I think this year marks my 10 year anniversary of attending these Research Retreats, and I’m still impressed at the breadth and depth of work on display here. It is especially exciting to see students present their own work here and get the opportunity to discuss in depth with experts in their fields in this small and intimate setting. And this year our table even one the quiz!
ARIA award - Ultrasound-targeted On-demand Cell-autonomous Gene Therapy for Neurological Diseases /
I’m excited to announce that we are about to start an exciting 4-year research programme, funded by ARIA, on a novel minimally invasive gene therapy approach to regulating brain states. Our work will focus on identifying, characterising and altering brain states in diverse models of neurological and psychiatric disorders. This is especially exciting, as I get to collaborate with some of the most exciting research developments currently in translational epilepsy - here’s to an exciting ride!
BPNA Research Committee and 2025 Annual Conference /
Now that I’m back in the UK, it feels great to reconnect with some of the people shaping the clinical care for and research on paediatric epilepsy here. I’ve recently joined the Research Committee of the British Paedaitric Neurology Association (BPNA), and am looking forward to playing a small role in shaping their future conferences and academic strategy. This was also a great opportunity to reconnect with old paediatric neurology friends at the Annual Conference in Oxford this year
AES 2024 winter sun in Los Angeles /
AES is slowly turning into one of my favourite conferences. It is big enough to cover a range of topics and is always a great opportunity to link up with friends old and new from basic and more translational epilepsy research. And it helps of course that they have accepted us for an investigator workshop for a second time - this time on Modelling in Epilepsy, with some fantastic talks and a full house of attendees!
And another one crosses the finish line /
So pleased to have an excellent team of examiners spend time with Jack and hear about his exciting work! Congratulations on finishing your PhD - here’s to exciting next endeavours!
Enabling Technologies with the Epilepsy Research Institute /
I’m thrilled to be part of a the leadership team for the Enabling Technologies theme with the Epilepsy Research Institute UK. This is an opportunity to maximise the use and utility of novel and emerging technologies for the benefit of patients and the epilepsy research community, and I could not be more thrilled to be involved. If you want to contribute - do get in touch!
AES 2023 in Orlando /
What a great reason to escape the winter cold - AES in Orlando was a blast! Had a nice time talking about our work on modelling transitions into and out of seizure states in paediatric patients in status epilepticus under different treatments. And saw some manatees!
SfN 2023 /
We were well represented at SfN this year, with Ulrich and Jack both presenting some of their PhD work, and Dynamic Brains alumnus Dom presenting at a nano-symposium on his new exciting postdoc endeavors.
New Action Medical Research funded project /
We are all very excited to have been awarded funding from Action Medical Research to develop and investigate zebrafish models of B6-dependent epilepsies, a potentially devastating early onset epilepsy. This is a collaboration with the great zebrafish crew at UCL, and could lead to identifying new treatment strategies.
Congrats Aswin on his PhD /
Huge congratulations ot the newly minted Dr (well Mr. Dr. Dr. - what does a surgeon-scientist go by?) Chari! Flew threw his viva with flying colours and is now out in the world as a real leader in theb epilepsy research community. Congrats!
Making waves at AES 2022 /
It’s been such a blast bringing together a bunch of zebrafish researchers and discuss allm things epilepsy research at our investigator workship at AES. Really grateful for the kind reception and fruitful discussion, and excited about what the future holds for the field.
Like a fish out of water? /
So exciting to have a whole nanosymposium dedicated to ‘acquatic’ models of neuro/psychiatric disorders at SfN 2022 - some exciting work represented here ranging from xenopus larvae to our very own zebrafish.
Dynamic Brains at the BSCN annual meeting /
The British Society for Clinical Neurophysiology invited Ulrich to talk about his work on modelling intracranial dynamics using receptor density distributions - a big chunk of his PhD work. Thanks for the invitation and the great questions!
Dr Burrows in the house /
Huge congratulations Dominic, who hast just finished his PhD with a bang! The examiners were truly impressed, as were we all - and excited to hear about what the newly minted Dr Burrows gets up to next!
P.S. If you are curious what the book is that seemed the obvious gift choice for the occasion, check it out.
Northern explorations /
What a fantastic meeting - it was a total joy participating at the Trondheim Fish Imaging meeting and hearing all things zebrafish (and some other species too!) from such a diverse and exciting group of researchers. Had an absolute blast and am really looking forward to hearing what everyone will get up to in the years to come!
And as a plus - I also got to see Björk live in concert!
Neuromatch Academy 2020 /
Never would I have imagined that the prospect of several weeks solidly spent on zoom would look in any way appealing, but 2020 really teaches you something! I’m really happy to play a minor role in the massive machine that is Neuromatch academy: for 3 weeks, 2000+ students will work through in-depth tutorials, teaching them various computational neuroscience methods. And what’s even better - the whole material will be accessible online, for free! Such exciting times where a field comes together to reduce the barriers for people to engage with some of the most fascinating questions in neuroscience!
The Young Epilepsy paediatric epilepsy research retreat /
This is the first year that we have joint the annual paediatric epilepsy research retreat after l have left UCL. Dom Burrows did a fantastic job in introducing the interdisciplinary crowd of clinicians and researchers to zebrafish models of epilepsy and what they can do - and boy did he get a reception. Believe it or not, several limericks where penned in celebration of zebrafish during the two day retreat! We will definitely be back!
Ronnie MacKeith Prize Lecture in Belfast /
I always thought the list of previous prize winners of the Ronnie MacKeith prize read like the who-is-who in academic paediatric neurologists in the UK. I can’t even express what an honour it was, to be added to this list and present some of the work on childhood epilepsies that I have been involved with. This was also an opportunity to think back and consider all the people that have helped me along the way - which is how this slide came to be. Definitely one of my favourite slides to make to date!
Thanks again BPNA for the prize and the opportunity to present in this fantastic setting in Belfast!
Ronnie MacKeith Lecture - just announced! /
It’s fair to say I’m very chuffed with these news! Just heard that I’ll be joining an impressive (intimidating?) list of UK child neurologists (https://bpna.org.uk/?page=mackeith-prize-lecturers) that have been received the Ronnie MacKeith prize. That’s because the BPNA just invited me to give the prize lecture at next January’s British Paediatric Neurology Association’s Annual Meeting. Very excited to say the least - and for those of you interested in new approaches to understanding childhood epilepsy, you should come and join us in Belfast early in the new year!
Putting the Dynamics in my Dynamic Poster in Chicago at SfN /
For the second time, I had the opportunity to present a dynamic poster at SfN - this means you get a screen that’s about poster-size and can use that to display your poster, but this time with some dynamic content. I usually put some videos, but also use the opportunity to have some fun with R Shiny Apps to make interactive graphs.
You can see what this looks like in the wild here: https://dafishcode.github.io/SfN19/ (note that I haven’t particularly tested this very well and it mainly works in fullscreen Safari, somehow Chrome is really bed with the video embeddings). You can also see the actual code used to make this on github here: https://github.com/dafishcode/SfN19