Home › Alumni News and Updates › Tom Schofield

Tom Schofield

Back to Alumni News and Updates

 

Tom Schofield  (MTBS 1989-1994)

(deceased 29th November 2010 aged 34 years)

An avid reader and keen cricketer, Tom’s parents acknowledge how the encouragement given by his teachers at school helped to prepare their son for his career path.  On leaving school, Tom went to Durham University to study Philosophy and Psychology.  During the next few years he combined work with further study and eventually did a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL.  This led him to be involved in research projects at this university. 

On the first anniversary of the tragic death of this Merchant Taylors’ pupil with a brilliant future ahead of him, two of his former colleagues at UCL share some of Tom’s personal qualities and contributions to medical research.  Tom had left London to take up a new job in New York and, after being there only a couple of months, he was killed in a coach crash in Columbia, South America, during a Thanksgiving Holiday break.

 

A tribute to Tom Schofield's work
at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL, London.
By Professor Cathy Price and Dr Alex Leff.


Tom Schofield

Cathy Price

I first met Tom in November 2004, when he was working in a recruitment consultancy business and studying part time for a Masters in Cognitive Neuropsychology. As part of this course, he needed to complete a research project and he contacted us because he was particularly interested in learning about the brain. Tom didn't have any previous research experience and therefore I had no idea how lucky we were to have captured his interest.

My first impression of Tom was that he was unusually laid back. He sat almost horizontally in the chair resting his head against the wall but he clearly wasn't falling asleep. I found him
very charming, engaging and thoughtful and I enjoyed his interest, enthusiasm and good will. The timing of Tom's visit was perfect for us. We were in the early stages of setting up a database where we were collating brain scans from Stroke patients with the aim of trying to understand why some of the patients recovered their speech better than others.

To understand patients, we also needed to understand the healthy brain. During Tom's first research project, he was involved in addressing 3 questions: (1) What are the brain regions that support reading and object naming? (2) How does brain activity differ with age? (3) How does brain activity change after Stroke? Tom's role was to recruit healthy adult participants and look after them while they were in the brain scanner.

Perhaps not surprisingly for those who knew him, Tom was awarded a distinction for his project. Although the results of his first experiment were not very exciting, he was faultless in his practical skills and aptitude, his ability to change direction with the data, for asking new questions and writing in an informed and informative way. Tom was probably rather surprised by his distinction but his interest was fired and he clearly wanted to continue. The opening came when one of our colleagues, Dr Alex Leff advertised for a research assistant to participate in a new study that aimed to investigate how recovery from stroke could be helped with behavioral and pharmaceutical treatments. Alex will tell you about this in his own words. In ending, I'd like to tell you that the fruits of Tom's work are still with us because Tom designed a database that allows us to store and retrieve information from any combination of stroke patients that have participated in our research. We delight in our memories of Tom and it's still hard to accept that we won't be seeing him again.

Alex Leff

I worked with Tom for four years on a complex and ambitious treatment trial. The aim was to improve the language function of patients who had suffered a stroke. We had two interventions: a computer-based program ,which patients would practice each day, and a drug, donepezil, which is usually used to help people with Alzheimer's disease. We were particularly interested in how these treatments might change patients brain function, so we measured this with two techniques: fMRI, that measure changes in brain blood flow, and MEG, that measures brainwaves. 27 patients took part and were all seen six times, each time having brain scans and language tests, which was a huge amount of work. Tom and I both collected the data but Tom was always the first one who patients would contact. He would take calls from them when they couldn't get their computer treatment to work; our oldest subject was 91 but even he managed it in the end. The patients all thought Tom was great and without Tom's easygoing, personal touch, the study would never have been completed.

The study was a success. Patients improved and we have found interesting associated changes in their brain networks. The data are still being analyzed, but Tom took the lead with the initial MEG data and produced a great scientific paper in a major journal which has highlighted the work. Tom wrote up his results as a PhD and passed with "no corrections" which is the best possible pass.

Part of the reason Tom was attracted to patient-based brain research was because his sister suffered a brain hemorrhage. In typical Tom fashion, he looked into the scientific literature and was shocked at how little was known about brain recovery. Although his scientific career was tragically short, he had already managed to make a lasting contribution to this important area.  

Back to Alumni News and Updates