Laura Cornelissen

Laura Cornelissen is an Assistant Professor at Boston Children's Hospital and an affiliated faculty member at Harvard Medical School, Boston. Dr. Cornelissen's research interests focus on the development of neural circuits underlying general anesthesia and pain processing in children.

Dr. Cornelissen received a combined BSc and MSc in Pharmacology at the University of Bristol (2002-2006), and spent a year working in the pharmaceutical industry in Philadelphia for part of her studies (2004-2005). She completed her PhD in Neuroscience at University College London under the supervision of Maria Fitzgerald, investigating the development of pain processing at the level of the spinal cord (2006-2011). Dr. Cornelissen moved to the USA for a postdoctoral fellowship in pediatric pain and anesthesia to study with Charles Berde in the Pain Treatment Service at Boston Children's Hospital, investigating efficacy of novel anesthetic therapies in clinical trials of healthy adult volunteers, long-term effects of inflammatory pain in children, and age-varying changes in brain activity during general anesthesia (2011-2015). In 2015, Dr. Cornelissen received the International Anesthesia Research Society Mentored Research Award to support her work to characterize the effect of general anesthesia on brain activity in children using non-invasive EEG and optical (NIRS) techniques.

Dr. Cornelissen has over 15 years experience in studying pediatric neurophysiology. She has expertise in non-invasive brain monitoring, electromyography, quantitative sensory testing, clinical trial design, and advanced signal processing analysis.

Companies

• Assistant Professor of Anesthesia Harvard Medical School (2020)
• Clinical Research Scientist, Neuroscience Boston Children's Hospital (2011)
• Instructor of Anaesthesia Harvard Medical School (2015 — 2020)
• Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Pain Harvard Medical School & Boston Children's Hospital (2011 — 2014)
• Research Assistant, Urology GlaxoSmithKline Pharma GmbH (2004 — 2005)

Education

• PhD UCL (2006 — 2011)
• MSci University of Bristol (2002 — 2006)