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Spotlight On: Yolanda Ohene

We are back with our 'Spotlight On' interview series, shedding light on inspiring women working in the field of neuroscience and reflecting on their distinct backgrounds and career journeys. The questions posed to these individuals explore the themes of job perks and challenges, developing new skills, their inspirations in the neuroscience field, and goals for the future. Stay tuned to see new interviews every few weeks from women in a range of neuroscience-related professions!

Yolanda Ohene, Wellcome Accelerator Fellow at the University of Manchester.
Yolanda Ohene, Wellcome Accelerator Fellow at the University of Manchester.

We interviewed Yolanda Ohene, a Wellcome Accelerator Fellow at the University of Manchester, whose work focuses on developing advanced MRI techniques. As Director of The Blackett Lab Family, she is also a dedicated science communicator and EDI advocate. In our conversation, Yolanda reflects on her interdisciplinary career, her research on the blood-brain barrier, and her commitment to building more inclusive scientific communities.



Can you tell us about your background in science, your current area of study, and what interested you about neuroscience initially?

I did my undergraduate in physics at Imperial College London, and I think it was when I was doing a master's project that I first realised how physics can be used to better understand biology. From there, I thought that imaging was really cool - being able to see what we can't with our eyes! I did a few different things before doing a PhD, but then I landed on a PhD in MRI research (magnetic resonance imaging) at UCL. I wasn't necessarily planning to go into the neuroscience field, but the project that I was working on was focused on Alzheimer's disease. I thought that the link between basic science and maths, developing technologies and looking at the brain, was fantastic! I'm still learning so much about the brain and it's really cool that my path has led me here, but that wasn't necessarily the plan in the beginning.



I saw that your publications related to various different diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease and stroke. Do you provide your expertise to people working on other diseases?

I would say that my expertise is the development of the MRI techniques - we test them with different disease groups to see how useful the techniques are in practice. Specifically, I've looked at genetic changes where a protein (aquaporin-4) has been removed from the brain, and other models of Alzheimer’s Disease which cause the accumulation of proteins, amyloid-ß and tau. It's a real combination of developing the techniques, which is where my real expertise lies, but then applying it to different populations to understand where it could be most useful.



Clearly physics is essential for your work, but do you find that there is a very natural intersection between physics, biology and neuroscience? And do you find it useful to bring a different perspective to neuroscience projects due to your career background?

Yeah, I think that a lot of the interesting questions actually lie on the intersections between the different fields. I knew that physics intersected with biology, but now there's so much neuroscience that comes into my role as well. Researchers using their knowledge and expertise from different fields can really help to move important questions forward that may not have otherwise been made apparent - it is really exciting.



Would you be able to tell us a little bit more about your PhD and postdoctoral work - in terms of developing the MRI tools - and how useful you think they are for studying neurovascular dysfunction?

During and after my PhD, I have been focused on developing an MRI technique to look at the vasculature and what's called the blood-brain barrier, which separates the vessels going into the brain from the brain itself. It plays a really important role -almost like the security guard of the brain - to let in things that enable the brain to function and to keep out waste products etc. 


The technique that I've been developing is to help determine how intact the blood brain barrier is. Previously for MRI, we had to inject a contrast agent or a magnetic tracer into the bloodstream. At places where the blood brain barrier is broken down, the magnetic tracer will move into the brain and then you can see it on the MRI scan.This is a very useful technique, but some people aren't able to have the tracer; for example, young people or people who have poorer kidney function. The work that I've been doing is trying to eliminate the requirement for a magnetic tracer and to probe the water within the blood vessels, to see how the water is moving across the blood-brain barrier. Another benefit of this is that water is a small molecule so the changes to the water flux across the blood-brain barrier may be more subtle than when a large tracer has to enter the brain. It's cool to see how this work has progressed! 


There are other groups around the world who are doing similar techniques and determining how these changes to the water moving across the blood-brain barrier link to various types of dementia and to cognitive decline. That’s it in a nutshell! 


More specifically, during my PhD I found that there's a particular water channel in the brain called aquaporin-4. We looked at a genetic model where the aquaporin 4 had been completely removed from the brain and saw that the water exchange was much slower compared to when the aquaporin 4 was present (Ohene et al., 2019). 


During my postdoc, I looked at an Alzheimer's disease model, specifically rats that have been genetically altered to have Alzheimer's disease. Some of these rats were also given a lung infection. We found that the blood-brain barrier worsens with Alzheimer’s disease and an infection. This is interesting because older people are more prone to illnesses like pneumonia, and these types of infections seem to exacerbate neurodegenerative conditions, causing delirium. Alterations to the blood-brain barrier may be playing a role here. In these studies, we also found an increase in aquaporin-4 protein on the blood-brain barrier (Ohene et al., 2025). It was cool to work on a different project during my postdoc but still have it linked with my PhD work! 



