Cristiana Tisca from our Department and Sara Bandiera from the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics were selected to represent the University of Oxford in the NeurotechEU Student Council 3 minute thesis competition.
The final round was held at the Neurotech Summit on 31 January 2022 where 15 online talks were presented. Each took the audience on exciting excursions to different destinations of neuroscience research such as Alzheimer's disease, pain, facial recognition, neuroinflammation, and human cortical development.
Each candidate was scored online for Presentation (Style/confidence), Visualisation (Design/images), Creativity (Use of gestures/ language) and Innovation (Unique presentation style).
The winners were:
- Best Presentation Award: Adriana Gea, González Universidad Miguel Hernández
- Best Visualisation Award: Lynn Le, Radboud Universiteit
- Most Creative Presentation Award: Cristiana Tisca, University of Oxford
- Most Innovative Presentation Award: Guoming (Tony) Man, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Cristiana's DPhil project, with Professor Karla Miller and Dr Aurea Martins-Bach, delves deeper into findings from the world's largest human neuroimaging dataset, the UK Biobank, which established links between genetic modifications and brain structure. She images novel mouse models using both magnetic resonance neuroimaging and microscopy, seeking to understand the biological cause of these links. Ultimately, she aims to make a contribution towards our understanding of the genetic basis of brain structure and function across species.