Dr Slater's fellowship, titled: 'Understanding mechanisms that drive pain perception in early human development’ will provide five year's of funding, and is set to start in November 2017.
Her vision is to transform understanding of the development of pain pathways in human infants, and to translate this into improvements in clinical practice.
It's a privilege to be a Wellcome Trust Fellow and I am thrilled to have received this fantastic award. The Fellowship provides a tremendous opportunity to advance paediatric neuroscience and to improve the treatment of infant pain. - Dr Rebeccah Slater
The Fellowship will enable insights from Dr Slater's work to be developed into broader concepts in human brain development. In particular, Dr Slater's approach provides a unique experimental opportunity to understand how the external environment shapes central nervous system (CNS) function during early human development – a fundamental question to which these studies in the youngest infants will bring great value.
"By shaping the future direction of paediatric neuroimaging research I will translate advances that have revolutionised our understanding of adult pain into the developing human brain. I will take a multi-disciplinary approach, using sophisticated mathematical approaches to derive maximum value from human data," Dr Slater said.