Dr. Martina Callaghan

Biography

Martina Callaghan obtained a BSc in Applied Physics from the University of Limerick in 2001 and subsequently joined Prof. Jo Hajnal's MR physics group at Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College London, to study for a Ph.D. in MRI image reconstruction using under-sampled data. As a postdoctoral researcher, she worked on parallel transmit technology and lipid quantification in heart and liver clinical populations using relaxometry. After a period traveling the world, she returned to the field of MRI methods development in 2012 and joined the Functional Imaging Laboratory (The FIL) under the mentorship of Prof. Nikolaus Weiskopf at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging (WCHN). Her research focuses on developing data acquisition and image reconstruction modeling methods for functional quantitative neuroimaging, leading to fruitful collaborations with research teams utilizing the extensive imaging infrastructure at FIL. In 2016, she was appointed Head of Physics, and in 2019 became Deputy Director of WCHN, overseeing the installation of UCL's 7T MRI system. A key motivator is her ambition to study the intra-cortical workings of the human brain using depth-resolved fMRI to test theories of human cognition. Promoted to Professor of MRI Physics in 2020, she has been leading the Department of Imaging Neuroscience since 2022 and in 2024 established the Wellcome-funded Discovery Research Platform for Naturalistic Neuroimaging.

Research Interests

Experience