Dr Kshipra Gurunandan

Position Governing Body Fellow Junior Research Fellow
School Clinical Medicine MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit
Email kshipra.gurunandan@mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk
X Profile @KGurunandan
Department link MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit

Kshipra Gurunandan is a cognitive neuroscientist at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. Her research focuses on the brain bases of learning and memory and how these change over the lifespan, especially in the context of language learning.

Kshipra obtained her BSc in Mathematical Sciences at Christ University in Bangalore and worked for two years at the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Defence Research and Development Organisation, India.

She was awarded a scholarship from the Foundation for Mathematical Sciences of Paris to study Applied Mathematics at the University of Paris. This was followed by a Masters in Cognitive Neuroscience of Language at the University of the Basque Country, Spain.

Kshipra obtained her PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at the Basque Centre for Cognition, Brain and Language. This was funded by la Caixa INPhINIT, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND fellowship.

She was a visiting researcher at Monash University, Melbourne, and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, with a Basque Government Postdoctoral Fellowship and then a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship. Kshipra is a member of Cambridge Neuroscience and Cambridge Language Sciences.

Kshipra's doctoral research focused on experience-dependent neural plasticity across the lifespan, with a special focus on language, and she has extensive experience in using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study the brain and its plasticity. She is interested in the neural mechanisms of learning and how these change in healthy ageing and pathology, and is currently investigating the effects of prior knowledge on learning and memory. Her work has received awards from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, Organisation for Human Brain Mapping, and the Society for Neuroscience of Creativity, and has been published in leading journals such as The Journal of Neuroscience, NeuroImage and Cerebral Cortex. Kshipra is also regularly involved in public outreach, giving public talks and media interviews in various languages and countries. Her work on neural plasticity for language received extensive international media coverage, with interviews by the Scientific American, Voice of America, Inverse, Cosmos, etc disseminated across Europe, the USA, Australia, and South America.

What's on

Event Type (field_event_type)

A vibrant abstract collage filled with layered cut-paper shapes, symbols, and text fragments in bright reds, oranges, blues, and purples, radiating outward from a glowing central area.

Art Exhibition: 'Epic Journeys'

18/04/2026 at 10.00

Visit Wolfson's latest exhibition 'Epic Journeys' featuring work by distinguished artist Hassan Aliyu.

An older woman in a red striped shirt and glasses stretches her arms out while standing on a sandy beach with waves in the background.

Lessons from WHO Non-Communicable Disease Initiative about Chronic Disease

21/04/2026 at 17.30

What links osteoporosis and heart disease? Dr Gordon Klein reveals surprising connections between two of ageing's biggest health challenges, and what they mean for prevention.