The BNA Scholars Programme supports students from currently under-represented ethnic groups in neuroscience, offering them a mentoring scheme, networking opportunities, and membership to both the BNA and Federation of European Neuroscience Societies, as well as funding towards attendance at conferences. Students are accepted on to the Scholars Programme following an annual open competition.
Congratulations to Morgan Mitchell and Faissal Sharif, two of this year's seven scholars.
Morgan Mitchell is part of Professor Heidi Johansen-Berg's Plasticity Group in the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging. She is working on a collaborative project with Dr Melanie Fleming and Professor Tim Denison from the Institute of Biomedical Engineering investigating the use of Targeted Memory Reactivation (TMR) during sleep as an intervention to boost the memory consolidation processes underlying motor learning for stroke rehabilitation patients.
Faissal Sharif is researching novel non-invasive brain stimulation applications targeting psychiatric symptoms present in a variety of affective and neurological disorders. Beyond potential new transdiagnostic treatments using neurotechnology, Faissal is interested in the neuronal underpinnings of affective processing, anhedonia and apathy. Faissal is supervised by Professor Huiling Tan in the MRC Brain Network Dynamics Unit.
Both Morgan and Faissal are passionate about engaging the public with their research, with Morgan part of the 2022 cohort of NDCN/WIN Public Engagement Ambassadors, and Faissal part of this year's cohort.