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.