Dr Karolina Farrell
Dr. Karolina Farrell is a neuroscientist focusing on neuropsychiatric disorders. She completed her undergraduate studies and earned her neuroscience PhD at University College London before undertaking a postdoctoral fellowship at the Francis Crick Institute. She currently works as a research fellow at University College London.
Research Interests
Mental health remains one of the least understood aspects of who we are and how we understand the world around us. I'm interested in leading and supporting neuroscientific research that aims to understand and develop better therapies for psychiatric symptoms, which occur in mental health disorders as well as in prodromal phases or in combination with other conditions such as in neurodegenerative, neurological, or immune disorders. I am currently exploring the efficacy of gene therapies in models of schizophrenia, dementia, and epilepsy.
Curriculum Vitae
Education & Employment
Research Fellow, University College London (UCL)
Research fellow investigating the neural basis of schizophrenia and epilepsy and testing novel gene therapies in the lab of Professor Gabriele Lignani.
Postdoctoral Fellow, The Francis Crick Institute
Postdoctoral fellow studying the neural basis of hallucinations and ketamine-induced psychosis in mice and humans in the lab of Dr Katharina Schmack.
PhD in Neuroscience and Mental Health, University College London (UCL)
PhD student on the MRC UCL-Birkbeck Doctoral Training Programme. Thesis investigated the role of VTA dopamine neurons in goal-directed navigation (Farrell et al., 2022).
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Awarded Sully Scholarship and UCL Neuroscience Early Career Runner-Up Prize, Junior Category.
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Attended the Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course, with a project focused on temporal difference reinforcement learning modelling.
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PhD Supervisors: Professor Aman Saleem (UCL) and Professor Armin Lak (University of Oxford).
Research Technician, Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, UCL
Research technician in the lab of Dr Yoh Isogai. Work included E.coli cell culture for large-scale protein production, building a MERFISH microscope, analysis of mouse pup-directed attack behaviours (Isogai et al., 2018), protocol curation, lab management and procurement, and molecular biology protocols including RT-PCR, gel electrophoresis, Western blot, Southern blot, transformation, competent cell culture, high-pressure liquid chromatography.
Neuroscience MSci, UCL
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Awarded 1st class integrated Master’s degree, with undergraduate studies including systems neuroscience, psychopharmacology and neural computation.
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Lab internships in the labs of Professor Andrew MacAskill, Professor Clare Stanford, and Professor Michael Häusser to learn neuronal reconstruction from EM, behavioural assays in mice and immunohistochemistry.
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MSci Supervisors: Professor Peter Dayan and Professor Jon Roiser, investigating valence effects on learned helplessness.
A-Levels, The Godolphin & Latymer School
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Awarded A*A*A in Maths, Biology and Chemistry.
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Awarded Dean Prize and Ennis Biology Prize.
Oct 2024 – present
Feb 2022 – Sep 2024
Oct 2017 – Dec 2021
Sep 2016 – Sep 2017
Sep 2012 – Jul 2016
Sep 2005 – Jul 2012
Awards & Funding
ARIA Precision Neurotechnologies
Co-wrote funded grant application for 'Minimally invasive self-regulating gene therapy for neuropsychiatric disorders', aiming to develop novel targeted gene therapy for schizophrenia, epilepsy, and dementia. Collaboration of 5 labs over 4 years, total award >£7.3 million.
UCL Neuroscience Early Career Runner-Up Prize, Junior Category
Awarded UCL Neuroscience Early Career Runner-Up Prize, Junior Category, with certificate presentation at the UCL Neuroscience Symposium 2023.
Cosyne Presenters travel grant for Cosyne 2022
Received travel grant to attend and present poster entitled 'VTA dopamine neurons signal phasic and ramping reward prediction error in goal-directed navigation' at the Cosyne (computational and systems neuroscience) 2022 conference.
FENS Travel grant for SfN 2021
Received travel grant to attend and present poster entitled 'Midbrain dopamine neurons provide teaching signals for goal-directed navigation' at the Neuroscience 2021 conference hosted by the Society for Neuroscience.
Max Perutz Science Writing Award
Shortlisted for the MRC Max Perutz Science Writing Award 2021 for article 'Toward reward: how dopamine calls us to action'. Awarded cash prize, science writing book, and writing masterclass.
Sully Scholarship upgrade prize
Awarded the Sully Scholarship for the best departmental upgrade.
Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course 2019
Accepted onto Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course 2019 at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, all expenses covered.
