Advisory Board
We are grateful to our diverse and multidisciplinary Advisory Board, the members of which are recognised for valuable contributions to neuroscience and other related fields.
Members
Dr. Brenda Williams
Programme Lead Applied Neuroscience
King’s College, London
Dr. Williams gained her Ph.D. in neurobiology from University College London and honed her research skills through post-doctoral positions at Cancer Research UK, the National Institute for Medical Research, and the Dana Faber Cancer Institute.
She worked as a principal investigator at University College London before moving to the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, King’s College London.
In 2018 Dr. Williams moved onto the Academic Education pathway, to focus on education delivery, scholarship, and leadership and also become a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Authority (Advance HE). She is now a Reader in Neuroscience Education and Deputy Head (Education) for the Basic and Clinical Neuroscience Department. In her current role, she works with colleagues and students to integrate and promote innovative neuroscience education.
Being a firm believer in diversity and inclusion, she has led the development of two successful distance learning MSc programmes, the Psychology and Neuroscience of Mental Health, and Applied Neuroscience. Dr. Williams is now programme lead for MSc Applied Neuroscience. She has a passion for encouraging interest and understanding of the Biosciences and does this as a member of the Royal Society of Biology London Branch Committee and through running the Basic and Clinical Neuroscience annual Work Experience week for A-level students.
Dr. Gisele Dias
Dr. Dias is a Chartered Psychologist, has a PhD in Science (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – UFRJ, Brazil/ Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, UK) and an MSc in Biological Sciences (UFRJ, Brazil).
After completion of her PhD, she has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at King’s College London in Dr. Sandrine Thuret’s Adult Neurogenesis and Mental Health lab.
Dr. Dias is a coaching psychologist (Centre for Coaching, London, UK) with a strong interest in applied positive psychology. Her current research focuses on designing and evaluating psychological interventions to promote wellbeing and resilience in vulnerable populations.
She worked as a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Greenwich (London, UK), as a Teaching Fellow and Senior/Principal Teaching Fellow in PNoMH/Applied Neuroscience (King’s College London, UK), having also published several scientific articles and book chapters in the fields of Psychology, Mental Health and Neuroscience.
Dr. Dias is now a Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London and Programme Lead for the MSc in Psychology and Neuroscience of Mental Health.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Anne-Laure Le Cunff is a researcher, entrepreneur, and writer. She investigates how different brains learn differently at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, and founded Ness Labs, an online school for knowledge workers to explore the applied neuroscience of learning, creativity, and decision-making. Her other interests include neurodiversity, psychedelics, metacognition, and consciousness research.
Previously, she worked at Google in the Digital Health team, promoting hardware and software to help people take better care of their physical and mental health. As an adviser to the Applied Neuroscience Association, she provides guidance on the subjects of science communication and community building.
Dr. Caitlin Walker
Caitlin Walker is a Doctor of Philosophy, PhD at Liverpool John Moores University. Dr. Walker graduated in Linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies and did four years post graduate research in ‘Strategies for Lexical access’ including anthropological fieldwork in Ghana. She was doing a PhD in Artificial Intelligence when a NZ Psychologist, David Grove invited her to work alongside in creating a new linguistic discipline called ‘Clean Language’.
She has since developed her linguistic and non-verbal clean, agile and systemic modelling skills from small scale group development to whole scale organisational culture change programmes addressing diversity, conflict, leadership, managing mergers and creating learning organizations. She has systematically tested and developed her ideas in bringing systems thinking to challenging arenas in the Justice System and Education. Her robust ideas have become sought after in Academia and Industry. You can find her research profile here and her TED TALK here. Her current projects include working with at-risk teenagers excluded from the school system. Her work is available on the Open University MBA Programme.
Juan Carlos López
Juan Carlos López is Managing Director, Research Grants, at the RTW Charitable Foundation. A native of Oaxaca, Mexico, Juan Carlos obtained his Ph.D. degree from Columbia University (New York) in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel and carried out postdoctoral research at the Instituto Cajal (Madrid). In 2000, Juan Carlos moved to London to launch the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, subsequently becoming its Chief Editor.
Four years later, he returned to New York as Chief Editor of the prestigious journal Nature Medicine. In 2014, Juan Carlos joined Hoffmann-La Roche as Head of Academic Relations and Collaborations, leading a team in charge of fostering scientific interactions between the company and academic institutions worldwide. After leaving Roche, Juan Carlos founded Haystack Science, a consulting firm specialized in editorial services and science commercialization. In 2020, Juan Carlos returned to the pharmaceutical industry as Director of Academic Research Collaborations at Bristol Myers Squibb. Throughout his career, Juan Carlos has served on the Boards of multiple organizations in the non-profit and biotechnology sectors, most recently on the Board of Directors of Keystone Symposia.
Christian Suojanen
Christian brings 25 years international and operational advisory experience in strategy, business development, and access to finance for technology transfer, start-ups, industry and investors in the biotech, digital health, medtech, healthtech, health and pharmaceutical sectors.
He has seen firsthand that world-class innovation can arise anywhere, and what is most often missing is the expertise and networks needed to ensure that the true potential of that innovation is realized.
Along with his day to day work with biotech companies, industry and funds, Christian has for two past two decades consistently supported innovation stakeholders in the bio, pharma and health sectors; delivering the first pan-European level biotech investment conference series (with EASDAQ, now Euronext), the first Biotech sector CEO academy at top MBA schools, advising EU level industry associations for biotech, pharma, and venture capital, and advising the EC and national governments, health systems and universities on innovation strategy, technology transfer and business creation. He has provided training and strategic engagement with finance and industry to over 3,000 innovation stakeholders, primarily representatives of start-ups and technology transfer, Licensing and innovation offices, across 5 continents.
David Hanson
David Hanson develops robots that are widely regarded as the world’s most human-like in appearance, in a lifelong quest to create true living, caring machines. To accomplish these goals, Hanson integrates figurative arts with cognitive science and robotics engineering, inventions novel skin materials, facial expression mechanisms, and collaborative developments in AI, within humanoid artworks like Sophia the robot, which can engage people in naturalistic face-to-face conversations and currently serve in AI research, education, therapy, and other uses.
Hanson worked as a Walt Disney Imagineer, both a sculptor and a technical consultant in robotics, and later founded Hanson Robotics. As a researcher, Hanson published dozens of papers in materials science, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and robotics journals — including SPIE, IEEE, the International Journal of Cognitive Science, IROS, AAAI, AI magazine and more. He wrote two books including “Humanizing Robots” and received several patents. Hanson was featured in the New York Times, Popular Science, Scientific American, WIRED, BBC and CNN. He also received earned awards from NASA, NSF, Tech Titans’ Innovator of the Year, RISD, Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, and the co-received the 2005 AAAI first place prize for open interaction of an AI system. Hanson holds a Ph.D. in Interactive Arts and Technology from the University of Texas at Dallas, and a BFA in film Animation video from the Rhode Island School of Design.
