Dr. Sana Hannan is a neuroscientist with an interest in using neurophysiological methods to understand brain function in physiology and disease states. She joined the Analytical Neurophysiology Lab at the MNI in 2021 as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Her current research is aimed at investigating fundamental interactions between epilepsy and sleep in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy who are undergoing presurgical monitoring. Specifically, she is using intracranial EEG and sleep recordings to directly analyze the effects of sleep structure on epileptic activity and improve understanding of this complex relationship.
Dr. Hannan received her PhD from UCL, UK in 2019 under the supervision of Professor David Holder and Professor Matthew C. Walker. Her PhD thesis focused on developing a functional neuroimaging modality, electrical impedance tomography, to image the propagation of neural activity during epileptic spikes in the neocortex and hippocampus with high spatiotemporal resolution. During her subsequent role as a Research Fellow at UCL, she worked towards translating this technique to clinical settings for aiding the presurgical localization of seizure foci in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy. Dr. Hannan has received numerous awards and prizes during her academic career, including the prestigious Jeanne Timmins Costello Fellowship and the FRQS Postdoctoral Fellowship, the latter of which supports her current research.