Members
You can find details of our members below.
Simon Keller (Director)
Professor Simon Keller is Chair of Neuroimaging in the Institute of Systems, Molecular and Integrative Biology (ISMIB) at the University of Liverpool. Simon has expertise in medical neuroimaging applications particularly, but not exclusively, in epilepsy. He has particular interest in how advanced imaging methods can be applied in various neurological disorders to:
- provide insights into causative neurobiological mechanisms
- predict patient outcome after medical or surgical treatment
- further understand cognitive impairment
- help improve diagnostic assessments
Email: simon.keller@liverpool.ac.uk
Corey Ratcliffe (Former PhD Student, honorary PDRA)
Corey Ratcliffe was a full-time PhD student working on an international PhD programme funded by the University of Liverpool and the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), India between 2021 and 2025. This project focused on imaging biomarkers of seizure presentation in patients with neurocysticercosis. Corey has since moved to the University of Newcastle and works as an honorary PDRA and close collaborator of the Liverpool BRAIN lab.
Email: Corey.Ratcliffe@liverpool.ac.uk
Bethany Facer (PhD Student, Research Assistant)
Bethany is a full-time PhD student working on an Anatomical Society-funded studentship entitled “In-vivo dissection of white matter pathways in Parkinson’s disease: tracking progressive degeneration and biomarkers of treatment success”. Bethany has been acquiring data from the Parkinson’s Progressive Markers Initiative (PPMI), the Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust, and LIMRIC at the University of Liverpool.
Email: Bethany.Facer@liverpool.ac.uk
Luke Andrews (PhD student)
Luke is a full-time PhD student working on an MRC DiMeN DTP iCase funded project entitled “Predicting motor impairment and neurosurgical treatment success in movement disorders using advanced neuroimaging techniques.” This project has been undertaken with support from Boston Scientific. Luke has been acquiring data from the Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust.
Email: Luke.Andrews@liverpool.ac.uk
Arnas Tamasauskas (PhD Student)
Arnas is a full-time PhD student. His PhD addresses the network-level development of chronic post-stroke pain using lesion mapping, connectomics and fMRI combined with detailed clinical assessment. It is hoped this will increase understanding of circuit-wide brain mechanisms and delineate biomarkers of chronic post-stroke pain that are clinically informative with the potential to define more targeted, mechanism-based treatments to ameliorate and prevent pain.
Email: Arnas.Tamasauskas@liverpool.ac.uk
Eszter Demirkan (PhD Student)
Eszter is a part-time PhD student focusing on the role of right hemisphere activation during semantic processes. For the project, she is planning to utilise a variety of neuroimaging methods, including fMRI and DTI. Eszter also works as a part-time doctoral academic teacher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Liverpool, acting as an academic advisor to first and second-year students as well as teaching research methods and statistics.
Email: E.E.Demirkan@liverpool.ac.uk
Saif Ahamed (PhD Student)
Saif is a full-time PhD student working on an Epilepsy Research Institute-funded DTC programme on cognition and brain imaging in people with newly diagnosed epilepsy. Saif will work to phenotype patients based on cognitive impairments and anti-seizure medication treatment outcomes and determine the imaging markers of each phenotype. More information on the DTC programme can be found here. Saif will be working with the MRC-funded EPINET newly diagnosed epilepsy cohort.
Email: S.Ahamed@liverpool.ac.uk
Charlotte Casey (PhD Student)
Charlotte is a part-time PhD student and Demonstrator in Anatomy. Her PhD work builds on the previous work performed in the lab on refractory temporal lobe epilepsy and preoperative imaging markers of postoperative seizure outcome. Charlotte uses novel methods to characterise white matter impairments and will also work to determine imaging-clinical correlations in patients with limbic encephalitis. Charlotte works in collaboration with the Translational Imaging Group at the Medical University Bonn, Germany.
Email: Charlotte.Casey@liverpool.ac.uk
Madeline Perez (PhD Student)
Madeline is a full-time PhD student working on imaging predictors of neurosurgical outcomes in patients with brain tumours. She is interrogating imaging data acquired as part of patient clinical pathways using morphometric and normative connectometry approaches. Understanding why some patients present with epileptic seizures is a key supplementary objective of her research.
Email: Madeline.Perez@liverpool.ac.uk
Elena Patera (PhD Student)
Elena is a part-time PhD student and Lecturer / Demonstrator in Anatomy. Her PhD work focuses on MRI structural covariance and subcortical-cortical connectivity in the healthy and diseased human brain. Connectivity patterns of the basal ganglia is of particular focus in her research.
