Profile

I am 26 (nearly 27) and chose to pursue a PhD after working for 3 years in medical research. I have always been very interested in medicine and engineering, with maths being my favourite subject at school. I studied biomedical engineering in Sheffield before working in a start-up using Ultrasound to help treat cancer better. I then started my PhD in 2022

I have had a range of hobbies throughout school, university and now including: kayaking, karate, playing Clarinet, American football and going to the gym. I am scared of heights, but like to push myself so have forced myself to try rock climbing on several occasions, I am yet to conquer that fear!

10 million people are affected by Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) globally. For the UK, £1.5 billion is spent per year by the NHS. Currently doctors often use colonoscopy to diagnose IBD which is an unpleasant imaging procedure for patients and requires great care and time from doctors to perform. Using intestinal ultrasound will allow doctors to image your bowel without this invasive procedure. However, to make this procedure effective in the clinic, research is needed to be able to standardise this procedure in clinical practice. (i.e. when we change from colonoscopy which has an established scoring system for IBD, we need to understand how to measure severity of this condition when using ultrasound instead). My job is to research using AI applied to Ultrasound to see if we can create a robust scoring system for patients with IBD. This can help reduce the amount of colonoscopies needed to perform, which is more costly and time consuming for doctors. This can help meet the high demand for patients with IBD to be monitored appropriately and also allow poorer countries to use a cheaper alternative to provide this medical care.

My work is almost all behind a computer, involving using programming language python to develop my deep learning models and test them. I spend a lot of time googling, reading research around deep learning techniques in ultrasound and medical imaging and also coding. I like to write my ideas down in my notepad and plan implementing the idea by writing it down first. When my code runs I feel happy, but then spend time thinking of ways to improve the model further. I always try to end my day by summarising the work I have achieved during the day and backing up my code to github. This ensures my work is saved and also gives me the freedom to access my code from my laptop or computer at university with ease.