Organisers

Anushka Irani recently joined Mayo Clinic Florida as a Senior Associate Consultant in Rheumatology, and is passionate about translating her clinical and research expertise in chronic pain to achieve novel evidence-based treatment approaches resulting in improved patient care. Her aim is to develop a comprehensive multi-modal quantitative pain assessment profile, including data from wearable devices and neuroimaging, which will inform and aid the delivery of individualised treatments for a range of patients living with chronic pain. 

During her DPhil, at the University of Oxford, she established an observational cohort study of patients with knee osteoarthritis incorporating neuroimaging, quantitative sensory testing and questionnaire-based assessment. Her post-doctoral fellowship enabled her to extend this work to include additional patient cohorts and objective measures of sleep and physical activity, such as actigraphy.

Eoin Kelleher is an anaesthesiologist and researcher who is presently pursuing his PhD with Professor Irene Tracey's P.A.I.N. group at the University of Oxford. Funded by an NIHR Doctoral Research Fellowship, his research explores the intersection of chronic pain and cognition, using advanced epidemiological and neuroimaging methodologies. His project focuses on understanding cognitive difficulties in people with fibromyalgia and trialling digital cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia as a potential treatment, using neuroimaging to shed light on the underlying mechanisms.

Katja Wiech is an Associate Professor at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford with an interest in the influence of beliefs on the perception and neural processing of pain. Her research uses a multi-methods approach combining different non-invasive brain imaging techniques including functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with behavioral and peripheral-physiological measures. 

Her current research aims to characterise the processes that integrates beliefs we hold with incoming sensory information and the failure of optimal integration in biased perception. With her background in Experimental and Clinical Psychology she seeks to translate her basic research into clinical pain to make new insights available to the prevention and treatment of chronic pain.

Sanda van Kruining Kele is a graduate intern at the University of Oxford's Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, researching neuropathic pain under Prof. Bennett. Simultaneously, she is pursuing a Research Masters in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience at Maastricht University, the Netherlands, specializing in Drug Development and Neurohealth. Sanda is actively engaged in characterizing a novel TRPA1 channel mutant associated with neuropathic pain, with an interest in its potential clinical implications. Her work is driven by a commitment to advancing the understanding and treatment of neuropathic pain, aiming to translate research findings into tangible benefits for patients. 

Sanda continues to embody the ethos of her former mentors, recognizing the transformative power of collaboration: 'When great people come together, great things can happen’, so do not hesitate to reach out and connect!

Dr Carinne Piekema is the Engagement Manager at the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN). She provides strategic direction for WIN's extensive programme of engaged research. Alongside a busy central programme of activities, she and Hanna also support individual researchers with their engagement needs. They support Public, Patient, and Policy Engagement and Involvement: anything from strategic planning of activities, events, and grants to brainstorming engagement with research, relationship building with stakeholders, planning and running events, providing evaluation support, writing contracts for collaborations, writing grant proposals, and much more. 

Dr Hanna Smyth is the Engagement Officer at the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN). Hanna co-coordinates WIN's central engagement activities programme and helps manage the 70+ individual engagement support requests that she and Carinne receive each year from WIN researchers. With a background in museums, she specialises in heritage partnerships. She also co-chairs the University's s Public Engagement Facilitator Network, which brings together 100+ public engagement staff from across every Division of the University. 

David Bennett is Professor of neurology and neurobiology at the University of Oxford and consultant neurologist at Oxford University Hospitals in the UK. He is head of the Division of Clinical Neurology at the University of Oxford and a senior research fellow of Green Templeton College. His research focus is to understand the pathogenesis of neural injury and neuropathic pain and ultimately improve the clinical management of this debilitating condition. He takes a translational approach ranging from cell based models to human psychophysics and clinical cohorts. He administers a specialist neuropathic pain clinic based at Oxford University hospitals. He has led the identification of novel clinical neuropathies and inherited pain channelopathies. He leads major international and national consortia including DOLORisk and PAINSTORM investigating risk factors and determinants of neuropathic pain. 

David received the PD Wall medal from the Royal College of Anaesthetists in 2016 and became an honorary Skou professor of Aarhus University in 2019. He was appointed to Fellowship if the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2020 for excellence in pain research.

Ben Seymour is a Wellcome Senior Clinical Fellow at Oxford University, working jointly at the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging and the Oxford Institute for Biomedical Engineering; and a visiting researcher at ATR labs (Kyoto). He is a Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute with an interest in safe AI control systems. Ben is also an honorary consultant neurologist at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust with an interest in behavioural homeostasis and sleep, pain and fatigue neurology.

Ben's lab addresses the computational and systems neuroscience of pain. This research is part theoretical: building realistic models of neuronal information processes to understand processes of pain perception and behaviour, and part experimental: testing these theories using a range of experimental methodologies, especially fMRI. His research aims to develop new technology-based therapies for treating pain in clinical populations.