Mr Richard Dear

Interests

I am a PhD student at the Brain Mapping Unit supervised by Petra Vertes and Ed Bullmore. I'm interested in using computational techniques to understand the neurobiology of mental health, with a particular focus on revealing the underlying biological subtypes of depression and depressive symptoms, and identifying potential clinical biomarkers and targets for treatment. I'm also broadly interested in the philosophy of neuroscience and the role of computation and theory in understanding the brain.

My first degree was in physics, but with two statistics professors for parents I initially had no intention of being in academia. I instead worked for two startups based in China, then ironically became a data scientist at Airbnb in San Francisco, before accepting my fate and coming to the most ivory of towers here in Cambridge to pursue neuroscience.

Research Focus

Equipment

Computational modelling