Principal Investigator
Dr Christian Lambert
christian [dot] lambert [at] ucl.ac.uk
Christian Lambert leads the Anatomical Phenomics group at the Functional Imaging Laboratory (FIL) in the Department of Imaging Neuroscience UCL. He is also a Consultant Neurologist specialising in movement disorders at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (NHNN), and a member of the Queen Square Institute of Neurology Movement Disorders Centre (QSIoN-MDC).
His research focuses on developing advanced computational techniques to map and study brain microstructure in vivo, and then applying these methods to study neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s. Through this work, he is a member of the FIL Methods group and Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM) development team. He has technical expertise across a wide range of methods including quantitaive MRI, deep phenotyping, computational anatomy, data clustering, machine learning and big data, coupled with clinical expertise in movement disorders and neurodegeneration.
His clinical practice includes a specialist movement disorders clinic that covers a wide range of conditions including Parkinsonian syndromes, dystonia, tremor, tics, chorea, gait abnormalities, functional neurological disorders (simple and complex, including non-epileptic attack disorders) and rare/genetic conditions, in addition to a regular general neurology clinic and acute neurology on-call which encompasses the wider spectrum of general neurology. He is also a member of the Rare Movement Disorders specialist group (part of NHS England Rare disease collaborative network).
Group members (current):
Affiliated Principal Investigators:
- Amit Batla: Dr Batla is a Consultant Neurologist specialising in movement disorders who has joined the lab as part of a MRC clinical academic research partnership. The focus of his work is trying to understand and disentangle the heterogeneity in essential tremor syndrome.
Postdoctoral Research Associates:
- Herberto Dhanis:
- Arthur Mitchell: Arthur is a Research Fellow studying Parkinson’s Disease (PD), based between the Functional Imaging Laboratory (FIL) within the Imaging Neuroscience department at UCL and the Neurodegeneration Biology Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute, supervised by Chris Lambert and Sonia Gandhi respectively. Before joining he worked as a AI Data Scientist at the National Institue of Agricultural Biology (NIAB) and completed his PhD in modelling airway surface liquid control in cystic fibrosis as part of the COMPLEX group at UCL.
Arthur’s research in the qMAPLab focuses on multiscale modelling of PD from organelle to anatomical levels using advanced statistical modelling techniques. In collaboration with clinicians and laboratory scientists Arthur uses Dynamic Causal Modelling and deep learning to discover how our cells and anatomy change with PD. Arthur is also part of the methods group, SPM Python development team, and the sustainability committee at the FIL
PhD Students (primary supervisor):
- Charlotte Dore:
- Hans Odd:
- Quin Massey
PhD Students (Secondary supervisor):
- Daniel Tchemerinska Konieczny
- Campo Cosimoy
- Yasmin Feuozi-Akhtiary
- Flavia Massey
- Klara Bas
Students:
- Meera Madhavan
Alumni:
PhD Students (primary supervisor):
- Francesca Ferriera: Francesca is a Neurosurgical resident who completed her PhD in 2023 entitled “Advanced computational anatomy approaches to understanding outcome variability in Functional Neurosurgery”. She is currently a NIGH clinical lecturer at the University of Cambridge.
Research Assistants:
- Nicola Smith
- Gabrielle Sheehan
Clinical Fellows:
- Leonidas Nihoyannopoulos: Leo was a UCLH Data Science Levy Clinical Fellow, whose project focused on using the electronic health records to better capture non-motor symptoms in Parkinson’s. He is currently in the North London specialist training programme in psychiatry.
Students (UCL):
- Tessa du Toit: Tessa joined the lab for her MSc Clinical Neuroscience research project, focused on using accelerometers to quantify sleep disturbance in Parkinson’s. She secured a follow-on research associate position working on the GP2 project with Professor Huw Morris.
- Alexandre Chkheidze: Alexandre completed his MSc research project using accelerometers to quantify sleep disturbance in REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder.
- Beth Bacasnot: Beth completed her MSc research project that used metaphenomic annotation to look at the Parkinson’s phenotype in clinicopathologically confirmed Alzheimer’s disease.
- Henry Bush: Henry completed his MSc research project using metaphenomic annotation using natural history Parkinson’s cohorts. He is now on a graduate medical degree
- Kim Staubli: Kim completed her MSc research project analysing the “cats and dogs” task in the baseline qMAP cohort and looking at the associated structural correlates. She is currently undertaking a PhD with Prof Mariya Moosajee and Dr Dekker at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology.
- Xiyu Feng: Xiyu completed her MSc research project analysing the walking task using accelerometer in the baseline qMAP cohort and looking at the associated structural correlates on MRI.
- Sara Joeghan: Sara completed her MSc research project looking at the face emotion task in the baseline qMAP cohort and looking at the associated structural correlates on MRI.
- Quin Massey: Quin completed her MSc research project using metaphenomic annotation in clinicopathological Parkinson’s cohorts. She joined the anatomical phenomics lab to continue researching early-stage Parkinson’s.
- Simona Jasaityte: Simona completed her MSc research project analyse bradykinesia in early-stage Parkinson’s using the baseline qMAP-PD cohort. She secured a follow-on research associate position working on the GP2 project with Professor Huw Morris.
- Obuaya Onyekachuwu: Obuaya completed her UCL research project analyse tremor in early-stage Parkinson’s using the baseline qMAP-PD cohort. She went on to study Translational Neuroscience in Edinburgh.
- Teodros Truneh: Teodros was a medical resident who completed his MSc in AI research project looking at feature selection using support vector machines in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
Students (St George’s University of London):
- Ghayda Javed
- Ahmed Abbass
- Zaynah Ahmed
- Kassem Shawki
- Chloe Tickner
- Neha Kallam
- Andrew Sahote
- Amir-Humza Suleman
- Jordan Colman
- Yamin Zarolia
- Annette Archie-Acheampong
- Gloria Onwuneme
- James Lloyd Forrester
- Henry Simon
- Janakan Sam Narean
Collaborators:
Collaborating Studies/Consortium:
UCL
Dr Martina Callaghan
Mr Harith Akram
Professor Ludvic Zrinzo
St George’s University of London
Thomas Barrick
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
LREN, Lausanne
[Note: still under construction]