Change The Numbers

I am currently trying to find out how the brain works! Since this is a bigger enterprise than I first appreciated, I have zoomed in on a particular brain faculty, which is the internal "map" the brain makes of the space around us, which it uses for navigation and memory. In my lab we record single neurons from the regions that form this map, in an attempt to find out how it is made and what it is for. I am particularly interested in how the "sense of direction" is constructed, and also in whether the map is three-dimensional or only flat.

The objective of my research is to investigate the role of ‘cellular cannibalism’ in human cancer, a major cause of death and disease that claims millions of lives each year. Cellular cannibalism is a fascinating process through which one cell is engulfed, killed and digested by another. Pathologists have observed this phenomenon in tumours for over a century, but its importance has not been well studied. My work seeks to investigate the relationship between cell cannibalism and cancer and to determine if this process has diagnostic, prognostic or even therapeutic value.

After completing my PhD at Institute of Neurology, UCL, I decided to pursue a more technology focussed career route. I started working at UCL Genomics in 2009 and in 2012, I was approached by ‘Integromics’ a Bioinformatics start up to help train scientists on genomics data analysis software. I joined PerkinElmer Informatics in 2013 and since then have been heavily involved in looking at how visual analytics can be used to improve data exploration right through from genomic analysis to various stages of clinical drug development. I also have a keen interest in seeing how visual analytics can be applied to broader Public Health questions such as surveillance of infectious outbreaks.

I began my career in chemistry in Australia and moved to London in 2012 to work at King's College London as a Marie Curie fellow. I enjoy making new, hitherto non-existent molecules and studying their properties in biological systems. I am particularly interested in the role that metals play in medicine and my research focuses on how radioactive metals can help diagnose cancer. To do this, I design molecules that deliver radioactive metals to tumours. Once the radioactive metal is at the tumour site, the emitted light provides an image that tells doctors a tumour's location and size and what stage the cancer is at.

This evening will be hosted by Dr Emily Grossman, a science communicator and broadcaster who explains science for a wide range of TV and radio programmes and at live events. Emily is an expert in molecular biology and genetics, with a Double First in Natural Sciences from Queens' College Cambridge and a PhD in cancer research.

Cities of today need to become smarter and create integrated solutions that will introduce a more sustainable and liveable model in urban development. The design of such solutions have been hindered by the inability of city systems to draw effectively on the current supply of cross-domain city data (e.g. sensors, open data, crowd-sourced data). My research pioneers a large scale and highly interconnected infrastructure to manage and coordinate city data. This infrastructure integrates cities’ technology and non-technology components to provide the stakeholders of smart cities with high quality data that will offer unprecedented opportunities to solve societal problems.