I was Mr Laurence's supervisor in his final year research project which was part of his undergraduate degree at the Department of Psychology, University of Westminster. Mr Laurence did exceptionally well in his project, obtaining a mark of 80%, being the top of his cohort. Mr Laurence was an outstanding student in various respects. He has a great ability to grasp complex theoretical issues and to derive novel ideas and hypotheses independently. He possesses excellent programming skills (including Matlab) and he is very skillful in implementing experimental protocols.

In addition, his ability to produce scientific output in the form of written reports is excellent. Mr Laurence is able to work independently and to take the initiative. I run a research team consisting of four postdoctoral research fellows, all of whom were impressed by Mr Laurence's intelligence, creativity and technical skills. Mr Laurence also possesses good interpersonal skills and is a reliable researcher in the lab environment. For these reasons, I have no doubt of his ability to perform well in his postgraduate studies; in my view, he is ideally suited for a research career.

In my role as Course Leader and Senior Lecturer for the Cognitive Neuroscience, BSc at the University of Westminster, I have had the pleasure of watching Alexander gain increasing maturity in his approach to his studies over the past few years. His final year performance demonstrated a high level of competence. This was most aptly demonstrated via his first class dissertation result (80), the highest mark in his cohort. Alexander will graduate with a BSc in Cognitive Neuroscience in July 2015 with a strong upper second-class honours degree.

I have been continually impressed by Alexander’s perseverance to achieve his goals. He is continually gaining in self-confidence and the ability to lead academic discussions and communicate his ideas. As necessary for a research environment, Alexander has demonstrated the ability to work well independently and as part of a team. Alongside his academic responsibilities, Alexander has pursued a passion for Neuroscience and science communication. In addition to founding the Cognitive Science Society at the University of Westminster, Alexander has held positions as a Research Assistant (Behavioural Lab, London Business School), Communications Assistant (TEDMED Live, Imperial College) and Teaching Assistant (Mencap, Ealing). Through his various posts, Alexander has gained exposure to a large repertoire of experimental and analysis methodologies relevant to the neurosciences.

I am confident that Alexander would be a self-motivated, productive and successful candidate. A placement on this programme would provide him with a strong platform to pursue his career goal of becoming an academic researching sensory and motor systems and developing human-machine interfaces, employing a range of inter-disciplinary neuroscientific and computational techniques.

Alexander has helped us with the development of 4 Apps for our two studies. We are working with sickle cell patients, a very sensitive cohort, and we wanted to create these Apps for ease of use not only for our patients, but also for our researchers. The Apps reduce paper work, keep data secure and organised. He helped us to develop these Apps for iOS and Android phones. It is a pleasure to work with Alexander, because he listens to our research needs, is creative, very knowledgeable and always tries to find a solution and importantly helped us to comply with new GDPR rules to keep patient data safe. I only can recommend you working with him, since he will be a great addition to your working environment.