Lauren Carson

Postdoctoral Research Project Manager

Contact details

Biography

Lauren Carson has a BSc (Hons) in Physiology (King’s College London, 2011), and an MSc in Reproductive and Developmental Biology (Imperial College London, 2012). Subsequently, Lauren obtained her PhD in Clinical Medicine Research (Imperial College London, 2016) with a focus on the impact of maternal antenatal anxiety/depression on placental functioning and its potential effect on the child’s emotional and behavioural development (assessed through postnatal biological, psychological and behavioural assessment).

Following her PhD Lauren returned to King’s College London in 2016 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate working on several projects including PRIMH (Promoting Recovery in Mental Health is an evaluation of an intervention to improve service responses to domestic and sexual violence), For Baby’s Sake (a manualised whole-family programme that addresses cycles of domestic abuse), and ESMI MBU (investigating the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of psychiatric Mother and Baby Units (MBUs) compared with general psychiatric wards or care from intensive Crisis Resolution Teams (CRTs) for acute severe postnatal disorders for women in the year post birth).

Following this Lauren joined the Department of Psychological Medicine, King’s College London in 2018 as a Postdoctoral Research Project Manager working across two programmes funded by the MRC. The first is the Mental Health Pathfinder Award which build on the departments existing strengths in clinical informatics and deliver projects that provide the necessary groundwork for a world-leading national mental health research platform. Specifically, the Award enables the development of algorithms to extract mental health data from electronic health records; and to establish the feasibility of working with schools and education data for mental health research. Second is the eLIXIR Study, a programme that combines information from health records and blood samples from mothers and children from a large population in an area of South London. This new and important resource will help to explore the ‘life course’ of some of the most common diseases, and help scientists and doctors understand more about disease and the processes leading up to disease.

Lauren has presented her research as national and international conferences and has won several awards based on these presentations.

Research Interests