Category: Research Staff

Dr Karen Logan, Senior Project Manager and Network Coordinator, Target Malaria  

Dr Karen Logan

“I look forward to the day when malaria is eradicated, and I can say we helped contribute to that!”

I’m an immunologist by training, with my early career focused on vaccine development. When I shifted away from the bench into project management, I wasn’t really sure I liked it, but over 20 years later I realise I’ve found my place. (more…)

Sadra Sadeh, Research Fellow, Department of Brain Sciences

Sadra Sadeh
“I have been trying to make computer models of brains, to understand how we see, learn, sleep, and remember.”

I started my academic journey by studying electrical engineering at the University of Tehran in Iran. Although I valued the technical skills and attention to detail that I acquired in becoming an engineer, I felt that it didn’t satisfy my need for free thinking and answering the many life questions that I had in my 20s.

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Michele Paulatto, Research Fellow, Earth Science and Engineering

“I have been working with an illustrator to produce a series of artistic but scientifically accurate drawings of the roots of active volcanoes.”

I started my university career as a Physics student in Italy. During my undergraduate degree, I spent a year abroad at the University of Manchester and this experience opened the door for me to British academia. I switched from Physics to Geophysics and was offered a PhD scholarship at the University of Southampton to study the Soufrière Hills volcano on the island of Montserrat.   

Since then, my main research focus at Imperial has been to image the plumbing systems of active volcanoes to better understand how magma is transported to the surface before and during an eruption. The volcanoes I study are usually submarine volcanoes or island volcanoes, and they are best studied using marine geophysics. These are the same field techniques that are used by the oil industry to image and monitor hydrocarbon reservoirs.  

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Alaine Berry, Senior Research Radiographer, Institute of Clinical Sciences 

“I was lucky enough to be part of the medical team at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games, a truly unforgettable experience and a patient group like no other!”

I completed my undergraduate degree qualifying as a Diagnostic Radiographer in 2004. I’ve enjoyed a brilliantly varied career up to now, working clinically in various countries, commencing a research career at UCL, and completing an MSc in Medical Magnetic Resonance. I was lucky enough to be part of the medical team at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games, a truly unforgettable experience and a patient group like no other! 

A particular career highlight came in 2014 when I worked in the Falkland Islands for a year. I was responsible for the medical imaging of the human population as well as that required by the veterinary service and the fisheries department.  

My current role at Imperial is as Senior Research Radiographer in a friendly and supportive team at the Mansfield Centre for Innovation. We optimise, acquire and analyse MRI data for an array of different studies, working closely with cardiac and psychiatric imaging groups who study diseases ranging from cardiomyopathy and pulmonary hypertension to schizophrenia and psychosis. We also perform some clinical imaging, such as running the fetal MRI service for Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.  

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Dr Adrian Najer, Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow, Materials 

“I started a long-term project aiming to provide an alternative nanotherapy-mediated vaccination strategy for malaria.” 

After finishing my studies in nanosciences,  I decided to take on the challenge of a cross-field PhD at the University of Basel and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Switzerland. Ever since, my research focus has been to use nanotechnology for the diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases, mainly malaria.  

Malaria is a devastating infectious disease that is transmitted by mosquitoes. It is responsible for the death of about half a million children every year. The current COVID-19 pandemic, among other factors, has led to a stagnation of the anti-malarial fight, which highlights the urgent need for innovations distinctively different to our current solutions. 

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Jerusa Brignardello Guerra, Research Postgraduate, Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction and Research Assistant, Department of Surgery and Cancer

Part of Shifting the Lens: A celebration of cultural diversity at Imperial 

“When you are Chilean, you feel proud because you come from a country that has overcome a lot of difficulties. We are extremely resilient.”

When you are Chilean, you feel proud because you come from a country that has overcome a lot of difficulties. We are extremely resilient. We have many natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanoes, so we are used to rebuilding everything. Bad things happen often, but we learn to carry on. 

