THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kochi Thevara native Mathew Thomas Kollamkulam, 23, is a genius who has got admission in University of Oxford and also in University of Cambridge for PhD on a full scholarship of more than 1,20, 000 GBP. His research at Oxford will be on how people acquire memory in their lives.
After his Plus II, Mathew went on to do a year’s research at National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, on handwriting analysis among Parkinson’s patients. Mathew never wanted to be a clinician, but a researcher on neuroscience and psychology.
When most of the children in the state pursue professional courses after Plus II, Mathew never wanted to study conventional courses like engineering and medicine. After passing out from Gregorian Public School, Kochi, Mathew took a gap year and landed in NIMHANS. At 18, he was the youngest researcher in the department on “qualitative analysis of handwriting impairment in patients with neurological movement disorders.”
At the Movement Disorders Lab, NIMHANS, headed by Prof Pramod Pal, Mathew went on to present the results of his research at several national and international conferences. His findings were also published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, “Movement Disorders Clinical Practice” at the age of 19.
When Mathew realised that none of the colleges in India is providing a degree in neurosciences, he took admission in University College London in September 2017. Halfway through the course, he became an undergraduate intern at the Plasticity Lab at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL headed by an Israeli woman academician, Prof Tamar Makin.
“I became a full-time research assistant after my graduation in September 2020. I worked on a project with an interdisciplinary team of researchers, doctors and designers that studied the effects of having an extra robotic finger on the human brain,” Mathew told TNIE.
It was not a tough call when he received Clarendon Scholarship from University of Oxford and a fully funded PhD offer from University of Cambridge. Mathew was keen on undertaking DPhil/PhD in experimental psychology from University of Oxford where the project aims to study the role of sleep in forming and retaining memories in human brain.