Dr. Hayriye Cagnan studied electrical and electronics engineering at Cornell University as a Fulbright Scholar and specialized in signal processing and biomedical engineering. In 2004, she was awarded a British Chevening scholarship and was accepted to the MSc program in engineering and physical science in medicine at Imperial College. Dr. Cagnan completed her PhD in neuroscience in a joint placement between the University of Amsterdam and Philips Research Laboratories in 2010. She subsequently joined the University of Oxford as a postdoctoral researcher, where she worked on tremor pathophysiology. In 2015, Dr. Cagnan was awarded a MRC Skills Development Fellowship in Biomedical Informatics, based at University College London.

Dr. Cagnan established her research group in 2018, funded by a MRC Career Development Award. She is developing theoretical tools and experimental approaches to elucidate how different brain regions communicate and control behaviour in heath and disease.