Profile
Iroise Dumontheil
My CV
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Education:
This is a bit complicated – ask me about it if you’re curious! 1995-1998 Lycée Militaire d’Aix-en-Provence, France (high school) 1998-2000 Lycée du Parc, Lyon, France (equivalent to first two years of uni) 2000-2004 Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, Paris, France 2000-2001 Université Paris XI, France (third year of uni) 2001-2002 Imperial College, London, UK (fourth year of uni) 2002-2003 Université Paris VI, France (masters) 2003-2006 Université Paris VI, France, and University College London, UK (PhD)
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Qualifications:
Licence in Biology and Biotechnologies Maitrise in Biology and Biotechnologies MSc (“DEA”) in Cognitive Sciences PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education
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Work History:
2006-2007 Medical Research Council – Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, UK 2007-2010 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, UK 2010-2011 Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden 2012-now Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, UK
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Current Job:
Reader in Cognitive Neuroscience
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About Me:
I am a French Londoner interested in how the brain works.
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I live with my Australian boyfriend in London. We have a cat and we are expecting a baby for just before Christmas. I am lucky enough to walk to work, I like living in central London but try to make sure I walk through some small parks to see a bit of nature every day (it’s supposed to be good for your mood!). I read a lot, novels, short-stories, sci-fi, detective stories, pretty much everything except history books or biographies. Same with watching films, I like watching movies a lot, except horror films – I get too jumpy.
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My official title is Reader in Cognitive Neuroscience – one day I’ll apply for promotion to become a Professor. I am employed by Birkbeck, University of London, and my job is quite varied, which I enjoy a lot.
I have administrative tasks, which maybe are the least fun tasks. For example I am in charge of a postgraduate masters course in Educational Neuroscience, and I have to decide whether I make an offer on the course to students who apply. I then have to meet them at the start of the year, and help them if they have problems during the year. I have to attend quite a lot of meetings about recruitment, timetables, etc.
I also teach, mostly on postgraduate courses, but also sometimes to undergraduate students in our department. Mostly I teach about brain development, about methods we use to study the brain, like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and about adolescence. As part of my role I also supervise students doing undergraduate or postgraduate research projects.
The third part of my work is research. I used to mainly do my own research, now more and more I am supervising students and collaborating with other people on research projects. For example I am involved in the SCAMP (www.scampstudy.org) and UnLoCKe (www.unlocke.org) projects. I am the main supervisor for three PhD students, who have three years to learn how to do research and become a “Dr”, and I also have five other PhD students I co-supervise. Sadly, as you can see here (https://sites.google.com/site/idcnlab/lab-members) they are all girls!
My research involves going into schools to test children and adolescents on computer tasks and questionnaires, we also test adults in our labs at Birkbeck. When I want to look into children, adolescents and adults’ brains they have to come to our neuroimaging centre (http://bucni.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/) so we can scan them using our MRI machine. We work a lot with computers, to program our computer tasks, then test participants on them, analyse the data, write papers – it’s pretty much all done on computers, but this means we can work from everywhere (except when we are scanning!).
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My Typical Day:
On a typical day I meet with one or two students, do some data analysis, read research papers, attend a research seminar or give a lecture.
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I don’t start very early 9.30am on a good day, but often finish late 7pm, 8pm, this will probably change once I have a baby! On most days I have meetings, with my PhD students, or with colleagues on projects, I also attend research seminars, at Birkbeck, UCL, or other universities nearby, which is a good way to keep track of what other researchers are working on and what they are finding.
At Birkbeck we often teach in the evening, once a week on average during term time I give a lecture to postgraduate or undergraduate students.
Every two weeks we have a lab meeting with my students where one of them will present something they are working on, and usually we eat cake and chat about how things are going on.
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What I'd do with the prize money:
I would spend it on preparing a version of the Meta play that we could provide to schools for free.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
curious active calm
Were you ever in trouble at school?
once – I was in a boarding school and we went out at night and got caught
Who is your favourite singer or band?
beach boys
What's your favourite food?
croque-monsieur
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
(1) procrastinate less, (2) have more time for research, (3) live by the sea!
Tell us a joke.
pass!
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