ISTM Women in Engineering: Dr. Caroline Stewart

Dr. Caroline Stewart is a Senior Research Fellow in ISTM, and the manager of the Orthotic Research and Locomotor Assessment Unit (ORLAU) at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in Oswestry. Caroline and I share an interest in exploring problems in human movement, and I was very excited to talk to her about her work and career in engineering.

You work in Bioengineering. What does that mean?

Bioengineering brings together people with a wide range of skills and backgrounds. I originally trained as a mechanical engineer and now I work with doctors, therapists, other engineers, computer scientists and life scientists. Our main aim is to use technology to come up with innovative ways of assessing and treating people with many different health problems and disabilities.

My main interest is in walking. It’s an activity most people take for granted, but it is surprising how much we still don’t understand. That is particularly true when you start to investigate the problems patients have with their walking. I’m interested in all kinds of questions. Why do patients with arthritis wear out their joints? Does orthopaedic surgery help children with cerebral palsy to walk better? Can we design better splints and artificial limbs to allow our patients to be more mobile? Is it possible to build computer models to help us to understand how patients walk?

I enjoy bioengineering because it is a field where you have to solve problems. Very often there are no standard answers and when there are they don’t always fit the patients you see in clinic.


What do you do day-to-day?

For four days each week I work in ORLAU at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital, where I am employed as a Clinical Scientist. ORLAU assesses patients with all kinds of mobility problems and also provides equipment to help patients to stand and walk better. We have a gait laboratory for measuring walking and workshops where we can design and build patient devices. Much of the equipment we give to patients was originally designed in ORLAU. I am responsible for managing the services and also use my expertise in biomechanics to assess patients in the lab.

On a Wednesday I work for Keele University as a Senior Research Fellow. This post gives me opportunities to work with researchers to devise new ways of using technology to assess and treat patients.


How did you become a Senior Research Fellow in Bioengineering?

After I left school I studied mechanical engineering at university as an undergraduate, followed by postgraduate training in bioengineering. For my PhD I studied amputees walking, to see which kind of mechanical knee joint worked best for them. During my mechanical engineering training I mostly analysed the function of structures and machines, so at first glance the work I do now looks quite different. You do, however, need all the same analytical skills to assess the loads on the body and the control systems people use in order to move. I probably use my engineering text books more than many of my fellow students who now work in industry.

In the NHS Clinical Scientists are registered with the Health and Care Professions Council. To register you have to go through a programme of training which makes sure you understand the clinical aspects of the job as well as the technical ones. Today there is very strong competition for places on the national training scheme, and it’s great to see that women are well represented. Half of those specialising in rehabilitation engineering who completed their training this in 2015 were female.

Research and development is a large component of many NHS clinical scientist jobs, so I was very pleased to be released to take up my part time post at Keele University. I now have time to explore things in greater depth and collaborate with other researchers.

What advice would you give a young person considering a career in engineering?

I became an engineer because I loved maths and physics, and wanted to translate what I learned into practice. I would strongly recommend engineering for anyone who likes using their numerical skills to solve problems. Working in bioengineering is a particularly good choice if you also enjoy working with and for people. There is a great deal of job satisfaction in working with clinicians and other researchers to improve the lives of patients.

ACORN 2015

We are pleased to announce that between the ACORN 2015 allocation, and additional support provided through the Faculty of Health, that offers to support the recruitment of six PhD students has been made. Fifteen proposals were submitted, seeking £339K in ACORN funding. Importantly, these proposals were leveraged against almost £550K of additional support. In total, ISTM and the Faculty of Health have committed almost £120K to the ACORN 2015 process, recognising the high quality of the applications made.

The successful students will join the research teams led by Tony Curtis, Martin Fisher, Nick Forsyth, Monte Gates, Jan Kuiper and Pensee Wu.

