Research Fellows

Shuqing is a Clinical Research Fellow working under the ‘Psychosis’ theme within the Mental Health Mission. Shuqing completed her Master’s at University College London in neuroimaging, followed by her PhD at King’s College London focusing on brain structural changes during the development of psychosis, during which she developed quantitative research methods in psychosis.

Shuqing has been supporting the development and implementation of PsyMetRiC- a cardiometabolic risk prediction model for young people with psychosis, as well as neuroimaging projects in the psychosis theme. She is passionate about using quantitative methods to bridge the gap between research and real-world clinical impact.

I completed Medical graduation and post-graduation in pharmacology. I worked as a clinical research fellow in oncology and now works as a research fellow in mood disorders. I primarily work in Ketamine treatment in drug resistance depression.

My passion is understanding the impact that mental health conditions can have on a person’s overall health and wellbeing of the person . I am passionate about clinical research and medical education, helping to advance the field of psychiatry and improve treatments for mental illness.

Dr de Cates is an NIHR Clinical Lecturer and Psychiatry Registrar currently at the Institute for Mental Health, University of Birmingham. Until February 2024, she was a Guarantors of Brain Postdoctoral Clinical Fellow at the University of Oxford. Her research interests focus on exploring cognition and mood as transdiagnostic and novel psychopharmacological targets in mental illness, including early psychosis. Recent projects include a body of work examining the role of specific serotonin receptor agonists in improving cognition.

Angharad qualified from the University of Oxford, and completed NIHR Academic Foundation and Academic Clinical Fellow posts at the University of Warwick. She then moved to Oxford to complete a Wellcome Trust funded DPhil (working on the first fMRI studies of medications that activate the 5HT4 receptor and how these might be useful for cognition), and subsequently a Guarantors of Brain Clinical Postdoctoral Fellowship.

She has been supervised by Catherine Harmer, Phil Cowen and Susannah Murphy (DoP, Oxford), Thomas Nichols and Anya Topiwala (BDI, Oxford), Matthew Broome and Rachel Upthegrove (Birmingham) and Scott Weich (Sheffield).

She is now completing her psychiatry residency in the West Midlands while continuing her research supported by the NIHR with a Clinical Lectureship.

Camilla is currently a Research Associate at the University of Birmingham, working on the Children and Adolescents Data Resource (CADRE) project under the supervision of Dr Siân Lowri Griffiths. She graduated with a BSc in Psychology and following this graduated with an MSc in Mental Health, both at the University of Birmingham. She has previously worked at the University as a Research Associate on several different projects, within the Institute for Mental Health (IMH) and School of Psychology. These had a particular focus on postpartum mental health, specifically postpartum psychosis, and sleep, as well as sleep in new parents.

Camilla is interested in both youth mental health and postpartum mental health, which developed following her MSc dissertation that investigated maternal postnatal depression and anxiety and risk for mental health disorders in adolescent offspring. This encouraged her to volunteer at The Barberry’s Mother and Baby Unit for several months, where she got to interact with mothers experiencing postpartum mental health disorders. She is also very passionate about improving mental health in young people, either through research, interventions or digital tools.

I have a BSc in Mathematics from University of Warwick (2015) and a GradCert in Statistics from University of Sheffield (2019). I embarked on my career as a secondary school mathematics teacher trainee, only to have been inspired by an online course on Big Data which led me to conclude that a career in data was for me. In 2016, I began working within the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), initially as a Data Inputter and from 2017 as Analytics Officer. Here I gained a broad experience of data analysis, including coding for app and report development, in data science and also the production of research data. I then joined the Department for Education in 2021, after I was successful at a cross-government recruitment round, as a Senior Statistical Data Scientist, badged by the Government Statistical Service. Within this role I was able to develop my skillset further, developing more junior staff, automating processes and leading the agile development of data products. After 18 months in that role, I joined the University of Birmingham as a Senior Data Analyst in 2022, where I developed institutional guidelines for report development and led the development of institutional level reports and materials. I am an experienced user of R, Python, JavaScript, M language (PowerQuery) and Git and of reporting software, such as SSRS and Power BI. I was delighted to join the Mental Health Mission MTC in October 2024 in my role as Senior Research Data Scientist.

I have been working at the University since May 2005, with the main focus of my research being behavioural and psychiatric problems in adults with intellectual disabilities (ID). I have worked on four main projects, one a guideline development project for the use of medication to manage behavioural problems in adults with ID, another was to develop a series of accessible medication information for people with ID, which was an offshoot from the guideline project. I have recently completed a longitudinal explorative project investigating aggressive behaviour in adults with ID and am conducting a qualitative study of the views and experiences of services of adults with intellectual disabilities from Black and minority ethnic communities. I have also recently started an acceptability study of eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing for trauma-related mental health problems in adults with intellectual disabilities.

Connor is a Research Fellow working under the ‘Psychosis’ theme within the Mental Health Mission. Connor completed his undergraduate degree within the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences – with a dissertation focusing on how changes in inflammation may bring about symptoms of psychosis.

Connor has since completed an interdisciplinary Priestley PhD Scholarship, hosted by the Schools of Sport and Exercise Sciences and Psychology at the University of Birmingham, and the Centre for Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne. This PhD project further explored how inflammation might affect the brain of people who experience psychosis, growing ‘brains in a dish’ to gain a better understanding of mental illness on a cellular level. Further, Connor conducted a regular exercise intervention at the University of Birmingham, to see how a clinical trial using structured physical activity may affect inflammation and symptom profiles in a population of young people experiencing psychosis.

Within the Mental Health Mission, Connor aspires to put lived experience at the forefront and co-design trials with people experiencing mental ill-health, for people experiencing mental ill-health. This will provide initial stepping stones towards improving transdiagnostic mental health outcomes and offering better support to those who need it most.

James is a clinical research fellow working in the psychosis stream of the mission, where he is working on clinical study delivery and capacity building. He is also a psychiatrist completing his consultant training in old age psychiatry. His interests are in psychosis and the biological aging process.

I work as a research fellow on the mental health mission, specifically working on difficult-to-treat depression (DTD) research. As part of my role, I am supporting the development of a DTD digital platform. The platform will house a wealth of patient level data to deeply phenotype this population.

I also work on a range of academic projects that explore early life predictors of chronic depression and building tools to better identify DTD patients and thus, better match them to treatments that benefit them. I started this role after completing a post-doctorate position at Public Health Wales where I explored the impact of adverse childhood experience on future health outcomes. I wanted to realign my focus on mental health and specifically mood disorders/depression.  I am interested in investigating the predictors of common mental health disorders and maintenance factors over the life course and how this may vary across groups (minoritised populations, younger populations).