Email: E.Patera@liverpool.ac.uk
Ahmad Ali (PhD Student, Neurosurgical Registrar)
Ahmad is a trainee neurosurgeon working on an NIHR-funded PhD programme entitled “The impact of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation on post-operative cognition in low-grade glioma patients”. He will use fMRI to determine unique cortical sites for rTMS to improve postoperative cognition in patients with brain tumours.
Email: ahmad.ali@liverpool.ac.uk
Raghavendra K (PhD student, Neurology Registrar)
Dr Raghavendra is a trainee neurologist at National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, and part-time PhD student between NIMHANS and the Liverpool BRAIN lab. His PhD work focuses on multi-modal brain network analysis in children with refractory focal epilepsy using MRI and MEG data.
Email: R.Kenchaiah@liverpool.ac.uk
Affiliated Consultant Neurologists
Our work could not be performed without close collaboration and excellent working relationships with research-active colleagues at the University of Liverpool, Walton Centre, and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. We consider all clinical colleagues as honorary members of the Liverpool BRAIN lab.
Professor Tony Marson is Professor of Neurology in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics and Executive Dean of the Institute of Systems, Molecular and Integrative Biology, University of Liverpool, and honorary consultant neurologist at the Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust. His area of expertise is clinical aspects of epilepsy and randomised clinical trials.
Dr Antonella Macerollo is a Consultant Neurologist at the Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust. Her area of clinical and academic expertise is movement disorders (especially Parkinson's Disease, Dystonia and Tourette's Syndrome) with specific focus on Deep Brain Stimulation. She was awarded her PhD entitled "The role of sensory afference in Parkinson's disease" in June 2018 at University College of London (Supervisors: Professor Limousin and Professor Keller). She is currently the Editor in Chief of the EANpage (the blog of the European Academy of Neurology).
Dr Andy Marshall is a Senior Lecturer in Pain Neuroscience in the Pain Research Institute and Institute of Life Course and Medical Science, University of Liverpool and an honorary consultant in clinical neurophysiology at the Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust. His major areas of interest and expertise are the pathways, physiology and pathophysiology of pain and touch from the peripheral neuron to early cortical processing areas.
Professor Benedict Michael is Director of The Brain Infection & Inflammation Group at the University of Liverpool and an honorary Consultant Neurologist at The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust. His research focuses on the intersection of neuroscience and infection, investigating the impact of infection on the brain not just clinically but also at immunological, virological, genetic, and neuroimaging levels.
Dr Saif Huda is a Consultant Neurologist at the Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust and senior lecturer at the University of Liverpool. His research focuses on immune tolerance mechanisms and biomarkers in Neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorders and myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein associated disease, particularly clinical and serological biomarkers that help predict relapse risk and prognosis. He is also interested in immune tolerance mechanisms and identifying novel symptomatic therapies that can improve patient quality of life.
Mr Jibril Farah is a Consultant Neurosurgeon and the clinical lead of the Functional and Stereotactic Neurosurgical Service at The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust. He has clinical and research interests in epilepsy, movement disorders, trigeminal neuralgia, spasticity, and chronic pain.
Professor Michael Jenkinson is Professor of Neurosurgery and Chair of Surgical Trials at the University of Liverpool, and Consultant Neurosurgeon at the Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust. His research interests include meningioma management (incidental tumours, seizures and quality of life), imaging and biology of brain metastases and interventional clinical trials in neurosurgery and neuro-oncology.
Mr Rasheed Zakaria is a Consultant Neurosurgeon at the Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust and Clinical Senior Lecturer at the University of Liverpool. His research interests are in brain metastases, glioma, immunotherapy, and advanced brain tumour imaging.
Mr Jonathan Ellenbogen is a Consultant Neurosurgeon working between Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital and is honorary clinical senior lecturer at the University of Liverpool.
Affiliated consultant neuroradiologists
All our imaging work in patients with neurological disorders would not be possible without the support and collaboration of consultant neuroradiologists at the Department of Neuroradiology, Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust. We work closely with Dr Kumar Das, Dr Shubhabrata Biswas, Dr Maneesh Bhojak, and Dr Samantha Mills in our programmes of research. We also work with Dr Shivram Avula at the Department of Radiology, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.