Dr Christine Farrugia

Christine's research is aimed at improving and implementing analysis techniques for the extraction of biomarkers (i.e. indicative signs of disease) from clinical MRI data. Her research primarily centres on multiple sclerosis and is part of the PrecisionMS programme. Within this programme, she works on validating existing processing and analysis pipelines, while also spearheading the development of novel methodologies specifically tailored for clinically-acquired MRI data.

Christine holds a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Malta (2012) and pursued further studies in Astrophysics for her Master's degree. She continued her academic journey with a PhD. in Mathematical Physics (Cosmology), transitioning to the medical field in 2021, when she joined the Boundaries of the Brain (BOB) neuroimaging laboratory at the University of Malta. Here, she focused on the extraction of patterns of local homogeneity from brain activity (fMRI data) and the mitigation of artefacts introduced during the data processing phase. She was also involved in the set-up and management of a new MRI data collection laboratory.

Related links

Edinburgh Imaging multiple sclerosis research page (University of Edinburgh website)