There is so much about Chile that people are not aware of. Chile is a really wealthy country in terms of literature – we have incredible writers such as Nicanor Parra, Roberto Bolaños and Pablo de Rokha. We have wonderful celebrations, such as for 18 de September, where the country stops for a week to mark the first meeting that started the process of independence from Spain. Everyone gets together to eat traditional Chilean food like empanadas and asados and drink terremotos, piscolas or an awesome Chilean wine. 

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Dr Diana Varaden, Research Associate, Environmental Research Group, School of Public Health

“I strive to identify how best we can communicate air pollution as a health risk to the public”

After I completed my MSc in environmental technology at Imperial, I started a job as an air quality consultant, working on projects involving monitoring and modelling air quality. Through my educational background and work experience, I was able to recognise the sources and magnitude of the air pollution problem in our city and its impact on human health.  

However, I couldn’t help but wonder how the public could understand the importance of tackling the air pollution problem if they could not see it! The opening sentence of my personal statement when applying for my PhD studentship eight years ago was – ‘Air pollution, the invisible killer, needs to be unmasked! How can we do it?’ Finding the answer to this question was and still is the focus of my research.  

My research largely involves working with members of the public, enabling them to be an active part of the research process, and helping them to design, implement and interpret their own air quality monitoring projects. I am interested in interdisciplinary work bridging natural science, social and health disciplines and in identifying the benefits of involving lay individuals in the research process.  (more…)

Phebe Ekregbesi, Research Technician, National Heart and Lung Institute

“There’s such a welcoming group of people with a healthy attitude to lunch –and the idea that breaking bread builds communities.”

I completed a BSc in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Bath in 2018. This included a placement at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where I published a paper. That experience was pivotal in deciding to be an immunologist. 

In 2019, I joined Imperial as a research technician. I mainly characterise immune cells in different diseases, and also now contribute to imaging within the Inflammation Repair and Development (IRD) Section. 

Outside of the laboratory, I volunteer with organisations promoting STEM fields to underrepresented groups, including mentoring young girls and non-binary people through the Stemettes and celebrating Black voices with the Black in Immuno Hub. 

Since 2021, I have been the technician for the Lloyd laboratory where I teach users how to operate some imaging equipment, assist members with their experiments, and offer wider technical support and some general laboratory administration.  (more…)

Dr Violeta Cordón Preciado, Research Technician, Life Sciences 

“I am optimising growth conditions and working out how to maintain and store the different species of cyanobacteria”

I am a molecular biologist and the Research Technician for the newly stablished Molecular Evolution Lab. Our group is studying the origin and evolution of photosynthesis using cyanobacteria as a model system. Cyanobacteria are carbon-fixing oxygen-releasing microorganisms of major ecological impact. They played a significant role in Earth’s history by enabling the rise of oxygen in the atmosphere and the appearance of more complex life. 

My project aims to better understand the dynamics of genome evolution in diverse cyanobacteria. We have planned a long-term evolutionary experiment in which we aim to gather experimental data of the speed and process of their evolution under stable lab conditions. For this, four species of cyanobacteria will be grown under constant light and growth conditions and their genomes analysed using next generation sequencing techniques.  

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Dr Giovanni Fantuzzi, Imperial College Research Fellow, Aeronautics 

“I am developing a completely new type of computer-assisted technique that combines tools from different areas of mathematics with the latest advances in numerical optimisation”

I joined Imperial as an undergraduate back in 2010 to study Aeronautical Engineering. I found myself so much at home that after graduating I decided to stay, first as a PhD student and now as an Imperial College Research Fellow. 

My work explores new ways in which optimisation – the science of doing things as well as possible – can help engineers design technology that performs at its best, and is robust to changes in its operating environment. This is key to making industries such as energy and transport sustainable. 

To meet this ambitious goal, one must be able to answer questions like, “How much energy can a wind turbine generate?” or “In which conditions does it operate safely?”. High-fidelity computer simulations and machine learning methods can only provide partial answers because, for engineering systems of such complexity, the number of scenarios that one can simulate accurately and use to train artificial intelligence is typically very limited.  

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