LAB FUNDING 

We are grateful for the support of current work by:

• Aligning Science Across Parkinson's
• Parkinson's UK
• The Medical Research Council
• The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Resarch Council
• National Science Foundation USA
  
• The Wellcome Trust

My laboratory focuses on understanding dopamine neurotransmission in the brain, particularly within the basal ganglia. We seek to improve understanding of the mechanisms regulating dopamine transmission and their dysfunction in neurodegenerative and other brain disorders, particularly Parkinson's disease and addictions, to gain insights into disease aetiology and therapeutic avenues. We are a founding group of the Oxford Parkinson's Disease Centre (OPDC).

I studied Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, followed by a DPhil at the University of Oxford Department of Pharmacology as a Mary Goodger Scholar. I was awarded postdoctoral E.P. Abraham Junior Research Fellowships from Keble College and then St. Cross College Oxford, followed by a Beit Memorial Fellowship, and a Paton Research Fellowship based at the University Department of Pharmacology, Oxford. My Fellowships involved stints at New York University Departments of Physiology & Biophysics and Neurosurgery, with Drs Margaret Rice and Charles Nicholson, and in the lab of Dr R. Mark Wightman at the University of North Carolina Department of Chemistry. I joined the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics in Oxford in 2006 through a joint appointment as University Lecturer and Tutor for Medicine at the college Christ Church. In 2014, I became Professor of Neuroscience.

I lead an international research program supported by the Aligning Science Across Parkinson's Collaborative Research Network. I am President of the International Society for Monitoring Molecules in Neuroscience, Member of Council for the International Basal Ganglia Society, on the International Scientific Advisory Board of Dopamine 2026, and serve in the Parkinson's UK College of Experts, on the Editorial Advisory Board for ACS Chemical Neuroscience, and on the Editorial Board for Addiction Neuroscience. I was previously an Associate Editor at npj Parkinson's Disease, and in 2018, was chair of 17th International Conference on Monitoring Molecules in Neuroscience held in Oxford. I have co-edited a new upcoming Handbook of Dopamine with colleague Mark Walton, and am excited to announce an anticipated publication date of May 2025!