I am a PhD student in the University of Lancaster Physics Department, UK. For the last three years I have also been scientific secretary to the BRACCIA project.

I work in the medical physics group, with my supervisor Aneta Stefanovska. I apply and develop data processing and signal analysis techniques suitable for the study of nonlinear systems, working with physiological data timeseries, such as human cardiac, respiratory, blood flow, temperature, arterial blood pressure and intracranial pressure signals (ICP may be monitored in intensive care).

My research includes:

Dynamics, spectral characteristics and phase coherence of skin blood flow and skin temperature subjected to heating and cooling. My first publication as a co-author: Nonlinear Relationship between Level of Blood Flow and Skin Temperature for Different Dynamics of Temperature Change

Application of wavelet phase coherence methods, mutual information methods and harmonic detection methods to short noisy physiological timeseries, including cardiac, respiratory, blood pressure and blood flow signals. A presentation I gave at ECMTB08, Edinburgh, UK: Phase coherence

My PhD topic: New methods for evaluating cerebrovascular autoregulation in subjects with head injury, in cooperation with Dr Per Kvandal of Ulleval Hospital, Norway. A poster about our preliminary results presented at Physics Meets Biology 2008, St. Catherine's College, Oxford, UK: ICP and ABP

I am also involved in the EU NEST BRACCIA project, studying the dynamics of human physiology under anaesthesia. As well as making recordings of volunteer subjects in the Royal Lancaster Infirmary, I maintain the BRACCIA website and have helped organise the six-monthly BRACCIA coordination meetings. I gave this presentation at the September 2008 BRACCIA meeting: BRACCIA Extra

Some photos from after the meeting in Lausanne

You can contact me at l (dot) w (dot) sheppard (at) lancaster (dot) ac (dot) uk