Dr Moataz Assem
Degrees & Honours
- MBBCh – Alexandria University, Egypt
- MSc Biomedical engineering – Bogazici University, Turkey
- PhD Medical Sciences (Cognitive neuroscience) - University of Cambridge, UK
Awards & Prizes
- Wellcome Trust Early Career Award
- Isaac Newton Trust Junior Research Fellowship at Murray Edwards
- Cambridge Trust Yousef Jameel PhD scholarship
- Experimental Psychology Society Frith prize (for exceptional body of work in the PhD thesis)
Research Interests
- Attention, cognitive control and intelligence
- Brain imaging (functional MRI, electrocorticography)
Moataz’s research investigates the brain basis of human intelligence. Specifically, he uses invasive and non-invasive brain imaging techniques to study the anatomy and physiology of a domain-general cognitive core circuit in the human brain.
Biography
Dr. Assem is a Wellcome Trust Early Career Fellow at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. He supervises students in neuroscience-related subjects including the Psychology and Behavioural Sciences (PBS) tripos. His research investigates the brain basis of human intelligence. Specifically, he investigates how a core domain-general circuit in the human brain organises our thoughts and behaviour. His research employs state of the art brain imaging approaches (precision fMRI, intracranial EEG) and brain stimulation (concurrent TMS-fMRI and intracranial stimulation). Dr Assem is multidisciplinary trained in medicine (Alexandria University, Egypt), biomedical engineering at (MSc Bogazici University, Turkey and MIT, US), and cognitive neuroscience (PhD, Cambridge). He is the recipient of the 11th Frith Prize from the Experimental Psychology Society for his PhD thesis. In parallel, since 2015, he has been involved in coordinating both the Egyptian and International Brain Bee competitions, the neuroscience olympiads for high school students.