We are delighted to share that SWC Research Fellow Dr Oliver Gauld has received a Wellcome Early-Career Award, commencing January 2025.

This prestigious award recognises Dr Gauld’s innovative research on economic decision-making and his meaningful contributions to understanding the neural mechanisms underlying these complex processes.

“I am very happy to receive the Wellcome Early-Career Award. It’s a testament to how much we’ve achieved so far in Ann Duan’s lab, and the incredibly supportive environment of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre. This award will allow me to develop my skills as an independent researcher and to continue to pursue bold research questions,” commented Dr Gauld, Research Fellow in the Duan Lab at SWC and recipient of the Wellcome Early-Career Award. 

The Wellcome Early-Career Award will provide Dr Gauld with funding to support his salary and research expenses for five years. The award will also cover a full-time Research Assistant for three years, which Dr Gauld hopes will help to streamline experiments in the lab along with furthering his mentoring skills.

Dr Gauld will continue to research the neural mechanisms underlying complex economic decisions, which have traditionally only been studied in humans and non-human primates. By developing innovative behavioural tasks for rodents, Dr Gauld and the team hope to uncover how the brain drives these complex behaviours, including the causal mechanisms underpinning risky decisions. Their findings could have future implications for understanding disorders involving changes in reward processing, such as gambling disorder and addictions.

“I am really excited for Oli for getting this prestigious award. Oli has made incredible progress in establishing creative approaches to answer long-standing questions in economic decision-making. This award will facilitate his scientific goals and career development in significant ways. It is a pleasure and an honour to have Oli as a colleague, and I can’t wait to see what he will accomplish in the coming years," commented Dr Ann Duan, Group Leader at SWC.

By the end of the five-year funding period, Dr Gauld hopes to have gained extensive experience as an independent researcher managing a small team and aspires to progress to lead his own research group.

Reflecting on the award, Dr Gauld said, “I am so grateful to Ann and the entire Duan lab team. I would also like to thank Jeff Erlich and all the other faculty members at SWC and the wider UCL neuroscience community for their feedback. I couldn’t have done this without the support from the SWC too including the NRF, IT, Communications and Finance teams.” 

To find out more about Dr Gauld and his research at SWC, visit the Duan Lab page.

About Dr Oliver Gauld

Dr Gauld is a research fellow in the Duan lab and is interested in the neural circuits involved in flexible and value-based decision-making. After completing his undergraduate studies in Neuroscience at Edinburgh University, and working as a research assistant at Oxford University, he joined UCL in 2014 for a PhD in Michael Hausser’s neural computation lab. During this time, Dr Gauld developed a project that combined behavioural psychophysics, population calcium imaging and targeted optogenetic manipulations to study the neural codes underlying whisker sensation in somatosensory cortex. At the SWC, he is helping develop behavioural tasks to study value-based decision making in head-fixed mice, and performing recording and perturbation experiments to identify and probe the neural circuit mechanisms involved in ‘risky’ decision-making.

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: Wellcome Early-Career Awards

Media contact

For more information or to speak to Dr Oliver Gauld, 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

Banner image illustration by Yuanwai Bai