Winok Lapidaire

Winok completed her undergraduate degree at University College Utrecht, the Netherlands. She subsequently obtained two masters degrees by following the dual masters in brain and mind sciences at University College London and École Normale Supérieure (Paris, France). She was awarded a Child Health Research studentship to fund a PhD on the long-term effect of neonatal nutrition on the preterm brain at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. This study was an adult follow-up of a nutritional intervention trial in preterm infants and entailed brain MRI scans and cognitive testing.

Her current role as a post-doctoral researcher also involves brain MRI analysis of preterm and term born adults. She is particularly interested in the relationship between the structure and function of the heart and the brain, the so-called heart-brain axis. Winok is an investigator in the Trial of Exercise to Prevent Hypertension in young Adults (TEPHRA) study, where she will examine the relationship between blood pressure and the structure of the heart and blood vessels in the body with the structure of the blood vessels and tissue structure of the brain in young adults. Another point of interest is whether these features and the relationships differ in those who were born preterm.