About me

I am a PhD student at the Stroke Research Group at the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, supervised by Professor Hugh Markus. Before I joined the group in October 2022, I graduated from my master’s degree at Imperial College London, with a specialization in computational neurosciences. I have had a particular interest in applying statistical approaches to analyze genetics and imaging data.

My PhD project aims to look at the genetic relationship of sleep and circadian rhythmicity with cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) using bioinformatical approaches. This is interesting since abnormal sleeping patterns may be associated with glymphatic system dysfunction, which plays important roles in CSVD pathology. The molecular findings will then be translated into clinical settings by exploring potentially druggable genes with no current targets and examining their off-target effects, which are helpful from the perspective of drug development.

I will use lacunar stroke data from GIGASTROKE, MRI-confirmed lacunar stroke data, as well as GWAS summary statistics of white matter hyperintensities, diffusion tensor imaging metrics, and enlarged perivascular space data.