Heather Cubie

Heather Cubie is a Consultant Clinical Scientist with an Honorary Chair in the University of Edinburgh College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. She was  the first Director of the National HPV Reference Laboratory in the Specialist Virology Centre in Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh until 2012 and lead of the  HPV Research Group  based in the University  of Edinburgh until 2014. She was previously R&D Director for NHS Lothian for 12 years where her mission was to ensure a supportive culture for research within our publicly funded National Health Service and facilitation of appropriate applied research activity in collaboration with a wide range of academic staff.  As Head of Service for training of Clinical Scientists in Microbiology for Scotland from 1994-2012, she actively pursued career development structures for the wider professional group of Healthcare Scientists and opportunities for collaborative research across disciplines and professions. She was awarded an MBE for her contribution to healthcare science in Scotland in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2012 and made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in the same year.

Her HPV expertise and publications span more than 40 years and relate particularly to translational HPV research for cervical disease and cancer. She has developed and used a number of HPV detection and genotyping systems and  worked on validation and quality assurance as a crucial part of  clinical HPV testing. Current interests include the impact of HPV vaccine and of health services for cervical cancer prevention, complemented by the establishment of the Scottish HPV Archive and the Scottish HPV Investigators’ network (SHINe). She is currently helping to establish a cervical cancer screening programme in Nkhoma, Malawi using VIA (visual inspection with acetic acid) and HPV testing.

She and Dr Christine Campbell, Centre for Population Health Sciences, co-lead  a Scottish Government funded programme (MW01)  to establish  cervical cancer screening and treatment in a 'see and treat' service  in Nkhoma, Central Malawi. More information can be found on the Global Health Academy website

With Professor Sarah Howie of CIR, she is active in public engagement events including the QMRI  series "Let's talk about understanding disease" and the Beltane Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas 2015 events during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Global Health Academy

Beltane Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas 2015

"Let's talk about understanding disease"