Laura Parkes is Professor of Neuroimaging at the University of Manchester. She has over 20 years’ experience in the invention, validation, implementation and application of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) measurements of the human brain. With training in both physics (MPhys, University of Oxford) and Neuroscience (University College London) she bridges the gap between technological innovation and fundamental neuroscience research. Following post-doctoral work at the Donders Institute in The Netherlands, she returned to the UK to take up an MRC New Investigator Award using quantitative MRI to study mechanisms of brain plasticity. Laura now leads a growing multidisciplinary team of physicists, mathematicians, neuroscientists and clinicians in a program of work developing and applying quantitative brain imaging measurements to characterise pathology, principally in dementia, stroke and brain tumours. She has supervised 17 PhD students to successful completion and is passionate about inspiring more physics and engineering students into neuroscience.
My main expertise is in MRI of the microvasculature, in particular, pioneering the development and use of arterial spin labelling (ASL) measurements of cerebral blood flow and neurovascular coupling. More recently I have developed and applied dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI measurements of blood-brain barrier leakage, tracking the progression of cerebrovascular pathology and neurodegeneration in dementia and stroke.