Congratulations on staff promotions
August 2020: Many congratulations to Sue Fletcher-Watson, Richard Chin, Will Whiteley, Paul Brennan, Heather Whalley, Rachael Wood and Szu-Han Wang who have all received academic promotions.
Professor Sue Fletcher-Watson
Sue Fletcher-Watson has been promoted to Professor of Developmental Psychology.
Sue is the Director of the Salvesen Mindroom Research Centre. She studies how children grow and learn, with a particular focus on non-normative experiences, such as autism and preterm birth. Her work aims to apply rigorous methods from psychology to questions with clinical, educational and societal impact. She strives to achieve meaningful partnerships with community representatives and to support neurodivergent leadership in research. She is an advocate for open science and good citizenship in research.
DART website (Development Autism Research Technology)
Salvesen Mindroom Research Centre
Professor Richard Chin
Richard Chin, an associate member of CCBS, has been promoted to Professor of Paediatric Neurology & Clinical Epidemiology.
Richard is a clinical paediatric neurologist with a particular interest in childhood onset epilepsy. His research aims to identify the causes and risk factors for epilepsy, develop better treatments, and to improve the quality of life of children and their families affected by epilepsy. He is an Honorary Consultant Pediatric Neurologist and Director of the Muir Maxwell Epilepsy Centre
Dr Paul Brennan
Paul Brennan has been promoted to Reader.
Paul's research spans the laboratory and the clinic, combining molecular, epidemiology and clinical investigation to guide rationale innovation to improve patient care. He applies this strategy to improving diagnosis, treatment and outcomes for people with brain tumours, and traumatic brain or spinal injuries. As founder of University of Edinburgh spin-out, eoSurgical Ltd, he has also led innovation in surgical simulation training around the world. Paul is an Honorary Consultant Neurosurgeon.
Dr Heather Whalley
Heather Whalley has been promoted to Reader.
Heather's main area of research interest is to link neuroimaging techniques with underlying biology in a bottom-up approach in order to better understand debilitating neuropsychiatric disorders, particularly in adolescence. Her research therefore focuses on how causal risk factors contribute to disease in terms of their impact on brain structure and function.
Dr William Whiteley
Will Whiteley has been promoted to Reader.
Will's work seeks to elucidate the mechanisms for prevention of disability due to stroke and dementia through the design, delivery and analysis of epidemiological studies and clinical trials. Of particular interest are: the contribution of vascular risk factors to dementia; the very long term follow-up of randomized trials; clinical diagnosis; and the better use of large electronic health record datasets for more efficient clinical trials and cohort studies. He is also an Honorary Consultant Neurologist.
Usher Institute Clinical Natural Language Processing Research Group
Dr Rachael Wood
Rachael Wood has been promoted to Honorary Reader.
Rachael conducts research on child public health, with a particular focus on child development and neurodevelopmental conditions affecting children. Her research often involves the use of routinely available data. Rachael is also a Consultant in Public Health Medicine in Public Health Scotland. Within Public Health Scotland, Dr Wood is responsible for national data on children’s health and director of the national congenital anomaly register (CARDRISS). Her role involves developing national data, overseeing national statistics publications, providing information to support health policy and service development and evaluation, and supporting the use of Public Health Scotland data for research purposes.
Dr Szu-Han Wang
Szu-Han Wang has been promoted to Senior Lecturer.
Szu-Han is passionate about understanding how learning and memory is formed and its underlying brain mechanisms. She investigates how peri-learning events affect memory persistence; how prior experience affects subsequent learning, and how memory consolidation and reconsolidation occur in the brain (focusing on the hippocampus, amygdala, and frontal cortex). An integrated perspective on the learning and memory process has major implication in translating preclinical models to clinical studies and in stimulating treatments for memory-related disorders.