ASP Member Spotlight
This spotlight is on ASP member, Dr Jessie Leuk! Jessie is an early career Postdoctoral Research Fellow doing exciting research within the Dementia Research Centre Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, where she works at the intersection of neuroimaging, biomarkers, and cognitive neuroscience. Her research focuses on understanding brain ageing and the early stages of neurodegenerative disease by integrating multiple sources of information, including functional brain measures such as fNIRS, digital cognitive assessments, and blood-based biomarkers.
“What motivates me is the opportunity to move beyond understanding mechanisms to actually intervening”
Jessie’s interest in research is driven by a long-standing curiosity about how neural systems support cognition and how these processes change with age. While understanding these mechanisms remains important, what drives her most now is the opportunity to translate scientific insights into meaningful interventions by using biomarkers to identify early changes and guide strategies that may alter trajectories before significant cognitive decline occurs.
A central theme of Jessie’s work is that brain health cannot be understood through any single measure alone. Instead, she takes a multimodal approach, bringing together biological, cognitive, and functional markers to better capture the complexity of brain ageing. She is particularly interested in how advances in machine learning can help researchers integrate these complex datasets, uncover meaningful patterns, and support detection and more personalized interventions.
Like many early-career researchers, Jessie spends her days wearing multiple hats—scientist, analyst, writer, and project manager, sometimes all before lunch! Accompanying this juggling act are carefully curated soundtracks, with different playlists reserved for reading, writing, and even debugging code. It’s important to have the right vibe for your vibe coding or getting in the zone for whatever you are working on!
Looking ahead, Jessie hopes to continue building collaborative research that is both rigorous and practical, contributing to scalable approaches for maintaining brain health and supporting cognitive resilience. Her research reflects the interdisciplinary nature of modern psychophysiology and we are very excited to follow her contributions as she continues to advance this rapidly evolving field.
If you would like to connect with Jessie to learn more about her work (or get music suggestions!), you can find her on ResearchGate, LinkedIn, or Instagram.
