Dr. Ross Purple studies the role of sleep in processing memories and how this relates to mental health problems. Dr Purple graduated in Biology from Imperial College London in 2012 before starting his research career investigating sleep disruption in patients taking opioid medication for chronic back pain, alongside Drs Katharina Wulff and Kyle Pattinson. In 2013 he began his DPhil education at the University of Oxford where he studied sleep and circadian rhythms in individuals at high risk for developing psychosis, supervised by Drs Katharina Wulff and Kate Porcheret. During this time, Dr Purple also investigated the spatiotemporal dynamics of local sleep spindles in mice, supervised by Dr Vladyslav Vyazovskiy at Oxford, as well as the effects of manipulating sleep using targeted memory reactivation, working with Dr Masanori Sakaguchi at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. In 2017, Dr Purple joined the group of Professor Matt Jones at the University of Bristol where he uses in-vivo electrophysiological techniques to study cell assemblies, groups of neurons that temporally and functionally organize to encode and store information. His research is now particularly focused on how emotional memories are processed within the brain during sleep, and how this may lead to the development of mental health problems such as PTSD.