Our team
Honorary Consultant Neurologist, Clinician Scientist
Dr. Fatemeh Geranmayeh
Fatemeh is an accredited Neurologist and a Principal Investigator at Imperial College London. Her research examines the neural mechanisms involved in recovery of language and cognitive function after cerebrovascular disease. She runs a specialist post-stroke cognitive clinic at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust for patients with cognitive and language disorders following stroke.
PhD Candidate
Dragos Gruia
Dragos is responsible with the design and programming of the cognitive tests, together with the stroke-specific brain imaging protocols. Before joining the team, Dragos studied Psychology and Neuroscience, then was employed by the UK Dementia Research Institute, where he developed and applied MR imaging techniques for patients. He hopes that through his research he can improve the quality of care offered by the NHS.
Phd Candidate
Sabia Combrie
Sabia is responsible for validating language tasks to optimise remote clinical assessments for stroke survivors and assisting with structural MRI brain scans. She has a particular interest in the interplay between cognition, biomarkers of neurodegeneration and the neural mechanisms of language recovery. Sabia has a background in Psychology and Neuroscience, and has experience working in clinical and community settings.
Speech and Language Therapist
Joanna Friedland
Joanna is a speech and language therapist at St Pancras Rehabilitation Unit within St Pancras Hospital. She works predominantly in stroke, as well as dementia and other progressive neurological conditions. Her research interests include factors influencing recovery from aphasia, and communication between healthcare professionals and people with dementia.
PhD Candidate
Giulia Sanguedolce
Giulia’s work spans both the Brain Sciences and Electrical Engineering departments. She wants to improve the pathological speech conditions after stroke by building an Automatic Speech Recognition tool for patients. Her aim is to increase the quality of the diagnosis and monitoring of aphasic patients as to provide them a better recovery. She previously obtained an MSc in Cognitive Science of Language, focusing her studies on speech disorders. Giulia wishes that her research will help with early detection of clinical conditions that affect the ability to communicate, improving the general quality of patients lives.
Research Intern
Sophie Brook
Sophie is studying for an MSc in Speech and Language Sciences at UCL and is working on a research project with us at Imperial. She is in the final year of her studies, training to be a speech and language therapist. Her thesis focuses on the feasibility of the IC3 assessment in stroke survivors with language difficulties and on creating age, sex and education norms. She is working on transcribing and analysing speech data, alongside other experienced speech and language therapists.