Monday, December 6, 2010

To remember Tom Schofield

I am writing to inform the community of very sad news. Tom Schofield, a terrific young scholar who trained with Alex Leff and Cathy Price in London and moved to New York recently as a post-doc in my lab, was killed in a bus accident in Colombia, South America, last week. He was traveling over the Thanksgiving break.

Obviously, his family, friends, and colleagues are in shock and completely distraught over this tragedy. We share in our profound grief with Tom's parents and sisters, his girlfriend Rashida, and all his friends and colleagues.

We have all been cheated out of a friend and a young scientist with tremendous promise. Tom quickly became a treasured colleague and companion to people around him. His mixture of low-key but incisive intelligence, personal warmth, sense of humor and perspective made him a focal point of a lab group.  

There is little to say in the wake of such a disaster. I would like this community to celebrate Tom by remembering his work and thinking about his contributions and the direction his research was taking. Tom had just defended his dissertation in London (his viva) and was already deeply into new projects in New York. Here are papers that Tom played a critical role in. Tom was a regular reader and (one of the few) contributors/commenters on this blog.



The left superior temporal gyrus is a shared substrate for auditory short-term memory and speech comprehension: evidence from 210 patients with stroke. Leff AP, Schofield TM, Crinion JT, Seghier ML, Grogan A, Green DW, Price CJ. Brain. 2009 Dec;132(Pt 12):3401-10.

Changing meaning causes coupling changes within higher levels of the cortical hierarchy. Schofield TM, Iverson P, Kiebel SJ, Stephan KE, Kilner JM, Friston KJ, Crinion JT, Price CJ, Leff AP. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Jul 14;106(28):11765-70.

Vowel-specific mismatch responses in the anterior superior temporal gyrus: an fMRI study. Leff AP, Iverson P, Schofield TM, Kilner JM, Crinion JT, Friston KJ, Price CJ. Cortex. 2009 Apr;45(4):517-26.

The cortical dynamics of intelligible speech. Leff AP, Schofield TM, Stephan KE, Crinion JT, Friston KJ, Price CJ. J Neurosci. 2008 Dec 3;28(49):13209-15.

Inter-subject variability in the use of two different neuronal networks for reading aloud familiar words. Seghier ML, Lee HL, Schofield T, Ellis CL, Price CJ. Neuroimage. 2008 Sep 1;42(3):1226-36.


For those of you who would like to contribute a comment, story, memory, or any other piece of information about Tom, I have set up a blog in his memory: tomschofield.blogspot.com.

David

4 comments:

Unknown said...

What exceptionally sad news. My condolences to all of Tom's friends and family. This is a terrible loss..

Dan

Diogo said...

My heart just sank after reading this. I didn't have the chance to meet Tom, but my thoughts are with his friends and family. Unimaginably sad news, and a terrible loss.

Jon said...

What a sad loss. He will be missed.

Unknown said...

I was just reading something on net and came across a beautiful article- ''On my way to being a scientist''.
This was really touching story from where he got motivation to become someone great and helpful person for the society. I have also experienced such terrible things in my life, then decided to go for something similar, not yet achieved but thanks to Schofield for inspiring me again. RIP.