Had people quantified aquaporin 4 before in different disorders and determined why you might consider them during MRI, or was that completely novel?

This is where the intersection comes in - there's been a lot of aquaporin-4 work in the biology world. However, no one had looked at how changes in aquaporin-4 could be measured using MRI techniques or how it would relate to this water exchange. I was the first one to do that! So, it was cool to see where the two different worlds collided, but it also made a lot of sense: if you take away the channels that transport the water, then we're going to detect a slower rate of water moving across the blood-brain barrier.


That's interesting. I wonder if the brains of patients with dementia are worse at responding to osmotic pressure changes, if there's any swelling.

Aquaporin-4 proteins are able to shuttle water really quickly in cases of significant swelling, like brain oedema. In diseases like Alzheimer's, there are changes to the aquaporin-4, but how those changes may relate to this water shuttling as the disease progresses is still unknown. However, several studies have shown that there is an increase in water permeability with Alzheimer's disease.



That makes sense! My knowledge of MRI is very basic, but is your work related to diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) if it relates more to water?

That's a good question because most MRI relates to probing water in the brain, but it depends on what type of MRI you use. It doesn't have to exclusively probe water because you can probe it to other molecules, but that's a lot less common. DTI is really looking at the microstructure, so how easily the water can move around, and it looks at how white matter tracks are linked. It's really good for doing that.


One of the techniques that I've been developing is based on a technique called arterial spin labelling, which is actually how the water is perfusing into the brain tissue. I'm looking, more specifically, at how the blood moves from the blood vessel into the brain tissue. So, instead of just measuring cerebral blood flow (CBF), I'm probing how quickly the blood is moving across the barrier. 


Another technique that we developed in the postdoc is looking at an advanced diffusion technique. It's actually two diffusion techniques combined together, in which you can also probe this water exchange. It's a bit technical!



Will your techniques improve the resolution of MRIs? For example, in stroke, if you're looking at blood flow specifically, would it improve the diagnosis of clots?

It’s rather the inverse; because these techniques are quite advanced, they're quite low-resolution techniques. At the moment, the techniques give us estimates about the blood-brain barrier in a brain region rather than probing in on a clot for example. What it does do is give us further insight into the functionality of the brain as opposed to just the structure. I suppose what's easiest to collect is, what does the brain look like? What's harder is, how is it functioning?



Right - and do you look at it with patients in a resting state as well as activity-based to see how blood flow changes and flows to certain areas based on the activity?

In my work, I haven't done much resting state or BOLD (active) imaging, or the difference between those states. There are lots of people who do that kind of work: looking to establish a baseline and then they provide a challenge like visual stimulation or tapping of something, and observe how the different areas of the brain function.



In terms of your job, what do you find the most challenging and the most exciting?

That's a good question. I think it's challenging because we don't know the answers and you can be blocked for a long time. Sometimes the results don't make sense which, I suppose, is both challenging and exciting at the same time. 


Ultimately, it's rewarding when things come together. For example, the work for my postdoc took around two/three years to implement and pull together, making changes and understanding what was happening. When it was complete, it was cool to see the different elements - the MRI research and the in vitro work (the immunofluorescence) - link to each other. 


I think I feel very blessed to work in a discipline where we get to meet people from across the world and exchange ideas. I've been to many conferences and been invited to different labs - it is wonderful to be part of a global network.  


I think what's the most challenging is the structure of academia; it seems less and less like there’s a clear path, so I think that is a huge challenge. I've gone from postdoc to postdoc and then have had my own fellowships as well and it’s a lot of work! You have to be writing applications, trying to progress research, and be thinking of future ideas, so it's a lot.



How far forward you have to think in academia is difficult. You can’t allow yourself to become complacent when you achieve funding for the next couple of years; you have to be thinking about what you’re going to do when that ends. 

I assume a lot of your work relies on the fact that you have people volunteering to be scanned. You must have to do ethical approval - is that difficult? 

It's interesting because most of my work has actually been animal studies. It’s only my most recent funding from Wellcome that has been to perform my first study working with people. It's been a real learning curve! It’s been cool to have that translational element going from mice and rats to people. 


There are definitely different skills required to pull together ethics applications. I'm really lucky that I'm part of a wider team that helps with recruiting people and with ethics applications and so on. That's been really good for me as the first step into more clinical work. The mechanisms of pulling people into research are also very interesting!



They also have very different brains, so your MRI scans must look very different now. 

Yes, exactly! I was looking at some of my most recent data and was thinking, “whoa, the human brain and the mouse brain are alike, yet so very different!” There are synergies there. I’m also someone who's gone from numbers and physics to then looking at a full mouse brain, got used to that for 10 years, and then moved onto much bigger human brains! 



Much more complex! 

