Team

Isabel Berwian is Associate Professor of Interventional Methods in Clinical Psychology at University College London. Her research focuses on understanding how interventions for depression and anxiety work and how they can be improved, combining computational modelling, experimental approaches, clinical research, and neuroimaging.

She completed her PhD at the Translational Neuromodeling Unit in Zurich and trained as a psychotherapist in Germany. During her postdoctoral work at Princeton University, she developed her research programme on modelling psychological interventions using computational frameworks.

Emma Leger is a Neuroscience MSc student at University College London, where she is completing her dissertation in Dr Isabel Berwian’s lab. Before UCL, she read Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews, where her interest in computational approaches to the brain first developed.

Her research takes a computational approach to the mechanisms underlying the spontaneous return of fear, motivated by a broader interest in PTSD, particularly in supporting veterans. For her dissertation, she is testing whether the selective maintenance of aversive memories drives the return of fear, using emotional facial stimuli to examine whether more aversive content produces a stronger return. The work is currently being conducted in the general population, with plans to extend it to symptom-based samples in the future.

Tiger is currently completing a Master’s in Mental Health Sciences Research. He is working on research to improve treatment for anxiety disorders such as phobias and PTSD. This involves understanding why fear returns after some time and in different contexts. He previously worked in a mental health hospital.

Guntash Mangat is an MSc Psychological Sciences student at UCL interested in applying computational methods to better understand human behaviour and mental health. The current project focuses on depression interventions, exploring how learning and decision-making abilities relate to patient characteristics and treatment outcomes.

Rowan is a Trainee Clinical Psychologist completing a Doctorate at UCL. Rowan is also interested in pursuing academic research. In the lab, Rowan works on developing interventions and designing a clinical trial for psychological interventions for anxiety.

Jialing Ding is interested in learning and decision-making processes in individuals with psychiatric disorders, with a focus on how individuals perceive the world and the factors underlying their behaviour.

In the lab, Jialing is working on a longitudinal clinical study to identify behavioural markers that predict treatment responses to psychotherapies and the future development of psychiatric disorders.

Jamie wants to create effective, personalized non-pharmaceutical treatments for depression and anxiety. As a therapist, she was frustrated by how little is known about which treatments work best for whom — and that question now drives her research. She is pursuing a PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience, with a certificate in Statistics and Machine Learning, at Princeton University, where she models readiness for change to help match people with the interventions most likely to help them.

Jamie is also the founder of The Brightly Project, which builds digital tools that connect at-risk teens with caring adults at their high schools. As a first-generation student, she is passionate about opening doors for girls and others traditionally underrepresented in academic spaces. In her spare time, Jamie enjoys hiking, reading, and learning to use the vintage camera she inherited from her uncle.