SWC Research Fellow Dr Edmund Chong has received a Wellcome Early-Career Award. This award is a testament to Dr Chong’s innovative research and his commitment to advancing our understanding of spatial working memory.

“I am very excited to receive this award. It will enable me to pursue more comprehensive approaches and establish new collaborations, particularly in the area of modelling neural dynamics. These collaborations will be crucial to advancing our understanding of working memory,” commented Dr Chong, Research Fellow in the Akrami Lab at SWC and recipient of the Wellcome Early-Career Award.

The Wellcome Early-Career Award will provide Dr Chong with funding for five years and will cover both research expenses along with a full-time Research Assistant. With the funding, Dr Chong hopes to utilise cutting-edge techniques, including optogenetics and integrated silicon probes, to manipulate and measure neural activity during working memory.

In addition to advancing innovative techniques, the project also has the potential to impact human health. By studying the neural dynamics of spatial working memory, Dr Chong’s research could lead to new ways of understanding and treating neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

“Spatial working memory is one of the characteristic deficits in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. My project is still very much focussed on the level of basic research in the short to medium term, but if we can better characterise the neural dynamics of spatial working memory and find ways to manipulate them, it could open up new avenues for designing stimulation treatments for these diseases,” explained Dr Chong.

"I am beyond ecstatic for Edmund, and for the lab! This award will enable Edmund to pursue even stronger his ambitious project on investigating neural dynamics involved in spatial working memory, in unprecedented detail. Working memory is fundamental to many cognitive processes. It is flexible, allowing for manipulation and integration of different sources of information. Edmund’s project aims to for the first time causally investigate neural dynamics supporting working memory," said Dr Athena Akrami, Group Leader at SWC.

With the Wellcome Early-Career Award, Dr. Chong is well on his way to establishing himself as a leading independent researcher. By the end of the five-year grant period, he hopes to be ready to lead his own research programme, continuing to push the boundaries of our understanding of spatial working memory and its implications for human health.

Expressing his gratitude to all those who supported him, Dr Chong said: “I would like to thank Athena and the UCL grant application support group for their invaluable assistance. I am really excited about the grant and the opportunities it provides. I am looking forward to collaborating with NYU and the University of Southern California.”

To find out more about Dr Chong and his research at SWC, visit the Akrami Lab page

About Dr Edmund Chong
Dr. Chong is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre in University College London. In addition to the Wellcome Award, he was previously a European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) Postdoctoral Fellow. Dr. Chong has long-standing interests in understanding internal representations of the brain, from sensory perception to working memory. His body of work investigates the common theme of how internal representations are not direct copies of the external world, but constructions that can flexibly incorporate predictions, or filter out redundant information for pattern matching. In his postgraduate work using fMRI in humans, he investigated how the brain constructs visual representations based on prior predictions. For his PhD, using optogenetics, electrophysiological recordings, computational modelling, and a novel behavioural paradigm in mice, he uncovered how the brain constructs internal templates from learned sensory inputs for pattern recognition. For his current work, he has developed a novel, touchscreen-based working memory paradigm in rats (Chong et al., 2022), and uses high-density electrophysiology and optogenetic manipulation of brain circuits to study the neural dynamics of working memory.

About Wellcome Early-Career Awards
Wellcome Early-Career Awards provide funding for early-career researchers from any discipline who are ready to develop their research identity. Through innovative projects, they will deliver shifts in understanding related to human life, health and wellbeing. By the end of the award, they will be ready to lead their own independent research programme. For further information, please visit the Wellcome website.

Media contact:
For more information or to speak to Dr Edmund Chong, please contact:

•    April Cashin-Garbutt 
Head of Research Communications and Engagement, SWC
E: a.cashin-garbutt@ucl.ac.uk T: +44 (0)20 3108 8028