Could you talk a little bit more about your fellowship, and why do you think focusing on the underrepresented communities is so vital?

I've just got a Wellcome Accelerator Award which was wonderful to get because they are extremely competitive. Prior to that, I've been thinking more about the lack of representation within research and within neuroimaging research. Last year, I did another fellowship in Berlin where I was trying to delve into the question of how medical imaging can better serve underrepresented groups. While I was there, I met lots of academics from across the world, from different disciplines, and it really opened my eyes to how science is not the centre, or not always the answer, and that other disciplines can really teach us a lot about the world and how things operate. 


For underrepresented groups, I think that it is really important to recognise why people would want to participate in research studies, especially if, historically, a particular group has been mistreated or their data mishandled. We need to approach with care and build trust. Unfortunately for people like me, from Black communities, dementia rates are much higher than the UK average. We need to try to understand why that is and there are many factors, from a health perspective, or a societal perspective, but then there's also the research perspective. I want my research to try and join some of these dots. And this is what the Wellcome Accelerator Award is hoping to begin to do – to translate the work that I've been doing in the lab, from the basic science with the mice, to people. And then also, how can I approach the questions and set up the research studies so that it can be more inclusive? 


It's hard, but I think there are many people working to pull ideas together, listening to different communities, and understanding the relationship between academia, scientific research and different populations’ views about health. 



I’ve heard clinicians describe certain groups as “hard‑to‑reach communities”, but I’ve never liked that phrasing. It usually isn’t about people being hard to reach – it seems to be about mistrust, often rooted in previous experiences with healthcare or research. There’s a consistent lack of representation in studies. A classic example is stroke research: more women experience strokes than men, yet historically the research has been done predominantly in men. And it’s not just sex - lots of conditions affect different communities in different ratios, but those communities still aren’t represented in clinical studies. 

Definitely! Hard to reach - hard for who? That's the question. It crosses so many different intersections. With women's health, I feel like there's so much more that can be done in that space. From a dementia perspective, for example, women get dementia at much higher rates than men, yet the majority of preclinical studies are in male mice. There's lots of work to be done, but I think that people are talking about it more than in the last 5 to 10 years. Hopefully we can continue to broaden the inclusivity and close the disparities. 



I also saw that you're involved in lots of initiatives, which is one of the reasons you were nominated for your WiNUK Award. You’ve been involved with Amplify, the Blackett Lab family etc., with the aim of getting more black heritage students into physics. Could you talk a bit more about the barriers that you want to dismantle through being involved in these initiatives?

Big up the Blackett Lab family! They are the UK collective for black physicists. It's existed for a long time, but we've only been public facing for the last five years. A couple of years ago, I started a programme called Amplify: The Black undergraduate physics symposium. The programme aims to bring together physicists at an undergraduate level, because we know that there's only one or two Black physicists within each institution every year. I think the primary aim is just to connect people because there's nothing like having connections. In the same vein, my biggest motivation is to give people a sense of belonging. If people do want to stay in the physics field or in physics adjacent fields, they need to feel like they’re meant to be there. It can be really lonely and isolating when you look around and don’t see other people like you. We’ve got work to do to change this!


We also need to highlight different career paths. I think it is really important because, unless you know someone who is in a particular field – your parents, friends, older siblings or people in your network - then you might not think that you could be that! Showcasing the people who are in such varied and brilliant careers and doing such varied research to undergraduates I think is really good for them. I've spoken to so many cool people through organising speakers and I do feel like you don't realise that you’re going to get something out of it as well. I get to make lots of connections!


Overall, it’s been really inspiring. There's nothing like bringing a bunch of really smart undergraduate students together and watching them vibing and thriving.


I imagine that you see the immediate impact of the events and the community, but then you also probably won't yet see how far reaching that impact is for decades to come - when they’re establishing themselves in their own spaces. I suspect that a lot of them will probably want to stay in contact with you and it'll be so nice for you to see what they've gone on to do.

It’s really cool to witness - from the first event that we did, one of the students got a research internship in a lab the next summer. Seeing what people are up to is so nice. With the Blackett Lab family, we had a school programme as well that we organised, but I'm not as heavily involved in that. Some students who went to that have now come to the undergraduate one, so we're actually seeing the pipeline strengthen!



That’s incredible! I think representation is massively important and it can be really difficult to enter a field where you can't see someone that looks like you or has come from the same background as you. Physics, in particular, is often deemed as male dominated as well. Do you find that you have an equal ratio of sexes in the community or is it still weighted one way? 

I think there's still a few more men in the physics area, but it's definitely changing. I think we reach quite a few women as well, and non-binary people.


I've loved working in the lab and also working alone - I think I'm on like the introvert-extrovert cusp. I love meeting people and hearing their stories and seeing what they're interested in - I feel like I get a lot out of it.



