Profile – Professor Parashkev Nachev

Name:

Professor Parashkev Nachev

Job title:

Professor of Neurology

Place of work / study:

Institute of Neurology, University College London

Area of Research:

Complex computational modelling of the focally damaged human brain

How is your work funded:

The Wellcome Trust, The Health Foundation and the UCLH NIHR Biomedical Research Centre

Tell us a little about yourself:

I wish to make neurology both reproducibly objective and sensitive to the finely defined individuality of each patient. The limits of conventional statistical models have hitherto forced us to sacrifice one or the other. But contemporary machine learning now allows us to create models that combine the finesse and flexibility of a clinician with the precision and rigour of a machine. It is my task to bring it into the very foundations of neurology.

Tell us a fun fact about yourself:

I make installation art as a way of conveying ideas about our biological nature that are hard not to misapprehend when framed in verbal form.

Why did you choose to work in dementia?

Our cognitive powers matter above all others, for they determine what we know of ourselves.