INCISE

Jakub is a Chartered Scientist and Specialist Biomedical Scientist currently working in the Glasgow Tissue Research Facility located at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital. He was awarded a MSc in Biomedical Science at Glasgow Caledonian University in 2017. Since completing his undergraduate degree, he has worked over 12 years in both NHS and private sector laboratories, where he has developed significant expertise in the practical application, and understanding, of histopathology, pathophysiology, laboratory management, research methods and planning.

Aula is a cancer biologist who has been working the last few years across different types of epithelial cancers (including breast and ovarian cancers). Aula is interested in understanding cancer biology and finding new ways to treat cancer or predict its recurrence/metastasis.

Aula’s previous research focused on understanding mechanisms controlling breast cancer metastasis through lymphatic vessels. She also studied the effect of macrophages interaction with breast cancer cells on response to radiotherapy. She assessed the prognostic significance of different molecules in terms of patient survival, cancer recurrence or response to treatment. Aula’s work in ovarian cancer aimed to assess the efficacy of blocking an inflammatory cytokine known as interleukin-6 in ovarian cancer and investigate any changes in immune cells following this treatment.

Aula is excited to use her previous experience to analyse immune cells present in patients’ polys. She aims to define immune cell signatures that can help predict patients at higher risk of developing future polyps and potentially cancer. Aula’s data will feed into other INCISE packages including digital pathology, transcriptomics and genomics with the ultimate aim to achieve more accurate postpolypectomy surveillance protocol and improve early detection of colorectal cancer which subsequently improves cancer outcomes and patients’ survival.

Billy Sloan is a Technical Specialist based at the NHS GG&C Biorepository.  He specialises in relational database development and related systems.  He has over 20 years’ experience in developing database systems for use in clinical trials, cancer research and routine clinical data management, and has a broad knowledge of information technology from network security and administration through to large system development.

Mark Johnstone is general surgical registrar currently working as a clinical research fellow at the GRI Academic Unit of Surgery. He undertook his undergraduate training at the University of Glasgow, completing an intercalated BSc in cancer science before graduating with honours from Glasgow Medical School in 2014. He completed 2 years of academic foundation training and 2 years of core surgical training and was appointed as the surgical Glasgow Academic Training Environment (GATE) Trainee in 2016. Mark gained membership of Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS) in 2017 before being appointed as a general surgical speciality registrar in the West of Scotland in 2018. To date Mark has published in areas including colonoscopic localisation of colorectal cancers and surgical reconstruction of the perineum following APR in the era of laparoscopic surgery. As well as his work on the INCISE project his other research interests include the use of Q-FIT in symptomatic patients and the impact of co-morbidy on bowel cancer screening outcomes.

 Akhil has recently completed a Masters in data science at the University of Essex. A passionate research Data Scientist, Akhil has over 5 years of experience in applying data science techniques to solve challenging problems in both the world of business and academia. Akhil's skills include building ETL pipelines, Web Scraping, Data Wrangling, Database implementation and maintenance, Data analysis using visualization and statistical techniques, NLP and Text Analytics, Building and optimizing predictive models using Machine learning and deep learning frameworks with proficiency in Python, SQL, and R Programming.

Ian has long experience in machine learning and medical image analysis.   He recently acquired skills in and enthusiasm for molecular biology and bioinformatics.