Project Title: Investigating Homeostatic Plasticity in Alzheimer’s Disease 
Supervisor: Dr Samuel Barnes
Location: Burlington Danes Building, Hammersmith Hospital Campus

About Me

I am an MRC funded PhD student and international graduate of neuroscience from Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen who is interested in developing and implementing optogenetic live-cell imaging strategies to unravel neuronal dynamics in health and disease. The versatility of these techniques makes them the ideal tools to bridge the gap in understanding between neuronal communication and neurodegeneration. The precise pathological mechanisms through which Alzheimer’s disease influences neuronal activity are still largely unknown, and less still is known about the effect of this perturbed neuronal activity on disease progression in the early phases of Alzheimer’s disease. My project will investigate neuronal firing homeostasis and synaptic plasticity in Alzheimer’s disease, aiming to identify deficits in these processes which we hypothesize function as early correlates of cognitive impairment in Alzheimer’s disease.
I am also supporting early career researchers in the Department of Brain Sciences as an ECR representative.

Qualifications

• BSc (Honours) – Biochemistry, Newcastle University
• MSc – Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

Publications

Doostdar N, Airey J, Radulescu CI, Melgosa-Ecenarro L, Zabouri N, Pavlidi P, Kopanitsa M, Saito T, Saido T, Barnes SJ. Multi-scale network imaging in a mouse model of amyloidosis. Cell Calcium. 2021 May;95:102365. doi: 10.1016/j.ceca.2021.102365. Epub 2021 Feb 11. PMID: 33610083.

Contact Details

Email: joe.sheppard@imperial.ac.uk
LinkedIn: joe-airey-527482113/