Current Appointment: Research associate at the UCL School of Pharmacy on The Human Brain Project (EU flagship project).

07/2010-10/2013: Research associate at the UCL Institute for Women’s Health, Maternal and Fetal Medicine. Achievements: Pursued my own independent research line on protein deimination in neonatal hypoxic ischemic insult (Rice-Vannucci mouse model) alongside my prime research project on the role of cytokines in the same model.  Confirmed my hypothesis of a crucial role for protein deimination in neonatal hypoxic ischemic insult and demonstrated that by pharmacological inhibition of peptidylarginine deiminases, neuronal damage, cell death and microglial activation are significantly reduced in neonatal HIE.

05/2006–06/2010: Research associate at the UCL Institute of Child Health, Developmental Biology Unit and Neuronal Development Unit. Achievements: Identified novel post-translational modifications involved in spinal cord regenerative ability from genomic and proteomic screenings. Developed my independent line of research on the role of peptidylarginine deiminases, the mediator of post-translational protein deimination, in spinal cord injury (chick model), demonstrating a significant improvement of neuronal survival upon pharmacological inhibition of peptidylarginine deiminases. Research on PADs in neuronal stem cells.

07/2003-12/2005: Academic visitor at the University Hospital Basel, Switzerland. Research on teleost and human complement system ontogeny.

06/2002- 10/2005: PhD student/Research assistant at the Institute for Experimental Pathology, University of Iceland. Achievements: Designed my independent research project on teleost fish complement system ontogeny and passed it by thesis committee. Performed the first ontogeny study on the complement system in an early vertebrate species, supporting my hypothesis on diverse roles of the complement system in organogenesis and the immune defense. Won the Prof. Axelsson´s Young Investigators Award, Medical Faculty, University of Iceland, 2005 for my PhD research project and associated publications. Obtained international funding (EMBO short term fellowship) to collaborate with the MRC Immunochemistry Unit, University of Oxford (Prof KBM. Reid, FRS) as academic visitor on protein purification of complement system components, and from the IUBMB to collaborate as academic visitor on the complement system regulator CRIT at the University Hospital Basel (Profs J.Schifferi & J.Inal).

06/2001 – 06/2002: Research assistant at the Institute for Experimental Pathology, University of Iceland on EU project FISHAID QLRT-1999-31076. The project focused on comparative immune system ontogeny studies of 5 teleost species.

09/1999-05/2001: M.Sc. student/research assistant at the faculty of Medicine, University of Iceland. Obtained international funding from the FEBS to collaborate with the University of Tromsø, Norway, as academic visitor on cDNA library construction and immunoscreening.

07/1998 – 08/1999: Research assistant at the Institute for Experimental Pathology, University of Iceland during BSc studies. Immunological studies on IgM and CRP.