CEPS CDT Student Laura Damm Awarded 2025/26 IHE Impact Fellowship
Congratulations to CEPS CDT student Laura Damm, who has been selected as a 2025/26 Institute of Healthcare Engineering (IHE) Impact Fellow at UCL.
The prestigious year-long fellowship supports early career researchers to develop the skills, confidence and networks needed to create impact beyond academia, including engagement with patients, community groups, policymakers and external partners.
Laura is a PhD candidate in Neural Engineering, where her research focuses on decoding finger movements to support stroke rehabilitation. Her work aims to develop a closed-loop system that combines brain-computer interfaces with robotic actuation, helping stroke survivors regain function through engaging rehabilitation approaches, including music-based activities such as piano playing.
Speaking about her motivation, Laura said:
“I want to create research that helps people with technology that inspires them. My goal is to allow people to get a bit of their life back after stroke and to improve rehabilitation efforts with creative methods like playing the piano.”
As an IHE Impact Fellow, Laura will receive specialist training in engagement and impact, including co-production, policy engagement, media engagement and science communication. The programme also offers mentorship, peer learning opportunities and support to apply newly developed skills through practical engagement activities.
The fellowship recognises Laura's commitment to translating cutting-edge research into meaningful real-world benefit. We are delighted to see her achievements recognised through this award and look forward to following her progress throughout the programme.
Congratulations, Laura, on this well-deserved achievement.
About Laura Damm
Laura Damm is a PhD student at UCL on the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Connected Electronic and Photonic Systems (CEPS CDT) programme. Her PhD research is on The Effect of Single Session Implicit Motor Learning on Finger Motor Imagery for EEG BCI, supervised by Professor Andreas Demosthenous, funded by EPSRC programme grant EP/S022139/1.
Find out more
Meet the 2025-26 IHE Impact Fellows
Published: August 2026