Novel approach identifies unique DNA signature

In exciting new work published in the prestigious journal Epigenomics, researchers at ISTM and at the Haywood Rheumatology Centre, have for the first time identified disease-associated changes to the DNA epigenome in joint fluid cells from patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

These patients often develop swollen joints and the excess fluid represents an attractive source to harvest and study the cells that cause damage within the diseased joint without damaging the joint tissue itself. The Epigenetics Research group used these cells to perform genome-wide profiling across more than 20,000 individual genes in these patients.

Dr John Glossop, first author of the publication, and colleagues identified a signature in these cells that uniquely distinguished patients with rheumatoid arthritis from those with other types of arthritis. Previous studies, where similar genes have been identified, have relied on cells from joint tissue obtained during joint replacement surgery.

These important new data support the use of joint fluid as a readily available alternative to study the role of these changes in the onset of joint disease and in the clinical management of this condition.

The study was funded by the Haywood Rheumatism Research and Development Foundation, and was authored by John Glossop, Kim Haworth, Nicola Nixon, Jon Packham, Peter Dawes, Anthony Fryer, Derek Mattey and William Farrell (ISTM/Haywood Rheumatology Centre), together with Richard Emes, Professor of Bioinformatics at the University of Nottingham.

Dr John Glossop

2015 ISTM Away Day

Over fifty members of ISTM gathered for their annual Away Day yesterday, held at Trentham Monkey Forest.

Speakers included two newly-appointed Professors: Professor of Medicine, Alan Silman, who set out the insights and challenges of his work on co-morbidity, and ISTM's new Professor in Cardiology, Mamas Mamas, who described his work to change surgical practice in the use of stents.

Mr Mark Hackett, Chief Executive of the University Hospital of North Midlands (UHNM), also addressed the meeting and shared UHNM's vision for future NHS research in partnership with Keele, and discussed steps that will be undertaken over the next decade to advance this agenda.

Members also discussed ISTM's own strategy and structure, and learned about the implications of Open Access publishing from Ellie James and Scott McGowna from the Directorate of Engagement and Partnerships at Keele University.

And, if all that wasn't enough, attendees were then able to walk around the park and meet some of the resident Barbary Macaques monkeys.

The photograph shows members and guests assembled during the ISTM Away Day,
which closed with a guided visit to the Monkey Forest.

ISTM Women in Engineering: Professor Alicia El Haj

Happy National Women in Engineering Day!

For the first post in our interview series with the female engineers in ISTM, we talked to Professor Alicia El Haj, a pioneer in regenerative medicine and our Institute Director. In recognition of her leading role in bioengineering, she received the MRC Suffrage Science Award 2015, which aims to encourage more women to pursue leadership roles in science and engineering.

You work in Cell Engineering. What does that mean?

Cell engineering involves finding new ways to use cells in treatments for human disease and injury. Essentially, we design exciting technologies for controlling the way cells behave. As a bioengineer, I take principles from engineering, such as biomechanics, and apply them to stem cells, and also use magnetic and optical materials. We often set up models of human tissues to study the way we can organise and control stem cells. This means building ‘bioreactors’, which are chambers which allow the growth of human tissues outside the body.

I got into research in this field because I found the concept of a stem cell as a therapy fascinating! But trying to find ways of controlling cells to help people suffering from disease and injury is extremely challenging. We work in an NHS environment, and everyday we see how much need there is in healthcare for new therapies. If my research can make steps forward along the pathway towards practical application in the clinic, I will have felt an enormous sense of achievement ☺. My research can also be incredible fun, allowing me to work across an international environment.

What is an exciting project you are working on at the moment? 

One of my most exciting projects at the moment is to see if we can use external magnetic fields to control the way cells behave in the body. We are designing a therapy where we attach small magnetic nanoparticles to signal systems on the cell and then inject them into a site such as the knee where we want them go and fix the cartilage. By using an external magnet, we can move the cells about and control the activation of the cell through the signal system. This means we can target cells and deliver injectable therapies which no longer need surgery! The Scientific American has an amazing article on our work in April which calls it the ‘Launch of the Nanobots!’

How did you become a Professor of Cell Engineering?