MRC Doctoral Training Programme
Accepted onto fully-funded 4-year doctoral programme, including research and conference expenses, funded by the Medical Research Council (UKRI).
Jan 2025
Jun 2023
Mar 2022
Nov 2021
Aug 2021
Feb 2020
Jun 2019 - Jul 2019
Oct 2017 - Dec 2021
Presentations & Talks
Poster presentations at SfN 2024, UCL Neuroscience Symposium 2024, SfN 2022, UCL Neuroscience Symposium 2022, Cosyne 2022, SfN 2021, FENS 2020, OIST 2019
Invited presentations at CortexLab, LakLab, University of Oxford (DPAG)
Invited speaker for Technician Experience
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Invited to present about career and experience as a research technician to MSc students at UCL.
Invited speaker for UCL Enrichment Series
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Invited to present about career and experience within neuroscience at UCL to undergraduate students.
Invited speaker for PhD applications
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Invited speaker for PhD applications tutorial for undergraduate MSci Neuroscience students, UCL.
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Invited panel member for PhD applications workshop for postgraduate MSc Psychology students, UCL.
Invited speaker at UCL Centre for Behavioural Change workshop
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Invited to speak about the PhD student-supervisor relationship and to inform UCL's sexual misconduct strategy.
2020-21
Dec 2021
Nov-Dec 2020
2017-19
Aug 2021
Aug 2019
Courses & Workshops
Barcelona Advanced Modelling of Behavior (BAMB!) Summer School
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Nine day summer school involving lectures, tutorials, and group projects on modelling behaviour, including reinforcement learning, Bayesian methods, mixture models, drift diffusion modelling, and artificial neural networks.
UCL Neuropixels Workshop
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Three day course involving lectures and tutorials on the use of Neuropixels and subsequent data analysis.
Allen Institute Neuropixels Workshop
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Two day course involving lectures and tutorials on the use of Neuropixels and subsequent data analysis.
UCLA Miniscope Workshop
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Two day course involving lectures and demonstrations of UCLA Miniscope construction, usage, and data analysis.
OIST Computational Neuroscience Course
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Three week course at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, involving lectures, coding workshops, and self-taught implementation of a reinforcement learning model.
Jul 2025
Oct 2021 + Oct 2024
Sep 2021
Nov 2019
Jun-Jul 2019
Leadership & Advocacy
Visiting artist, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance
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Contributor to project exploring musical interpretation of neural signals in psychosis and epilepsy models.
Chair of the Institute of Neurology BSU User Group, UCL
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Chair of meetings raising research needs and user feedback and liaising with the Facility Manager and research labs, including guiding future facility development. Also includes representing the Institute of Neurology on the UCL BSU Strategy Committee.
Committee member for Career Development and Mental Health Action Groups, UCL
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Voluntary position on the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committees at the Institute of Neurology at UCL, supporting the career development of early career and underrepresented researchers, as well as mental health and wellbeing of students and employees at the Institute.
Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Champion, MRC DTP, UCL
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Voluntary position within the MRC Doctoral Training Programme at UCL, including sitting on an inter-university PhD programme EDI committee, organising EDI events and outreach, and taking part in admissions and recruitment.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee Member
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Voluntary position at the Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience, UCL, involving organising EDI meetings and producing IBN EDI strategy.
MRC Doctoral Training Programme Student Representative, UCL
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Representing the UCL-Birkbeck MRC DTP among UK-wide MRC-funded DTPs.
Women’s Network Postgraduate Research Representative, UCL
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Representing postgraduate research students on the Women's Network committee, UCL.
UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences Postgraduate Research Representative, UCLU
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Elected to position by faculty vote, sat on UCL's research degrees' committee and faculty research degrees' committee.
Workshop leader for Active Bystander training, UCLU
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Led workshops training undergraduates and postgraduates on recognising consent and active bystander techniques as part of UCL's Zero Tolerance to Sexual Harassment campaign.
Blog-style science writer, HelloBio
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Invited to write blog-style articles about life as a scientist, including navigating the student-supervisor relationship and cutting costs in the lab.
Undergraduate Societal Roles
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Vice-President and Webmaster for UCL Neuroscience Society
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Open Portfolio Committee member for UCL Women’s Network.
