dissertation explored the antidepressant effects of structured aerobic exercise, focusing on interest-activity symptoms and cognitive effort. Currently, I am examining how mental health symptoms from across disorders are related to brain function and to each other in young people.
I am an MSc Child & Adolescent student at UCL. I am certified in CBT from Oxford University and aspire to work with individuals to better understand and help them through therapy. I am currently an InPatient Supporter (VIPS) at UCL Hospital. Over the past 3 years, I have worked in consulting, psychotherapeutic clinics, hospitals, and research labs, and aim to continue doing the same in the future.
I have been completing a research placement at CANDL as part of my final year in the MSci Psychology and Language Sciences program at UCL. I have been working on a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of school-based interventions targeting depression, anxiety, and internalizing problems. My primary interest lies in exploring ways to improve mental health outcomes for young people.
I joined the team at the end of 2024 to pursue my research project in MSc cognitive neuroscience. My dissertation explores the neural basis of emotion processing in adolescents using using fMRI. I gained a BSc Psychology degree in 2022 before completing an MSc in environmental and social sciences, where I wrote my thesis on ethics and sustainability in technology. I am interested in interdisciplinary collaboration and research that contributes to multi-level understanding of global well-being.
I am completing my dissertation in the team for the Psychological Sciences MSc course. My focus is on technology use and socialising in adolescence and its effect on emotional states. After completing an undergraduate degree in Classics at Durham University, I qualified as a social worker in 2021. I am currently working part-time as a social worker in a Local Authority with young people and am particularly interested in adolescent wellbeing, mental health, and family dynamics.
I am a MSc Psychological Sciences Student who joined the team in 2024. After completing an undergraduate degree in English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford, I spent a year as a teaching assistant at a primary school in London, working particularly with children with learning difficulties. My MSc dissertation is focused on using data collected from movie-watching fMRI to explore the links between emotional processing, learning rates, and mental health symptoms in adolescents.
I joined the team as an Honorary Research Fellow in March 2025. After receiving my bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Lanzhou University, I pursued a PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Xi'an Jiaotong University and began a one-year research visit with the team. My research focuses on applying deep learning methods to model and analyze brain networks in psychiatric disorders such as depression. Currently, I am exploring deep neural network approaches for large-scale multi-site fMRI data, with a particular interest in cross-site individual identification and domain adaptation across sites.
I joined the team in February 2025 as part of a research internship program at Boston University, where I am completing my undergraduate degree in Psychology. I am currently using the available data from the study to assess the interaction between emotion regulation, socioeconomic status, and depression. I am interested in developmental psychology and neuroscience, and hope to continue my education in this field.
Katy is a final year Trainee Clinical Psychologist studying at UCL. With a background working in Child and Adolescents Mental Health Services (CAMHS), she joined the research team in 2023 to complete her doctoral thesis, conducting a systematic review on social learning in anxiety and depression and an empirical study using computational modelling to investigate social evaluation learning in young people with internalising symptoms. Katy has an interest in working with schools to support young peoples mental health.
Heema joined the team in 2025 as part of the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology. She previously completed the MSc in Clinical Mental Health Sciences at UCL and has a background in neuroscience. She has worked as an assistant psychologist in a non-profit organisation supporting children and young people’s mental health, as well as in adult inpatient mental health care. Her research interests include cognitive and emotional processes in psychopathology and the use of computational approaches to inform clinical practice. Her doctoral research explores learning patterns in anxiety and depression.
Collaborators
Isabel Lau completed her MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL under the supervision of Dr. Carlisi and Dr. Michael Moutoussis. Her dissertation focused on computational modelling of social evaluations in depression and anxiety. She then worked as a Research Assistant at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge and is now completing her DPhil at the University of Oxford
Alumni
Rose Eagle-Hull has been volunteering in the team since January 2023 and is now interning part-time as a Research Assistant. After studying French and Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, and working in Paris for 9 years, she completed the MSc psychology conversion course at UCL in 2023. Her MSc dissertation was a meta-analysis on mistrust and borderline personality disorder under the supervision of Peter Fonagy. She is particularly interested in child and adolescent mental health.
Jessica Norman has been a Research Assistant within the group since December 2022. Her undergraduate degree was in Biological Sciences at the University of Oxford. She then worked as a mental health support worker for 9 months, before beginning an MSc psychology conversion course at UCL. She completed her MSc dissertation on individual differences in facial emotion processing in adolescence, under Christina’s supervision. She also spent 5 months working as a research assistant in the UCL Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit before joining CANDL. Jess is now a PhD student and RA in the AIM lab at UCL with Prof Argyris Stringaris and Dr Georgina Krebs.
Jess Hughes-Nind joined the team as a Research Assistant in August 2023. After completing an undergraduate degree in Modern Languages from the University of Cambridge, she spent 5 years working at a not-for-profit in London to develop and scale solutions to complex social issues with local and central governments in the UK and internationally, focusing on children and young people's mental health and online harms. She completed the MSc Psychological Sciences course at UCL in 2022. Her dissertation explored whether different motivations for using social media are associated with differences in wellbeing and academic outcomes amongst undergraduate students. Jess is now a clinical psychology trainee at the University of Oxford.
Thomas Reed has been interning part-time as a Research Assistant since autumn 2023. A former student on the MSc Psychological Sciences course, he is interested in using computational techniques to understand the cognitive mechanisms underpinning mental health problems. His prior background is in History and tech policy.
James Ursell (MSc Psychological Sciences)
Eve Webber (UCL DClinPsy)
Manveer Sadhra (MSc Psychological Sciences)
Kamilla Pawlowska (MRes Brain Sciences)
Alice Zacharia (UCL DClinPsy)
Eilidh Smith (UCL DClinPsy)
Jennifer Fielder (BAP Summer Intern)
Jack Gilgunn (UCL DClinPsy)