Researcher | Research Overview
Dr. Laura Cornelissen’s research investigates the development of sensory processing networks in children, and in neurodevelopmental outcomes following exposure to anesthesia, sedatives, and pain interventions. There are three core areas:
- Sensory evaluation focused on mapping associations between behavioral and clinical phenotypes in patients with acute and chronic pain, neurodegenerative disease, and in intervention clinical trials (including small molecule therapies, novel local anesthetics).
- Development of innovative sensory evaluation methods in patients with a range of communicative and cognitive abilities (i.e. using quantitative sensory testing), and consciousness states (including perioperative and critical care brain monitoring using EEG)
- Neurodevelopmental outcome assessment using multimodal measures of brain function, clinical questionnaires and surveys, and behavioral evaluation
Researcher | Research Background
Laura Cornelissen PhD MSci is a clinical investigator in the Division of Pain Medicine in the Department of Anesthesiology, Critical Care and Pain Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. Following her graduate studies in Pharmacology at the University of Bristol, and a Research & Development industry internship at GlaxoSmithKline, Philadelphia, Dr. Cornelissen obtained her PhD in Neuroscience at University College London, United Kingdom. She completed postdoctoral fellowships in the areas of perioperative brain monitoring and pediatric pain at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School.