Profile

I have one teenage son, two cats and a small garden that has a wildlife pond and silly numbers of Japanese acers. I used to have an allotment but I didn’t have time to keep it going with everything else I do so now I grow vegetables in pots in every conceivable gap…

I am struggling to run at the moment because of a bad hip, so I now cycle to work instead and walk my Parkruns. I have run a couple of half marathons in the past so hope I can get going again.

I am the world’s most unlikely Beaver Leader, but I love it, even if it is chaos at times. I’ve been doing this since January 2016, including helping run an online weekly meeting throughout lockdowns.

I’ve been working in a NW London hospital since 1995. I didn’t expect to stay beyond a postdoc, but I liked the place, the people and the ethos, and so here I am, still. I’ve been involved in clinical trials for most of this time – we image patients who are being treated with new therapies, and monitor if and how they respond to the treatments.  I’ve also been involved in IT for most of that time, and also information governance and security.

MRI physicists aren’t found in all hospitals with scanners, sadly, so I look after the MRI safety queries for several other hospitals as well as my own to make sure people are safe to go in. Demand is always going up so more of us are needed. Keeps me busy.

On my onsite days I wake at 6.45am, make a coffee and put it and lunch in my bag. I cycle to the station and catch a train about 7.30am, get off at 8am and then cycle from the station to work, arriving about 8.15am.

I’ll work on analysis of images, check the scanners are working by checking the quality assurance (QA) images, have a meeting with my research team to see who is dealing with what trials that day, and do data analysis or trial data transfers to other places in the morning. I try and have lunch about 1pm though it depends if I need to run QA scans on one of the machines. There is often a 2pm meeting (e.g. governance, IT or image quality audits) and then I’ll go back to dealing with trial data or teaching (clinical science trainees on the Scientist Training Programme). I leave when everything’s done, which can be any time from 5pm to 7pm.

On my home days I wake an hour later and go to work on my dining table, but most of the work is the same except meetings are on Teams and I often get a cat sitting on me for those.