Rate My Professor Thomas Okell

Thomas Okell is an Associate Professor in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford, holding the position of Sir Henry Dale Fellow, Head of Neurovascular Imaging at the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (FMRIB), and OxCIN MRI Graduate Programme Director. He recently joined the Podium Institute within the Institute of Biomedical Engineering as Associate Professor of Technologies for Mental Health & Cognition and is a Fellow of St Catherine's College. Okell earned his MSci and DPhil degrees from the University of Oxford, where he developed novel non-invasive MRI techniques during his doctorate under Peter Jezzard at FMRIB. Following his DPhil, he conducted postdoctoral research at FMRIB. From March 2015 to June 2020, he served as University Research Lecturer and Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow at the University of Oxford (NDCN/WIN/FMRIB). In June 2020, he was promoted to Associate Professor.

Okell's research focuses on developing advanced non-invasive MRI methods to visualize blood flow in cerebral arteries and quantify perfusion in brain tissue, with emphasis on arterial spin labelling (ASL) and vessel-encoded pseudocontinuous ASL (VEPCASL). These innovations support neurovascular imaging in health and disease, including applications in large-scale studies like UK Biobank. He co-authored the book Introduction to Perfusion Quantification using Arterial Spin Labelling (Oxford University Press, 2018) with Michael Chappell and Bradley MacIntosh. Prominent publications include Multimodal population brain imaging in the UK Biobank prospective epidemiological study (Nature Neuroscience, 2016; 2346 citations), Medium-term effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection on multiple vital organs, exercise capacity, cognition, quality of life and mental health, post-hospital discharge (eClinicalMedicine, 2021; 815 citations), The dorsal posterior insula subserves a fundamental role in human pain (Nature Neuroscience, 2015; 485 citations), and Arterial spin labeling for the measurement of cerebral perfusion and angiography (Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism, 2018; 132 citations). Okell has received fellowships from the Wellcome Trust, Royal Society, and Royal Academy of Engineering. He directs the OxCIN MRI Graduate Programme, supervises DPhil students, and contributes to teaching and committee roles in neuroimaging.