SENA BIANNUAL MEETING

Miss Grainne Mckenna

Consultant Neurosurgeon

Dr Grainne McKenna is a Consultant Neurosurgeon at Barts Health, specialising in neurotrauma and neuro-oncology, based at The Royal London Hospital, one of the UK's busiest Major Trauma Centres. She joined the Neurotrauma Team in 2019 and established a weekly Head Injury multidisciplinary team (MDT) meeting to strengthen collaboration, improve clinical decision-making, and support earlier focus on prognostication and rehabilitation. She has also contributed to the development of a dedicated neurotrauma governance system that promotes team learning and clinical research.

Dr McKenna trained at the University of Cambridge, where she completed an MA in Neurophysiology, followed by clinical and foundation training at Addenbrooke's Hospital. She entered the North London neurosurgery training programme in 2009 and later completed an MSc in Medical Education with UCL and the Royal College of Physicians. Her academic interests focus on traumatic brain injury, particularly the challenges of uncertainty in clinical management and translating research findings into patient care.

Peripheral sensory ataxia and other sensory presentations

Dr Vijay Nar is a Consultant Neurologist and the SENA Representative for St George's Hospital. He is also the organiser of the 2025 Autumn Meeting.

Peripheral sensory ataxia and other sensory presentations

Dr Lina Nashef is a London-based Consultant Neurologist and epilepsy specialist known for her research on SUDEP and her contributions to medical education and international training.

Dr Monica Marta

Clinical academic neurologist

Dr Monica Marta is a clinical academic neurologist specialising in neuroinflammatory and neuroinfectious diseases, with particular expertise in multiple sclerosis (MS) and HIV-related neurological conditions. She has worked with the Barts MS Team and the HIV-Neurology service at Queen Mary University of London and Barts Health NHS Trust since 2007, contributing to investigator-led clinical trials in MS and research exploring the role of infections in neuroinflammatory disease. She has published extensively and remains actively involved in public and patient engagement initiatives.

She graduated from Coimbra University Medical School in 1994, including an ERASMUS year at the University of Bristol, and completed neurology specialist training in Porto with focused experience in neuroinflammation, HIV-neurology, and neurogenetic disorders. Her academic training includes a PhD from Karolinska Institutet, where she researched immune mechanisms and gene regulation in experimental models of multiple sclerosis, following further research work with Prof Olsson's neuroimmunology group in Stockholm.

Dr Sharmilee Gnanapavan

Consultant neurologist

Dr Sharmilee Gnanapavan is a Consultant Neurologist at Barts Health and Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust, and an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. She specialises in multiple sclerosis and neurological biomarkers, leads the CSF neurofilament service at the Blizard Institute, and co-chairs a consortium developing guidelines for neurofilament use in MS. Her research focuses on body fluid biomarkers, spanning basic science, clinical translation, and trials, and she also serves on the UK Brain Bank advisory board and as an expert for the UK MS Society.

Dr Angharad Davies

Clinical Academic Medical Microbiologist

Professor Davies is a clinical academic medical microbiologist who trained at St John's College, Cambridge, and the Royal Free Hospital, London, and completed a PhD at University College London on dormancy in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. She is an honorary consultant at the national Cryptosporidium Reference Unit for England and Wales and has a research focus on infectious diseases. She has held several national leadership roles across research, funding, and professional bodies, including positions with Health and Care Research Wales, the Medical Research Council, NIHR, and the Royal College of Pathologists. She is currently Vice-President of the Medical Women's Federation and was elected a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales in 2024.

Dr Vasiliki Tsirka

Senior Consultant in Clinical Neurophysiology and Epilepsy

Dr Tsirka is a Senior Consultant in Clinical Neurophysiology and Epilepsy at the Royal London Hospital and Clinical Lead for Neurophysiology. She trained at St Thomas' Hospital, the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, and King's College Hospital, and holds a PhD in Neurophysiology. Her expertise includes nerve conduction studies, electromyography, EEG, and video telemetry in adults and children, with a research focus on neurophysiology techniques and electrophysiological analysis tools in collaboration with Queen Mary University.

