Lena Palaniyappan awarded a Discretionary Award from the Wellcome Trust

January 11, 2023

Last December, Dr. Lena Palaniyappan, co-investigator in a project led by Dr. Iris Sommer at the University Medical Center Groningen, was awarded a Discretionary Award from the Wellcome Trust to predict emerging psychotic relapse. This initiative aligns with Dr. Palaniyappan’s broader research focus on leveraging speech and language for guiding clinical decision-making. The project, titled ‘Language In Psychosis’ or LIPS, involves the collection and analysis of speech samples from individuals living with psychotic disorders using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. The aim is to develop a biomarker for impending psychotic relapse, enabling a window of opportunity for relapse prevention. Importantly, the project will incorporate co-designing with people with lived experience, to identify key aspects for implementation into current clinical practices and to ensure the approach is acceptable for service users across the globe.

Congratulations to Dr. Palaniyappan!