Researcher profile

Álvaro Díez

Research experience: My research career started in 2005 during the last year of my Psychology degree (Complutense University of Madrid; Spain); at the time, I was funded by a final year scholarship to collaborate as research assistant at the Department of Psychobiology. In 2006 I started my Master’s degree in Clinical Neuropsychology at the University of Salamanca (Spain), where I developed expertise in cognitive and clinical assessments. In 2008 I began my PhD studies and was awarded a 4-year competitive fellowship co-funded by the Junta de Castilla y León (Spanish Region) and the European Social Fund. During this time, I developed expertise in psychosis, I achieved relevant teaching experience, and was trained in EEG methodology. My PhD research was focused on the study of brain activity disorganization in patients with schizophrenia and its relation to clinical and cognitive outcome. I also worked with other neuroimaging techniques such as MRI and SPECT, although quantitative EEG and evoked potential analyses were my preference. This hard work led to being awarded in 2011 and 2012 two Spanish-funded research grants as co-investigator, and in 2013 my PhD degree. In 2013 I was awarded a ‘Marie Curie’ grant from the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme, a highly prestigious and competitive fellowship, to start my first post-doctoral position at the Division of Psychiatry – UCL with Dr. Elvira Bramon. My project ‘Cortical disorganization in psychosis’ gave me experience in advanced methods of analysis of neural connectivity and its disorganization in psychosis by using Dynamic Causal Modelling in EEG data. This was done in collaboration with the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, meeting world-class neuroscientists such as Prof. Karl Friston, developer of these methods. In 2015 I returned to Spain with my second postdoctoral position after being awarded the prestigious ‘Juan de la Cierva’ fellowship. Currently I am working with Prof. Fernando Maestú and Dr. Ángel Nevado at the Lab of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience – Centre for Biomedical Technology (Complutense University and Technical University of Madrid). The main objective of my work here is to use my expertise in neural connectivity methods to the study of EEG and MEG data in patients with psychiatric disorders. My current research project, settle in Madrid, requires collaboration with my former teams at the University of Salamanca (Spain) and UCL (UK). Teaching experience: During my academic career, I have accrued substantial teaching experience. In 2006 at the same time I started my MSc degree in Clinical Neuropsychology at the University of Salamanca, I also completed a post-graduate degree in Teaching Methods and Psychopedagogy at the Complutense University of Madrid. This Spanish official certificate aims to give those students with a University degree the required skills (both theoretical and methodological) for teaching at the secondary school level, including 100 hours of on-site teaching practice at schools. From 2008 to 2012, as a pre-doctoral grant holder, one of my duties at the University of Salamanca was to give support to my Department’s teaching activities providing 60 lecturing hours per year. During these years, I prepared, managed and performed 240 hours for the 1st and 3rd years of the Psychology degree; teaching the subjects ‘Neurobiological Basics of Personality’ and ‘Neuropsychology’. Later, during my first postdoctoral position at UCL (2013-2015), I taught the module ‘Introduction to Biological Research in Mental Health’ for the MSc in Mental Health Sciences Research. Currently, during my second postdoctoral position, I am lecturing 48 hours per year the module “Basic Psychology” for the degree in Social Working at the Complutense University of Madrid. In 2017 I was accredited for University teaching by the (Spanish) National Agency for the Evaluation of Quality and Accreditation (ANECA). Science communication has also been present throughout my academic career; ranging from several scientific publications to numerous conference participations and more informal meeting presentations at the University. Firstly, I have a total of 13 published scientific articles in relevant peer-reviewed journals, as well as a total of 10 participations at important national and International conferences. Finally, I have presented my research progress in many intra- and inter-Departmental meetings; and have also taken part of different outreach experiences aiming to make my research accessible to the general public.