| Address | University College London 1st floor, 90 High Holborn London, WC1V 6LJ |
| marzia.scelsi.15@ucl.ac.uk | |
| tinyurl.com/yysqut9a |
Bio:
Marzia joined the COMBINE lab in September 2015 as an MRes/PhD student in the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Medical Imaging. She had previously received her BSc (hons) in Physics and MSc (hons) in Applied Physics from University of Bari (Italy). She discovered her passion for brain imaging during her MSc dissertation project, which focused on machine learning applied to classification of DTI scans for Alzheimer’s patients. From there she has embarked on a journey of discoveries, from physics to human genetics and computational biology, through brain imaging and machine learning. Marzia received her MRes in August 2016, and graduated from her PhD in June 2020 with a thesis on the genetics of dementia progression and heterogeneity (link here).
Marzia’s research has been recognised with two consecutive Merit Awards from the Organisation for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) in 2017 and 2018. From 2017 to 2019 she served as member of the OHBM Student and Postdoc Special Interest Group executive committee (https://www.ohbmtrainees.com/), as well as other committees, academics and not.
In 2018, Marzia was Visiting Student Researcher in the FIND lab at the Stanford University School of Medicine. In 2019 she undertook a placement at Roche Products Ltd, analysing large-scale clinical trials in Alzheimer’s disease, and currently holds a permanent position as clinical trial statistician in the same company.
In her spare time Marzia enjoys cooking and baking, making music (she holds a Master’s degree in piano performance) and is an amateur fencer.
Research interests:
Marzia is interested in uncovering and understanding genetics risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease progression and heterogeneity, through applications of multivariate mathematical modelling, machine learning and statistics. She is also studying how gene interaction networks are disrupted by rare mutations in dementia. On a personal level, she is interested in effective strategies for mentoring and development of early-career neuroscientists.
Recent publications:
- Andre Altmann, Marzia A Scelsi, Maryam Shoai, Eric de Silva, Leon M Aksman, David M Cash, John Hardy, and Jonathan M Schott. “A comprehensive analysis of methods for assessing polygenic burden on Alzheimer’s disease pathology and risk beyond APOE.” Brain Communications (2019).
- Marzia A Scelsi, Valerio Napolioni, Michael D. Greicius, Andre Altmann, and ADNI. “Network propagation of rare mutations in Alzheimer’s disease reveals tissue-specific hub genes and communities.” PLOS Comp Biol (2021), in press; DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008517
- Leon M Aksman, Marzia A Scelsi, Andre F Marquand, Daniel C Alexander, Sebastien Ourselin, Andre Altmann, and ADNI. “Modeling longitudinal imaging biomarkers with parametric Bayesian multi‐task learning.” Human brain mapping 40, no. 13 (2019): 3982-4000.
- Marzia A Scelsi, Raiyan R Khan, Marco Lorenzi, Leigh Christopher, Michael D Greicius, Jonathan M Schott, Sebastien Ourselin, Andre Altmann