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Murray Edwards College
University of Cambridge
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    Dr Moataz Assem

    MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit
    15 Chaucer Road
    Cambridge
    CB2 7EF

    Isaac Newton Trust Research Fellow in Neuroscience

    Physiology, Development and Neuroscience

    Fellow

    Degrees &  Honours

    • MBBCh – Alexandria University, Egypt
    • MSc Biomedical engineering – Bogazici University, Turkey
    • PhD Medical Sciences (Cognitive neuroscience) - University of Cambridge, UK

    Awards & Prizes         

    • 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                         

    Following training in medicine at Alexandria University (Egypt) and biomedical engineering at Bogazici University (Turkey) and MIT (US), Moataz undertook his PhD training at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge working with John Duncan. 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.

    Publications            

    Selected key publications

    • Assem M, Glasser MF, Van Essen DC, Duncan J. (2020) A Domain-General Cognitive Core Defined in a Multimodally Parcellated Human Cortex. Cerebral Cortex. 30(8):4361-4380. doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhaa023
    • Assem M, Blank IA, Mineroff Z, Ademoglu A, Fedorenko E. (2020) Activity in the Fronto-Parietal Multiple-demand Network is Robustly Associated with Individual Differences in Working Memory and Fluid Intelligence. Cortex. 131: 1-16. doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2020.06.013
    • Duncan J, Assem M, Shashidhara S. (2020) Integrated Intelligence from Distributed Brain Activity. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 24(10). doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2020.06.012