Profile

A big chunk of my time is involved in teaching students. I teach on a biomedical science degree which is designed to train students for work in the NHS science labs where patient samples are tested to help the doctors diagnose and treat their conditions.

When I am not teaching I do some research. My main interest is in the transplantation of organs and how to make more organs available for transplant. So at the minute we are involved in a project to recondition hearts that would not normally be used for transplant. In this case the hearts are stopped and we get them going in a glass bowl connected to a blood supply and restart them and test them. It is a bizarre sight seeing a heart that had stopped start beating in a bowl by itself (with a little help from our machine!).  You can see a video of the machine here on a piece shown on the local news (no heart though!)

http://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2013-07-10/new-machine-could-double-number-of-heart-transplants/

I am also working with Durham wildlife trust to look at genetic inbreeding in adders- as part of this I was briefly on Countryfile on BBC1.

I gives lectures and run practical classes where students do pre-designed experiments. I also supervise students doing research projects where they do experiments that have never been done before to learn how to become a scientist. I also have other more advanced students doing much bigger and longer research projects.