Current students

Current PhD Students associated with MARC

Sam Turton
Imperial College London 
Funder: MRC - MARC
Dr. Samuel Turton is a MRC MARC clinical fellow completing a PhD in the Centre for Neuropsychopharmacology under the supervision of Prof Anne Lingford-Hughes and Prof David Nutt.
His research uses PET and MRI imaging to investigate the endogenous GABA and opioid neurotransmitter systems in alcohol addiction.

He is also involved in a number of other studies including the validation of a novel Imadazoline-2 binding site PET tracer BU99008.

Sarah Barrett
University of Bristol
Funder: Society for the Study of Addiction (SSA)
I gained a first class honours degree in pharmacology (MSci) from the University of Bristol in 2016, during which I developed a strong passion for addiction science. During my degree I spent one year working in industry at Takeda Cambridge in the in vitro pharmacology department. I have now been awarded a 3 year scholarship from the Society for Study of Addiction to complete a PhD, in which I will be undertaking the project "Characterisation of Tolerance Development to Rewarding Effects of Opioids and the Effects of Ethanol on Reward Tolerance".

Maddy Dyer
University of Bristol
Funder: University of Bristol studentship (MARC)

I graduated from Southampton University in 2013 with a BSc in Psychology with first-class honours. After completing a Psychology PGCE (with distinction) at Canterbury Christ Church University in 2014, I worked as a Psychology and Health & Social Care teacher in Oxford for a year. I recently completed an MSc in Research Methods in Psychology at Bristol University, working with the Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group (TARG) for my dissertation.
Using the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) and experimental studies, my PhD research will investigate the relationship between anxiety and alcohol use in adolescence and young adulthood. I am supervised by Professor Marcus Munafò and Professor Matthew Hickman.
Relationship between anxiety and alcohol use in adolescence and young adulthood: epidemiological and experimental analyses.

Emmert Roberts
King's College London 
Funder: MRC - MARC

Dr. Emmert Roberts is an MRC MARC PhD clinical fellow at the National Addiction Centre under the supervision of Prof Colin Drummond and Prof Matthew Hotopf. His research uses large scale national datasets to investigate trends in hospitalisation and death due to alcohol in England.

He is currently undertaking the MSc in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and works as an Honorary Specialist Registrar in General Adult Psychiatry at the South London and the Maudsley (SLaM) NHS Foundation Trust.

Prianka Padmanathan
University of Bristol
Funder: MRC - MARC

Dr. Prianka Padmanathan is an MRC MARC PhD clinical fellow at the department of Population Health Sciences under the supervision of Prof Paul Moran, Prof Matthew Hickman and Prof David Gunnell. Her research will use a combination of large-scale national data, as well as local data from coroners, mental health and drug and alcohol services, to explore suicide and self-harm amongst people with alcohol and opioid dependence. Dr. Prianka Padmanathan is also a Core Psychiatry Trainee, who will be working in Addiction Psychiatry in Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust alongside her PhD.

Miriam Hillyard
Kings College London
Funder: MRC - MARC

Dr. Miriam Hillyard is an MRC MARC PhD Clinical Fellow at the National Addiction Centre, King's College London. She is doing a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Colin Drummond and Dr. Kate Rimes, looking at the experiences of addiction problems for LGBTQ+ people. Her doctoral work will use both qualitative and quantitative approaches. She is also a General Practice trainee and undertaking clinical work in addictions at South London and Maudsley NHS Trust.

Daniel Titheradge
University of Bristol
Funder: MRC - MARC

Dr. Daniel Titheradge is an MRC MARC PhD clinical fellow at the University of Bristol under the supervision of Prof. Matthew Hickman in Population Health Sciences and Prof. Matthew Jones in the School of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience.  His research uses epidemiological approaches to explore the association between early life adversity and adolescent alcohol use to alcohol use disorder in adulthood in combination with preclinical neuroscience research aimed at understanding the mechanisms underlying these associations. Dr. Daniel Titheradge also works as an Honorary Specialist Registrar in General Adult Psychiatry at the Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust alongside his PhD.

Katherine Herlinger
Imperial College London
Funder: MRC - MARC

I am a Clinical Research Fellow in the Division of Psychiatry, currently conducting my PhD on the neurobiology of reward and emotional processing in opiate and alcohol dependence. My PhD has been funded through the MRC Addiction Research Clinical Training Programme (MARC). In order to investigate the above, I am working on several translational medicine and neuroimaging projects: the NCORE study; an fMRI study of the effect of NK1 receptor antagonism on reward and emotional processing in opiate dependence, the ICCAM study; a multi-centre fMRI study which investigated the effects of opioid, dopamine and NK1 receptor antagonism on brain pathways involved in reward, inhibitory control and stress/emotional processing in addiction, and the GHADD study; an fMRI study investigating the effect of appetitive gut hormones on eating and addictive behaviours.