people

Anna Sadnicka is a Consultant Clinical Academic and leads the CMD Lab.

My PhD at University College London (UCL) explored the ‘Role of the Cerebellum in Dystonia’ and I used neurophysiology, robotics and psychophysics to probe this topic from a range of perspectives. My funding was a prestigious Guarantors of Brain Clinical Research Fellowship within the Association of British Neurologists scheme and I was supervised by Mark Edwards and John Rothwell.

I was then awarded a Chadburn Clinical Lectureship at St George’s University of London (SGUL) and completed my clinical neurology training whilst we established the Motor Control and Movement Disorders Group. Working as a Principal Investigator, I continued work exploring mechanism in dystonia and functional neurological disorders. I secured additional project funding from the Royal Society, SGUL and Rosetree Trust.

In 2023, I joined the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit as a Senior Clinical Research Fellow mentored by Maneesh Sahani. A Wellcome Trust Early Career Award has supported this transition and has allowed me to establish the CMD Lab. I am also an Honorary Consultant Neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery where I see patients with hyperkinetic movement disorders in a weekly clinic headed by Tom Warner.

Iván Varela is a research assistant intrigued with the world of computational and mathematical models to unravel the brain’s remarkable abilities and understand how diseases affect them.

My journey in neuroscience began with a BSc from the University of Miami and led me to an MSc in Neuroimaging at King’s College London. At UCL’s Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit and Department of Clinical Movement Neurosciences, my role is to delve into the Mathematics of Movement Disorders. Our team is building a rich, quantitative, multimodal dataset on movement disorder patients, aiming to uncover the hidden patterns in these conditions.

Kate Sampson is a Research Physiotherapist and Highly Specialised Physiotherapist in Neurosciences, focusing on innovative neurorehabilitation approaches for hyperkinetic movement disorders. Throughout my career, I have worked across the patient journey from hospital to home, which has enabled me to gain rich experiences with patients presenting a vast range of neurological pathologies in diverse settings.

My research addresses a critical gap in neurorehabilitation literature by exploring hyperkinetic movement disorders, an often-underrepresented area. Currently, my work aims to investigate the experiences of Dystonia patients accessing Physiotherapy in the UK and to develop novel treatment approaches for Dystonia rehabilitation.

Isobel Platt is a Clinical Research Fellow in Movement disorders. I completed my medical undergraduate training at UCL and have returned to undertake a PhD in DYT-TOR1A Dystonia. I am enthusiastic to explore my interests in hyperkinetic movement disorders in clinical and research settings.

My project is aimed at developing quantitative phenotyping of patients with DYT-TOR1A dystonia alongside those with non-genetic dystonia through high-density electromyography (HDEMG) and magnetic encephalography (MEG). The project is a collaboration between the Department of Clinical Neurosciences and the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging.

Mireia Coll is a highly specialised physiotherapist with a strong focus on neurological recovery. She completed her BSc in Physiotherapy in Barcelona and later earned an M.Sc. in Nervous System Sciences from Rovira i Virgili University, Spain.

Since graduating, Mireia has worked extensively with clinical populations affected by neurological disorders in various settings, including acute care, outpatient, and private practice. She transitioned to clinical research, joining neurotechnology companies that focus on stroke recovery using VR and Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs). In 2022, she joined UCL as a research physiotherapist, contributing to the ArmLab (team lead by Prof. Nick Ward) in the Clinical and Movement Neurosciences Department at Queen Square. Joining the CMD Lab she looks forward to studying hyperkinetic motor manifestations within rich multimodal datasets.