MsAmina Benkhelfa

Amina Benkhelfa (MSc, BSc) is a Research Assistant at the Child Health Unit, School of Public Health and the Division of Psychiatry, Department of Brain Science. She has joined Imperial College London to coordinate the ongoing Health and Activity of Pupils in the Primary Years (HAPPY) project in pursuit of supporting effective health promotion for young children and people of all ages. She also supports the IMPACT study, recruiting young people to improve uptake of digital mental health resources and positve help-seeking behaviours.

She has strong academic background in Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, as reflected in receiving the Carthy Prize (awarded by QMUL) for her academic performance. Her previous work involved conducting primary experimental studies including emotion bias in interpreting ambiguous facial expressions in affective disorders, and a secondary analysis of immersive virtual reality navigation strategies as a clinical behavioural marker for early Alzheimer’s disease. She has had some hands-on experience analysing brain imaging fMRI and EEG data, as well as large data sets using MATLAB, R, Stata, and Statistical Parametric Mapping for neuroimaging (SPM).

Other strong research interests include the how young people interact with digital spaces, how exercise activation and reactivity predict depression symptoms, and pathways to preventing the development of neurodegenerative disease.

She is currently looking to pursue a PhD, with an interdisciplinary research focus aimed at improving the physical and mental health of young people through translational research methods.