Dr Harri Siva

Dr Stephen Keddie

Neurology Consultant at Barts Health NHS Trust

Dr Stephen Keddie is a Consultant Neurologist based in London at Barts Health and The Royal London NHS Trust, with research interests in neuroimmunology, POEMS syndrome, and inflammatory neuropathies. His work focuses on developing novel assays for peripheral nerve damage, including approaches using MSD, SIMOA, and human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs).

Prof. Charles Marshall

Clinical Director for Dementia at NHS London

Professor Charles Marshall is a Clinical Director for Dementia at NHS London and a Consultant Neurologist at Barts Health NHS Trust, East London NHS Foundation Trust, and London Bridge Hospital (HCA Healthcare). He leads dementia research at the Centre for Preventive Neurology, focusing on early detection, digital, blood, and neuroimaging biomarkers, health inequalities, and dementia epidemiology.

He trained in neuroscience at the University of Oxford and completed his MBBS and PhD at University College London. A recognised expert in cognitive disorders, his clinical and research interests include Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Lewy body dementia, frontotemporal dementia, mild cognitive impairment, and emerging amyloid-targeting therapies.

The science of signs in FND and their clinical implications

Dr Jan Coebergh is a Consultant Neurologist at St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Ashford & St Peter's Hospitals, specialising in movement disorders, cognitive neurology, Wilson's disease, and Functional Neurological Disorder (FND). He leads the FND specialist clinic at St George's, which integrates multidisciplinary care including specialist physiotherapy, and also runs a Movement Disorders clinic at Ashford & St Peter's.

Dr Coebergh's research focuses on the semiotics of neurological signs, patient narratives in FND, the neurocognitive basis of symptom generation, Parkinson's disease, neuropsychiatry, and he is currently following a cohort of patients with musical hallucinations. A strong advocate for interdisciplinary approaches, he serves as Clinical Lead for Neurosciences at Ashford & St Peter's and Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care System.

He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and a member of the Movement Disorder Society, the Association of British Neurologists, and the British Neuropsychiatry Association. Dr Coebergh regularly lectures medical students at King's College London, Surrey Medical School, and St George's University of London.

New therapies in Headache

Ms Anne Marie Logan is a Consultant Physiotherapist and Headache Specialist Nurse at St George's Hospital, London, and Co-Lead of the Headache Service. She specialises in musculoskeletal physiotherapy for chronic migraine, cluster headache, and other headache disorders.

Anne Marie qualified from St Thomas' Hospital and completed her MSc in musculoskeletal physiotherapy at UCL in 1994. She became an Independent Non-Medical Prescriber in 2015 and has been with the headache service since 2010. Her research focuses on patient-reported outcomes, nurse-led interventions, and integrating CGRP-targeted therapies into clinical practice.

She actively contributes to national headache working groups, aiming to improve treatment access, and regularly lectures on headache management and self-management strategies. She is a member of the Musculoskeletal Association of Chartered Physiotherapists and the British Association for the Study of Headache.

How to evaluate a patient with Primary Progressive Aphasia

Prof Peter Garrard is a Consultant Neurologist and Professor of Neurology at St George's, University of London, specialising in neurodegenerative dementias such as Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal dementia, and Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA). He directs the dementia research group at St George's Neuroscience and Cell Biology Research Institute, with a focus on language deterioration in dementia, semantic memory loss, computational linguistics for diagnosis, imaging of progressive aphasia, and molecular pathology of frontotemporal dementia.

Prof Garrard graduated from the University of Oxford in 1985, earned his MD ChB from the University of Bristol in 1990, and completed a PhD at the University of Cambridge in 1999. He has held clinical posts at leading UK hospitals and academic roles at UCL and the University of Southampton. His research has been supported by major funding bodies including the Medical Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust.

Clinically, he specialises in cognitive and language disorders, early-onset dementia, and frontotemporal dementia. He is also noted for his work on literary analysis in dementia, bridging neurology and the humanities.

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