You’ve also taken part in lots of events like speaking at New Scientist Live, BBC Tomorrow's World Live and the Dementia Researcher podcast. How easily do you find adapting such a complex neuroscience/physics technique for different audiences? And how do you get involved in these things?

I think I have to say that I was really lucky doing my PhD at UCL; my supervisor was Professor Mark Lythgoe, who does a lot of science communication. From the get-go of my research, I was doing outreach and science communication. That’s just continued and I've built my skills! There are a few things that I've learned: I think simple is always better. Early on, I had more of a tendency to try and make something sound complicated to try to look smarter. That was drawn out of me very quickly. Simple is better if you want audiences to know what you're talking about.


I like think about the audience: I'm always going to keep it as simple as possible, but what does simple mean to a school student compared to people at the pub or a research focused audience? I was part of a great scheme called Bright Club that was started by Steve Cross - he's also a great person for science communication. That involved pulling more comedy into talks. I'm not a comedian, but I think that there's something very exposing about trying to do a science comedy set without any props, without any slides and just speaking. I think that that's taught me a few things about trying to interact with an audience. Through doing those schemes during my PhD, I learned a lot.


Another thing is that I've made the mistake of always trying to do a different talk when asked by different events. More recently, I’ve decided to try to nail one talk and I think that that's what the people who do science communication for a living do – they have a menu of good talks that they know deliver which have different elements within them. I'm really trying to build on that principle. I have not managed to quite do this yet, but I’m working on it.



I like how aware you are of your audience. I think how you deliver information is incredibly important. As scientists, sometimes it's quite difficult to switch off that concise way of talking and remove the jargon to ensure it is engaging. If you lose people early on, then you've lost people for the rest of the talk. With MRI, I imagine it’s good because you must have some nice pictures, but it’s still technical to describe!

Yeah, I've got some good pictures! I have been trying to describe Fourier transform for about 5 years and not quite got it, but I'm getting there. I've brought a recorder out and I've made people sing in the audience! Every time I do a talk I'm getting closer to describing things how I want to. I like to think of creative ways to draw out the concepts that I’m describing. Sometimes you need to zoom out and consider where you can hook the audience.


I also think that, as scientists, we don't really showcase the everyday that much. We show the final results, but we don’t show the journey to get there. For example, how we might have to change one parameter at a time and see what that does, until the method is right! It might be super boring, but I think sometimes it can also give a false impression about what it is to be a scientist; things rarely work the first time! People are talented, but mostly it’s because people are committed and they get results from that! 



What goals do you have for your career and where do you see yourself in the next few years professionally? How long is your fellowship?

It's only two years, so next year I need to do something else. I either want to start a group or leave and do something creative. Those are the two things - or maybe try to merge the two. We'll see what the next year has in store for me.



In your life - could be in the research world or in your personal life - which female-identifying people have inspired you?

There have been a lot along the way. I think Professor Hannah Fry is top notch.She explains things in a simple yet interesting way - amazing. Helen Arney as well. I think she's really inspiring in terms of bringing the musical element to science histories and I think she was originally a physicist. I have to say Maggie Aderin-Pocock; she's just lovely and I think the gem of black physicists in the UK for sure.I was reading Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's book recently called The Disordered Cosmos. She’s in the USA and she is really dismantling the relationship between physics, science, and race. That’s a bit more left field, but I loved her work. And Angela Saini also does amazing work. There are a whole host of neuroimaging people in the field who I take my hat off to. The list is long!



An impressive list! What advice would you give to early career researchers who would like to be successful researchers with social impact?

I think just be yourself – try and make connections with people and things will happen. Sometimes people say that you do too much of one thing, for example too much outreach, public engagement, science communication, or that you don't do enough and you are in the lab too much. I personally think just do you and lean into what you enjoy and you will find your power! Everyone has their unique things that they bring to being a scientist, so just lean full force into that.



I love that. 

My final question is about the WiNUK Awards event - congratulations on your win in the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion category! How did you feel to be nominated and to win the award? How do you think that this recognition will shape your work moving forward?

I was very humbled that my lab nominated me - that was really nice. It so happened that my colleague Hamid was also up for the same category and he does incredible work as well!


I wasn't expecting to win, but that was just the cherry on top. Having the recognition of the people around you is really special - so thank you to them for nominating me! 


It's really cool to see how the WiNUK network has built up over the years and is showcasing fantastic women, allies, and non-binary scientists. I feel really proud to have got one of the awards. Thank you to whoever selected me! It's amazing to know that you're a part of something that is really special and really important.


References


This interview was conducted by Rebecca Pope and edited by Clarise Castleman, with graphics produced by Georgie Savastano and Rebecca Pope. If you enjoyed this article, be the first to be notified about new posts by signing up to become a WiNUK member (top right of this page)! Interested in writing for WiNUK yourself? Contact us through the blog page and the editors will be in touch.

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