Feb 2026
Jun 2025 - present
Nov 2024 - present
Nov 2020 - Dec 2021
Oct 2020 - Dec 2021
Jun 2020 - Dec 2021
Oct 2019 - Sep 2020
Oct 2018 - Oct 2019
Sep 2018 - Oct 2018
Sep 2018 - Jan 2019
Oct 2014 - Jul 2016
Academic Service
Lecturer on schizophrenia and reinforcement learning for Psychopharmacology undergraduate course at UCL
Contributions to peer review
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Review of research manuscripts for Nature Neuroscience, Nature Communications, Brain, Journal of Neuroscience, PLoS Computational Biology, eNeuro, Behavioral Neuroscience, Qeios.
Contributor to In Vivo Connectomics Roadmapping Workshop, sponsored by Advanced Research and Innovation Agency (ARIA)
Supervision of students
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2 PhD students at The Francis Crick Institute (2022-2025).
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MSci and MSc students, UCL (2020-present).
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Undergraduate student, Sainsbury Wellcome Centre (2016)
Postgraduate Teaching Assistant/Marker
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Postgraduate teaching assistant/marker for undergraduate modules, including neuroscience, schizophrenia, visual neuroscience, pharmacology, microbiology and molecular biology.
2026
Dec 2017 - present
Oct 2025
2016 - present
Jul 2018 - Mar 2019
Publications
2025
Farrell K, Viduolyte A, Schmack K (2025), Excitation-inhibition dynamics in auditory cortex shape hallucination-like perception, in preparation
Edwards MD, Yin Z, Sueda R, Gubanova A, Xu CS, Lakner V, Murchie M, Lee C-Y, Ng K, Farrell K, Faraway R, Ganguly S, Jacobs E, Bintu B, Isogai Y (2025), Combined transcriptomic, connectivity, and activity profiling of the medial amygdala using highly amplified multiplexed in situ hybridization (hamFISH), eLife, doi:10.7554/eLife.105388.1
2024
Edwards MD, Yin Z, Sueda R, Gubanova A, Xu CS, Lakner V, Murchie M, Lee C-Y, Ng K, Farrell K, Faraway R, Ganguly S, Jacobs E, Bintu B, Isogai Y (2024), Combined transcriptomic, connectivity, and activity profiling of the medial amygdala using highly amplified multiplexed in situ hybridization (hamFISH), bioRxiv, doi:10.1101/2024.09.14.613026
2022
Farrell K, Lak* A & Saleem* AB (2022), Midbrain dopamine neurons signal phasic and ramping reward prediction error during goal-directed navigation, Cell Reports 41(2): 111470, doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2022.111470
- awarded UCL Neuroscience Early Career Runner-Up Prize 2023
Farrell KJH (2022), The role of midbrain dopaminergic neurons in goal-directed navigation, Doctoral thesis (PhD), UCL, https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10149425/
2021
Lopes G, Farrell K, Horrocks EAB, Lee C-Y, Morimoto MM, Muzzu T, Papanikolaou A, Rodrigues FR, Wheatcroft T, Zucca S, Solomon SG & Saleem AB (2021), Creating and controlling visual environments using BonVision, eLife, doi: 10.7554/eLife.65541
Farrell K, Lak* A & Saleem* AB (2021), Midbrain dopamine neurons provide teaching signals for goal-directed navigation, bioRxiv, doi:10.1101/2021.02.17.431585
2020
Lopes G, Farrell K, Horrocks EAB, Lee C-Y, Morimoto MM, Muzzu T, Papanikolaou A, Rodrigues FR, Wheatcroft T, Zucca S, Solomon SG & Saleem AB (2020), BonVision – an open-source software to create and control visual environments, bioRxiv doi:10.1101/2020.03.09.983775
2019
Lak A, Okun M, Moss MM, Gurnani H, Farrell K, Wells MJ, Reddy CB, Kepecs A, Harris KD & Carandini M (2019), Dopaminergic and Prefrontal Basis of Learning from Sensory Confidence and Reward Value, Neuron 105: 1—12 doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2019.11.018
- also featured in Best of Neuron 2019-2020 as Most Widely Read Article
Lak A, Okun M, Moss MM, Gurnani H, Farrell K, Wells MJ, Reddy CB, Kepecs A, Harris KD & Carandini M (2019), Neural basis of learning guided by sensory confidence and reward value, bioRxiv doi:10.1101/411413
2018
Isogai Y, Wu Zheng, Love MI, Ahn MH-Y, Bambah-Mukku D, Hua V, Farrell K & Dulac C (2018), Multisensory Logic of Infant-Directed Aggression by Males, Cell 175(7): 1827—41 doi:10.1016/j.cell.2018.11.032
* denotes joint authors
