Christian Beckmann is the designated chair for NeuroImaging Methods at MIRA Institute at the University of Twente and the PI ‘Statistical Imaging Neurosciences’ at the DCCN in Nijmegen. He is a departmental senior research fellow at the Oxford Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain (FMRIB) and a honorary senior lecturer at Imperial College London. Christian holds a DPhil from Oxford (2004) and is known for developing cutting-edge methods for functional and structural MR image analysis, machine learning and imaging statistics (>70 articles, >3800 citations, H-index: 23). From 2007-2010 be developed the Clinical, Cognitive and Computational Neuroimaging Lab (C3NL) at Imperial College London. His work mainly focuses on approaches to utilise information theoretic principles for the model-free analysis of FMRI data. Christian’s research is being disseminated to the academic community via FSL (FMRIB Software Library), a comprehensive software package for analysis of MRI data, made freely available to the research community since 2000, and used in hundreds of institutions with >1000 individuals and groups. For the past 10 years, Christian has been co-organising a week-long intensive course on FSL. Christian’s research has been funded to the tune of 1.9 M€ and he has contributed significantly to the Human Connectome Project ($30m). Christian has recently been awarded the 2011 Wiley Young Investigator Award by the Organisation for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM).

Recent key publications by Christian Beckmann:

1.       Damoiseaux, J.S., Rombouts, S.A.R.B., Barkof, F., Scheltens, P., Stam, C.J., Smith, S.M. and Beckmann, C.F. (2006): Consistent resting-state networks across healthy subjects, P NATL ACAD SCI USA.  103(37):13848–13853.

2.       Filippini, N., MacIntosh, B.J., Hough, M.G., Goodwin, G.M., Frisoni, G.B., Smith, S.M., Matthews, P.M., Beckmann, C.F. and Mackay, C.E. (2009): Distinct patterns of brain activity in young carriers of the APOE-ε4 allele. P NATL ACAD SCI USA. 106:7209--7214.

3.       Smith, SM., Fox, P.T., Miller, K.L., Glahn, D.C., Fox, P.M., Mackay, C.E., Filippini, N., Watkins, K.E., Toro, R., Laird, A.R. and Beckmann, C.F. (2009): Close correspondence of major functional networks in rest and under task. P NATL ACAD SCI USA. 106:13040-13045.

4.       Cole DM; Smith SM; Beckmann CF. (2010). Advances and pitfalls in the analysis and interpretation of resting-state FMRI data. Front Syst Neurosci. 4:8.

5.       Doria V, Beckmann CF, Arichi T, Merchant N, Groppo M, Turkheimer FE, Counsell SJ, Murgasova M, Aljabar P, Nunes RG, Larkman DJ, Rees G, Edwards AD (2011). Emergence of resting state networks in the preterm human brain. P NATL ACAD SCI USA. 107(46):20015-20.