Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng

Associate Professor @UniofNottingham| Neurocognitive development | Caregiver-child interactions | Contextual influences| Long-term outcomes.

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

Congratulations to Dubheasa, PhD student (second from left) for best oral presentation at the U of Nott PGR conference. She presented our work on interpersonal synchrony and executive functions. @BaharTuncgenc and I are lucky to be her supervisors! @UfNCollab @PsychologyNTU

[School of Psychology, University of Nottingham @notts_psych]

Fantastic talks and posters at our #PGRConference today! Huge congratulations to the runners-up and winners of the Open Research, Best Poster, and Best Talk awards!

[NIRx Medical Tech. @NIRx_NIRS]

How reproducible is #fNIRS within a subject? 🧠📍

Wagner et al. (2025) show HbO responses are more reproducible than HbR across 10+ sessions of visual and motor tasks. Source localisation and optode digitisation improved repeatability.

📖 https://t.co/Hn9VQGX6pn

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

The deadline for this fully-funded PhD studentship with me and @alexhendry is tomorrow (18th Feb). Apply if you are interested in improving executive functions in children from neurotypical and neurodiverse families.

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

Funded ESRC DTP Strategic joint PhD studentship with me at @notts_psych and @alexhendry! Look at application details in the link. Deadline: 18th Feb. Please share widely!
https://t.co/UU9V9XUBmY

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

@MDPIOpenAccess

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

Sharing a fantastic paper using Miro-E I was lucky to be involved in. Led by the amazing Nikhil Deshpande at @UoNComputerSci @notts_psych. A Multimodal Adaptive Framework for Social Interaction with the MiRo-E Robot https://t.co/zo33Rxw9Rz #mdpisensors via @Sensors_MDPI

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

Only one week left to apply for this ESRC PhD studentship with me and @alexhendry. If you are interested in how to improve executive functions through caregiver-child play interactions in neurotypical and neurodiverse families, consider applying!

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

Funded ESRC DTP Strategic joint PhD studentship with me at @notts_psych and @alexhendry! Look at application details in the link. Deadline: 18th Feb. Please share widely!
https://t.co/UU9V9XUBmY

[Áine T. Dineen @AineDineen]

Through the Foundcog project we scanned 100+ infants with awake fMRI. In this Nature Neuroscience paper led by @ClionaODoherty, we show that, by 2-months, infants’ brains already encode rich representations of object category.

Congratulations Clíona on such beautiful results!🧠

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

Two weeks till the deadline for this fully-funded ESRC DTP position with me and @alexhendry on play interactions and executive functions in neurotypical and neurodiverse families. Please share!

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

Funded ESRC DTP Strategic joint PhD studentship with me at @notts_psych and @alexhendry! Look at application details in the link. Deadline: 18th Feb. Please share widely!
https://t.co/UU9V9XUBmY

[School of Psychology, University of Nottingham @notts_psych]

Apply now for a PhD in our school with @DrSWijeakumar 👇

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

Three weeks until the deadline for this fully funded ESRC DTP PhD position with me at @notts_psych and @alexhendry. Please share with colleagues and interested students.

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

Funded ESRC DTP Strategic joint PhD studentship with me at @notts_psych and @alexhendry! Look at application details in the link. Deadline: 18th Feb. Please share widely!
https://t.co/UU9V9XUBmY

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

Funded ESRC DTP Strategic joint PhD studentship with me at @notts_psych and @alexhendry! Look at application details in the link. Deadline: 18th Feb. Please share widely!
https://t.co/UU9V9XUBmY

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

Funded ESRC DTP Strategic joint PhD studentship with me at @notts_psych and @alexhendry! Look at application details in the link. Deadline: 18th Feb. Please share widely!
https://t.co/UU9V9XUBmY

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

Thanks @NIRx_NIRS

[NIRx Medical Tech. @NIRx_NIRS]

How do #infant-caregiver brains coordinate attention?

These researchers show that during natural play, caregiver left STG activation is linked to infants’ joint-attention patterns and visual short-term memory, via #fNIRS #hyperscanning.

📖 https://t.co/INY4U8ypf8

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

@aimeetheyer @NeurosyncP @notts_psych

[NIRx Medical Tech. @NIRx_NIRS]

How do #infant-caregiver brains coordinate attention?

These researchers show that during natural play, caregiver left STG activation is linked to infants’ joint-attention patterns and visual short-term memory, via #fNIRS #hyperscanning.

📖 https://t.co/INY4U8ypf8

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

‼️New paper‼️Alex Turner, Aly Magassouba and I applied a transformer-based ML network to capture caregiver-infant behaviors during play. Performance metrics differ based on data partition - with drop when tested on unseen dyads! @notts_psych @NeurosyncP
https://t.co/tMiLFLLJ7w

[Dr Christina Davidson @davidsonchri]

Officially marked the end of my PhD @notts_psych 🎉 A lovely day celebrating all the hard work put into @NeurosyncP 🧠 Thanks to @DrSWijeakumar @aimeetheyer @GhadaAmaireh

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

Yay! Congratulations! Lovely photo.

[Aimee Theyer @aimeetheyer]

Yesterday I graduated with my PhD! Huge thanks to my supervisor, @DrSWijeakumar, for her guidance, and to my family and friends for their endless love and support. I couldn’t have done it without you all. 🧠✨ @notts_psych

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

@notts_psych

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

‼️New paper📷Published in Infant and Behaviour Development. The interaction between caregiver scaffolding and infant object engagement is associated with better visual working memory in 6-to-10-month-old infants.
@NeurosyncP
@davidsonchri
@aimeetheyer
https://t.co/9CH4r6ZBBp

[Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar PhD BEng @DrSWijeakumar]

Proud supervisor post! @GhadaAmaireh has defended her PhD thesis. Her work looked at a mixed-methods approach to understanding the impact of caregiver involvement in cognitive development from infancy to toddlerhood. @notts_psych @NeurosyncP