To celebrate Brain Awareness Week 2026, we speak to Dr Sara Ajina, a Senior Clinical Research Fellow investigating vision recovery following an acquired brain injury, such as a stroke or trauma.
What is your role and what does it involve? What impact do you hope to make?
I am a Senior Clinical Research Fellow, which means I am in that grey area between postdoctoral researcher position and group leader. I was previously a Consultant in neurorehabilitation, helping patients recover after an acquired brain injury, but I had to give up this post to take up my research fellowship, putting me at the mercy of successful future fellowship awards! It’s very rewarding work and I hope to bring vision recovery research in stroke to the forefront so that doctors will be able to stop telling patients there is nothing we can do to improve their visual loss.
How long have you been at UCL and what was your previous role?
I’ve actually been at UCL a really long time, having started here as a 17-year-old undergrad in Medicine! I left for a few years to carry out a PhD at the University of Oxford, but I had always hoped to come back. I continued my clinical training in London and Queen Square before starting as a Consultant here in 2018.
Tell us about a project you are working on now which is top of your to-do list.
Top of my priority list right now is recruiting people with hemianopia (the loss of half the visual field in both eyes) to my neuroimaging study ’VISPA’. We previously showed that patients with visual loss after stroke can still respond to certain images in their blind field, due to preserved pathways in the brain. This study is to understand those pathways in much more detail, so we can better design future treatments to recover lost vision.
What makes you most proud of your work so far?
Hearing how individuals with sight loss would be willing to travel to London to take part in my study, even though they are living in Manchester, Ireland, or even Paris and Switzerland!
What are you most excited about in 2026, UCL’s bicentennial year?
I am excited to be collecting data for my current study. Also, on the spur of the moment, I decided to propose a symposium for a massive international neuroscience conference I have never attended. Fingers crossed we are successful, and I will get to meet a fantastic group of scientists whose work I hugely respect.
What’s a small habit or ritual that helps you stay grounded at work?
Make myself a cup of tea.
Who would be your dream dinner guests?
We were talking about this recently as it came up in my eldest’s 11+ interview! I liked his answer, which was to invite Brian Cox (the scientist).
What advice would you give your younger self?
Keep going, it’s a long road but if you want it, go for it.
What’s one thing most people don’t know about your life outside of work?
I sing in the Royal Albert Hall most Christmases as part of the Royal Choral Society (shhh)!
Where do you go (physically or mentally) when you need to recharge? What’s your favourite place?
This is the hardest question. I don’t have one favourite place, but the Pembrokeshire coastline is very beautiful.
Want to learn more?
- University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT (0) 20 7679 2000
