The Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN) was established in 2017. It bridges the gap between laboratory neuroscience and human health, by performing multi-scale studies spanning from animal models through to human populations.
The extension is testament to the progress that WIN has demonstrated so far against its vision in all five of its themes: cross-species relationships; cross-scale integration; population data-mining; clinical neuroimaging and open neuroimaging.
WIN researchers have so far generated 698 peer-reviewed publications (and 152 preprints). These papers have collectively gathered 4807 citations to date.
The work of WIN staff has had an impact in many areas, including:
- Clinical discovery (e.g. throuh the licensing of its software library (FSL) to non-academic users in clinical settings)
- Clinical practice (e.g. establishing the ‘Brain Health Centre’, opening to memory clinic patients in spring 2020)
- Engaging industry (e.g. hosting five industry-funded PhD students)
- Scientific practice: (e.g. influencing neuroimaging research practice via FSL. The main FSL paper has been cited >9000 times).
- Public debate (e.g. holding a day for patients and public on ‘Building better brain research’).
WIN has also had an impact more locally, initiating new collaborations and leveraging further funding. Fifty-three PhD students have completed since WIN began, and facilities have been enhanced (including the installation of a new rodent scanner and a new MEG scanner).
WIN has ensured that working practices reflect its values, including openness and inclusivity. For example, they have established working groups in Open Science and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.
Core staff have been recruited, including Jason Lerch (heading up the small-animal imaging facility), Ben Seymour (Wellcome Clinical Research Fellow) and Madalena Fonseca (preclinical functional MRI).
The extension will allow WIN to establish incentives (e.g seed grants) and support (e.g facilitators) for projects that take mechanism to clinical population, or basic neuroscience to clinical translation. It will also provide resources to develop their cutting-edge work on building a positive research culture.