He is the deputy on a Yorkshire Cancer Research programme grant ‘accelerating new treatments in clinical trials in bowel cancer’, and currently working on a number of phase II and III national and international clinical trials. These studies involve the development and validation of new molecular predictors of response to therapy, and the integration of morphology and genomics using digital pathology.
Vee Mapunde is the Programme Director with responsibility for providing overall management for the programme, management of day-to-day operations and providing support for the Director and the Theme leads. She has over ten years’ experience working in clinical research at the Yorkshire and Humber Clinical Research Network, where she was Industry Manager and worked with 14 NHS organisations across West Yorkshire, to develop and implement systems to support commercially sponsored clinical research.
Sheila has worked for Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust since 1989, initially as a radiology assistant in the MRI department before moving into research in 2000. She holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Health Research and a NEBS Management Certificate. She worked on clinical research studies with contrast agents and MRI in radiology for eight years, before taking on a research management role in 2008. Sheila joins the MIC as a project manager and to handle the administration side
Will is currently an Academic Foundation Doctor and NIHR Clinical Research Fellow in the Global Health Research Group Surgical Technologies in Leeds. He is taking time out of training to complete a PhD on surgical technologies for application in low and middle income countries. He is the lead for the MedTech Foundation, a student and trainee affiliation of the NIHR Surgical MedTech Cooperative. The group aims to educate and engage early career students and professionals to enhance medtech skills and promote interdisciplinary research.
Candice Downey is a Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. She is a registrar in General Surgery currently undertaking an NIHR Doctoral Research Fellowship. Her interests include remote monitoring, wearable technologies and patient safety after major surgery. She brings expertise in clinical trials, qualitative research and early economic analysis of surgical technologies.
Stephen is a NIHR Doctoral Research Fellow at University of Leeds and a Surgical Trainee in the Yorkshire & Humber Deanery. His interests include colorectal surgery, surgical recovery, clinical trials, and medical devices. He is passionate about cross-disciplinary collaboration and currently coordinates an international, student-led collaborative group (EuroSurg) across 25 countries.
Ryan Mathew is an Associate Professor at the University of Leeds and an Honorary Consultant Neurosurgeon at Leeds Teaching Hospitals. He obtained an MBCHB with Honours and an intercalated BSc with Honours, the latter in Clinical Sciences (Tissue Engineering) research. During his neurosurgical training at Leeds (FRCS (SN) in 2013), he undertook further basic science research (funded by CRUK) and was awarded a PhD based on Glioma Modelling using induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs) and Cerebral Organoids. He was a co-applicant on an ~£1M Innovate UK grant based on this work. He has spent time as a Visiting Research Collaborator at the Brain Tumour Research Centre at Sickkids in Toronto, with whom he now has ongoing collaborations. He co-runs a brain tumour research lab with Dr Heiko Wurdak and is academic lead for neurosurgery. His clinical interests cover the full spectrum of brain tumours with a special focus on glioma and awake surgery. His basic science and clinical trials research interests focus primarily on brain tumours and surgical technologies/devices.
Maria Lonsdale is a Professor of Information and Communication Design at the University of Leeds, UK, and the Deputy Head of School of Design. Maria has been a design practitioner and academic for over 20 years. Within her specialist design and research areas of Information Design and Communication Design, Maria has particular interest in Healthcare and Security. She also specialises in user-centred research methods for Design that involve users in all stages of the design and research process (including co-design, usability testing and performance testing), as well as measurement techniques such as eye-tracking alongside qualitative data collection. Within Design for Healthcare, Maria has led research projects focusing on bowel cancer prevention, detection and recovery, using information visualisation as an effective means to make information more accessible and inclusive of all levels of literacy, ages, genders, languages and cultural backgrounds
