Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship
8 December 2016
Dr James Kolasinski from the School of Psychology has been awarded a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust.
The award allows recently qualified postdoctoral researchers to start independent research careers, working in some of the best research environments in the world.
Dr Kolasinski’s Henry Wellcome Fellowship will be based at Cardiff University’s new £44m Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC) in the School of Psychology. He will be using the facility’s 7 tesla MRI scanner to understand the cross-talk between different brain regions that support human dexterity.
Dr Kolasinski recently joined Cardiff University from the University of Oxford, where he held a Junior Research Fellowship, based at the Oxford Centre for fMRI of the Brain. He received his undergraduate and doctorate degrees from the University of Oxford, and has also held the von Clemm Fellowship at Harvard University.
The new Brain Research Imaging Centre where Dr Kolasinski will carry out his research was opened by the Queen in June 2016. It brings together expertise that has established Cardiff University as one of the UK’s top three universities in the UK for Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience, alongside Oxford and Cambridge universities.
Four times larger than the University's previous brain research imaging facilities, the Centre houses the best neuroimaging equipment in the world to help unravel the mysteries of the human brain.
The new facility has been part-funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the European Regional Development Fund through the Welsh Government, the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Wellcome Trust, the Welsh Government and the Wolfson Foundation.
Together, these investments are supporting innovation in world-class brain imaging research, including the creation of highly-skilled research jobs in Wales. Scientists at the Centre are seeking to provide unprecedented insights into the causes of neurological and psychiatric conditions such as dementia, schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis, as well as understanding the workings of the normal, healthy brain.