When I first went to University, I wanted to become a game warden in an African safari park! I had no idea that I would fall in love with bioengineering research, and couldn't have anticipated the enjoyment it has brought me. 

The satisfaction of spending my days trying to answer new questions with a great group of young training students is fantastic. I spent my early career travelling to different universities in Europe and the USA before settling in the UK. I enjoy my job tremendously and the variation in work day to day suits me. It allows me to balance my job with my family and my home full of the safari park that I ended up with on my doorstep! 

I was very proud to achieve a Royal Society Merit Award and gain my Professorship, which is also a reflection of the good people who have worked with me over the years.

How can we encourage more women to work in engineering? 

I get involved with action groups who try and encourage young female students to join us in a career in engineering and science. I hope that I can show them that bioengineering is for everyone! 

I like to show how engineering is not as dull as it is often portrayed, and how I have managed to balance my normal family life with my partner, our four children, and a home full of dogs and horses with a full-on career in research. 

There is a place for everyone in engineering and I hope you will consider joining us!

ISTM Women in Engineering

In our research institute we have quite a few engineers. If you are thinking of men in oil-stained overalls carrying spanners, think again! Hand tools are optional, and overalls would be an unusual outfit choice. More to the point, many of our engineers are women.

Sadly, engineering is misunderstood. Engineers do not fix cars and install new boilers. They design self-driving cars and develop new ways to produce clean energy. Engineers are inventors, who try to find solutions to problems and improve our world.

In our institute, the focus is human health: our engineers work on many biomedical research areas, such as designing prosthetic limbs, using stem cells to treat degenerative diseases, and developing new cancer therapies.

Engineering is creative and fulfilling. I am a female biomedical engineer myself, and I love it! (I do not use spanners in my work. I mostly use imaginary objects, and sometimes a pointy stick.)

However, the UK has a shortage of engineers. According to EngineeringUK, we need to double the number of recruits into engineering to meet demand. Girls in particular seem to think that engineering is not for them. I was shocked to find out that only 6% of the engineering workforce in the UK is female!

We need to encourage young people and particularly girls to consider careers in engineering. Who better to inspire them than female engineers in our institute? During the next few months, I will ask them about their work and career paths, and post their responses here.

June 23rd is National Women in Engineering Day so a fitting day to start our interview series. In the meantime, here is some reading for you: Tomorrow’s Engineers is a great website with information and resources on engineering careers. Start here: What is engineering?

Festschrift for Professor Warren Lenney

On Friday 6th June an academic meeting titled “All’s well that ends well!” was held at Keele Hall to celebrate the career of Prof Warren Lenney who is retiring in August. This “Festschrift” was attended by over one hundred family, friends and colleagues of Professor Lenney from across the UK. Ten speakers from South America, Europe and the UK gave talks covering a range of interesting topics in Paediatric and Adult Respiratory Medicine as documented below:

“Asthma and Allergy in Olympians” - Prof Kai-Håkon Carlsen, University of Oslo, Norway
“CF Nutrition: Chewing the fat” - Dr Gary Connett, University Hospital Southampton, UK
“Is Asthma Control Achievable? Can we affect it?” - Prof Søren Pedersen, Kolding Hospital, Denmark
“Poetry, Politics and Cystic Fibrosis” - Prof Kevin Webb, Manchester Adult CF Centre, UK
“Education, Education, Education!” - Dr Will Carroll, Derby Childrens Hospital, UK
“What Paediatricians Should Read” - Prof Andy Bush, Royal Brompton Hospital, UK
“Pleural Disease in Brazilian Children” - Prof Gilberto Bueno Fischer, The Federal University of Porto Allegro, Brazil
“From molecules in space to molecules in breath” - Prof David Smith (FRS), Keele University, UK
“Research is the future, the future is …..” - Dr Francis Gilchrist, Royal Stoke University Hospital, UK
“All’s well that ends well!” - Prof John Price, Kings College Hospital, UK

The meeting was a huge success and short papers from each of the speakers are going to be published in a special edition of Paediatric Respiratory Reviews later in the year.