I'm currently looking for candidates to fill these posts:

• PhD candidate on combined experimental and computational approaches to characterising the tumour microenvironment: https://www.ed.ac.uk/igmm/igmm-graduate-research-and-training/edinburgh-college-doctoral-scholarship-projects

Additional PhD funding opportunities exist through The University of Edinburgh (http://www.ed.ac.uk/student-funding/postgraduate). Please get in touch if you would like me to consider supporting your application.

Abnormal vascularisation is a hallmark of multiple diseases. For example, insufficient vessel growth and regression of existing vascular networks contribute to disorders such as myocardial infarction and stroke. Conversely, uncontrolled vessel growth has been linked to tumorigenesis and retinopathies. At the basic science level, there exists a pressing need for advancing our understanding of vascular biology and biotransport and to translate these findings into the next generation of vascular normalisation therapies. At the clinical level, we currently lack methods for identifying patient groups most at risk of suffering from conditions linked to abnormal vascularisation. On this topic, the eye offers a unique window for monitoring non-invasively the vascular health of organs as diverse as the brain, the heart or the kidneys.

My group's research is on vascular structure and function. Our approach is theoretical through mathematical modelling and machine learning and we work closely with vascular/cancer biologists and clinicians. My research interests concern: a) the development of automated methods for eye and systemic disease diagnosis in retinal scans, b) the study of the tumour microvascular environment and its impact on treatment, c) the mechanistic investigation of vascular remodelling during angiogenesis.

What do I do?

I’m a computer scientist by training. My research is on vascular structure and function. My approach is theoretical through mathematical modelling and machine learning and I work closely with clinicians and vascular/cancer biologists. My research interests concern: a) the development of automated methods for eye and systemic disease diagnosis in retinal scans, b) the study of the tumour microvascular environment and its impact on treatment, c) the mechanistic investigation of vascular remodelling during angiogenesis.

What is the real world applicability of my research?

I develop algorithms for the automated analysis of biomedical images (typically angiograms across a range of imaging modalities, from clinical to microscopy) and their automated classification based on expertly annotated data.

How could this apply to commercial stakeholders?

Commercial stakeholders can integrate these algorithms in their medical devices or in device-agnostic diagnosis/referral platforms. Custom-made solutions to medical imaging problems can be also developed in partnership with commercial partners.

Between 2008 and 2011, I completed a doctorate in Computational Biology at the University of Oxford. The core of my doctoral research was the development of computational methods for the simulation of ventricular cardiac electrophysiology. My contributions became the basis of multiple subsequent Ph.D. projects and were pivotal for the success of the EU-FP7 grant VPH-preDiCT. During the project we had the opportunity to work closely with pharmaceutical companies in order to explore how mathematical modelling and simulation can be brought into their drug cardiotoxicity research pipeline. My work was also selected for presentation at the Heart Rhythm 2011 conference, one of the biggest international meetings on cardiac science, including basic, translational, and clinical research.

In 2011, I joined the Centre for Mathematics and Physics in the Life Sciences and Experimental Biology (CoMPLEX), UCL, where I worked on characterising the relationship between haemodynamics and vascular remodelling with a combination of computational and experimental methods. My work featured in the New Scientist magazine (#2906, Feb 2013) and has been published in journals and international conferences. During this time, I realised that a strong interaction between experimental and computational techniques is required in order to address the most pressing questions on how blood vessels respond to normal and abnormal flow conditions during development and disease.

In 2015, I joined the The University of Edinburgh with a prestigious Chancellor’s Fellowship where I established my first research group at the Centre for Medical Informatics, Usher Institute. Promotion to Senior Lecturer followed in 2019. The research activities of my group have been supported with funding from Fondation Leducq, European Commission, EPSRC, MRC, British Heart Foundation, The Alan Turing Institute, and Diabetes UK.