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Bessie O'Dell

Bessie O'Dell

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Bessie O'Dell

BA (Hons), GDL, MRes, MPhil.


DPhil Candidate

Bessie is reading for a DPhil in Psychiatry under the joint supervision of Professor Andrea Cipriani and Professor Ilina Singh. Her doctoral project is funded by an Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre PhD Scholarship, and examines ethical issues, patients’ perspectives and trust in precision psychiatry. In particular, she is examining human-computer interactions in clinical encounters for mental health, with a focus on the use of conversational AI and virtual humans for PTSD and depression. 

As part of her research she is assisting the Oxford Precision Psychiatry Lab in developing an internet-based platform which seeks to tailor antidepressant medication to individual patients, using machine learning algorithms. 

Prior to joining Oxford, she undertook an MRes in Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology at University College London in collaboration with Yale University, and was awarded a Distinction. During this degree, she spent one year at the Anticevic Lab in Yale’s School of Medicine, where she used both behavioural data and task-based fMRI to examine spatial working memory deficits in patients with schizophrenia. Prior to this, she read for an MPhil in Criminology at the University of Cambridge (St. Edmund's College), where her thesis in neurocriminology focused on examining what neuroscience can contribute to informing the law on Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility. She also holds a degree in History (BA Hons), and a Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL).