1. Valerie Voon MD PhD FRCPC
Department and Organisation: Psychiatry - University of Cambridge
Job Title: Wellcome Trust Fellow, Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist
Email: vv247@cam.ac.uk
Tel No: 01223 761327
Date: 15/9/16
Academic Recommendation
Timo Kvamme has been a research assistant under my supervision at Cambridge University, Department of
Psychiatry. I am a Wellcome Trust Fellow and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at the University of Cambridge. My
research group focuses on mechanisms underlying impulsivity and compulsivity with a specific focus on addictions.
Timo spent 6 months in my lab and I continue to co-supervise him. He has proven to be an exceptional student. In a
very short period of time, Timo has learned the elements of careful experimental design and behavioural and
neuroimaging data analysis. He proposed an intriguing novel therapeutic intervention to modify attentional biases
(relevant to drug and threat cues in substance use disorders and anxiety disorders) by using eye-tracking feedback. He
learned how to code using Python and developed both the attentional bias task and developed his own code for online
feedback and measurements for our eye-tracking device, a task that would easily be appropriate for a PhD or
postdoctorate level student. He has learned a tremendous amount from developing this task from scratch and continues
to adapt the task and feedback parameters. He has outstanding skills in a careful reading and interpretation of the
literature, rigorous experimental design and testing and the capacity to develop, code, interrogate and analyse his own
tasks. His analyses are incredibly thorough and presented in a logical manner having considered multiple options in the
statistical analysis. He has helped out in my lab to code other tasks with Python and indeed continues to do so even
having moved back to Aarhus. During his stay at Cambridge, he was also keen to start imaging analysis and to write a
manuscript. He was very quick to learn how to analyse a voxel based morphometric analysis with a large database of
binge drinkers and healthy controls. For his first manuscript as first author, he showed the capacity to write clearly and
has produced an excellent manuscript which has been published in Neuroimage Clinical. He will be a co-author on at
least another three papers from my lab. He brings to any and all of his endeavours a remarkable degree of motivation,
intelligence and creativity matched with a careful rigorous methodological approach and thinking. He manages to find
solutions in the face of difficulties and is both an independent problem-solver and very collaborative. He is very reliable,
hard working and exceptionally friendly, considerate and thoughtful of others. He has been a pleasure to have as a
student.
I cannot stress enough his capacities and despite his very early career stage, predict that he will eventually have an
excellent career as an independent investigator in neurosciences. He is within the top 1% of any student I have
supervised.
In short, I give my highest and warmest recommendation and expect a very bright future for Timo.
Yours sincerely
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Valerie Voon MD PhD FRCPC