Email: portico-services@ucl.ac.uk
Help Desk: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ras/portico/helpdesk
- Senior Research Fellow
- Dept of Med Phys & Biomedical Eng
- Faculty of Engineering Science
My professional career started working as Research Associate in Glasgow University following my graduation with a PhD in elementary particle physics at the University of Sheffield. Following a tenure position as a Senior Scientist in the Rutherford Appleton laboratory, I joined the NHS and became a Clinical Scientist and Medical Physics Expert in Radiotherapy (RT). I worked at various hospitals as a Consultant Clinical Scientist or Head of Radiotherapy Physics acquiring an extensive experience in leading multidiscipline clinical teams of healthcare professionals. I have set up the vision for the clinical RT service and advised hospital executive boards in the specification and procurement of capital RT equipment, planned and oversaw staff recruitment their training and continuous development, managed the physics team, co-founded an academic research group, formed clinical partnerships, lobbied politicians and industrialist promoting RT issues and spoke publicly about radiotherapy and scientific research. I planned and managed a safe, efficient and resilient radiotherapy physics service that incorporated leading edge technology, achieving:
- The clinical implementation of advanced treatments (IG-IMRT, SABR, SGRT).
- Cost savings on UHCW’s capital RT equipment lifecycle program of ca. £4M.
- Increased productivity by eightfold enabling UHCW to meet the national IMRT target.
- The formation of a regional strategic partnership (between UHCW and WAHT) that resulted in innovative collaborative working and joint governance to promote best practice, increase service efficiency and quality.
- A shared vision with the clinical consultants and Trust managers.
- Staff “buy in” and increased engagement of my teams as measured in staff surveys.
- A record number of contributions to a major national scientific conference (UKRO 2015) by UHCW’s RTP team.
- The foundation of a national scientific network to promote advances in RT (https://www.advanced-radiotherapy.ac.uk/).
- Over £3M in research funding.
My research interests include all aspects of radiotherapy physics, from treatment planning to delivery with photons or protons and the development of the associated instrumentation. I have worked on the knowledge transfer of particle physics detector technology to medical applications, having invented position sensitive instruments to measure the dose deposited by ionising radiation during stereotactic radiosurgery treatments, as well as the patient volumetric imaging with protons for proton Computed Tomographic (pCT) imaging. These I am keen to pursue further with a new project to develop an instrument for the measurement of the range of protons used in proton beam therapy (PBT), soon to become available at UCLH. The initial aim is assist the quality assurance tests prior to PBT patient treatments, leading eventually to the real time monitoring of PBT treatments in vivo.
My other research focus is the development of a clinical trial to study the feasibility of Biological Image Guided Adaptive Radiotherapy Treatments (BIGART) as the means to improve the outcomes for patients with brain tumours. This will provide the blueprint for clinical radiotherapy trials to other solid tumours, bringing a paradigm shift in radiotherapy and leading to personalised treatments.
To promote these activities I work at the academic-clinical interface in close collaboration with UCLH's radiotherapy department and the City of London RADnet partners.
I have teaching experience in both undergraduate and postgraduate physics, including project supervision for final year undergraduate, MSc and PhD students at the universities of Glasgow, Birmingham and Warwick.