On Thursday 21st May, Natalia Cotic, 3rd year PhD candidate in the COSMOS group presented her work as one of 12 Research Spotlight Finalists at the London Grace Hopper Colloquium 2026 at the UCL East campus. The event provides a platform for women in computer science to showcase their research, network with other new researchers, and take part in the research spotlight competition. Natalia also had the distinction of winning the ice-breaker prize for successfully locating people who fit given criteria in about 25 boxes.
Natalia presented her PhD research in a talk titled “Music-based cardiovascular therapeutics: How music entrains physiology“. The research investigates how music structure shapes autonomic physiology and explores its potential for precision cardiovascular therapeutics. The work showed that the body’s cardiovascular rhythms can synchronise with phrase structures in music, especially predictable changes in loudness. Across two studies, physiological responses such as heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, and HRV aligned with objective musical patterns more than chance, suggesting that carefully structured music could one day support scalable, personalised cardiovascular therapies.
