Profile
Stephanie Foster
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About Me:
I live with my husband, 2 teenage children & a Romanian rescue dog in Epsom, Surrey. When I’m not working I enjoy long walks with Issy the dog, reading and watching TV.
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My pronouns are:
she/her
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My Work:
I work in Cancer clinical trials where we test new treatments for cancer to see whether they work and are safe for patients.
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In a clinical trial patients who agree to take part will be given either a new treatment or the standard treatment and we will collect lots of information about the effect of the treatments on the patients cancer and their health generally to see whether the new treatment is working better than the standard treatment and to be sure that the new treatment is not causing the patient any harm.
Often, whether the patient gets the new treatment or the standard treatment is ‘Randomised’ which essentially means that it is decided randomly by a computer. This makes sure that we can trust the results of the study because we didn’t accidentally or intentionally put all the patients of a particular type into the same group.
Clinical trials can be all sorts of sizes, some may just have 10’s of patients (usually in the early stage of development) and others in later stages can have 1000’s.
I am involved in the part of the process where we work out what information we need to collect about all the patients and I work with teams of people to design, build & test databases to collect all that information. Then when the data is entered by the hospital doctors & nurses my team will review it to make sure it makes sense and sort out any errors in the data before it is handed over to the statisticians to do their analysis which will hopefully show which treatment is best.
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My Typical Day:
I get up at 7am and have a cup of tea and some breakfast. I then walk Issy around our local park before either logging on to my computer at home or going into the office for about 9:30am (I usually work in the office about 2 times/week, the rest of the week I can work at home using my computer).
I finish work at 5pm and then walk Issy again before cooking dinner for my family and then relaxing in front of the TV.
I’m usually in bed by 10:45pm, reading a few pages of my latest book before falling asleep.
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Much of my work day is spent in meetings with the clinical trial teams discussing how best to set-up the trial, making project plans for the programming & testing of the databases to make sure that they are ready to collect the patient data & helping people with issues and questions about the data of the trials.
I’m lucky that I get to work with all sorts of people in clinical trials like Professors, Medical doctors, Statisticians, computer programmers, trial managers etc.
I also am the boss of other people so I talk to them to make sure their work is going OK and see if they have questions or need help.
When doing clinical trials there are many rules that you have to follow (called regulations). The rules are there to make sure that we don’t accidentally hurt any of the patients and to make sure that we can trust the results of our trials. So some of my time is spent writing down really clear instructions on how to do things which, if people follow them, will make sure none of the rules are broken.
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What I'd do with the prize money:
The ICR already does STEM public engagement activities with local schools so I would use the money to see if we can develop more engaging materials to use during those events and perhaps see if we can broaden our reach to more schools locally.
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Education:
O’levels – High school – Yateley Comprehensive, Yateley, Surrey
A-Levels – Maiden Erlegh School, Reading, Berkshire
BSc (Hons) degree – Loughborough University, Leicestershire
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Qualifications:
O’Levels – Maths, English Language/literature, French, Biology, Chemistry, Geography, History, Design & technology (woodwork)
A-Levels – Social biology (B), Economics (B) Geography (C)
Degree – BSc (Hons) – Human Biology 2:1
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Work History:
1993-1996 Scientific Officer for the Cancer Research Campaign Gray Laboratory at the Mount Vernon Hospital – Laboratory work involving investigation of the Micro-environment of tumours
1996 to 2001 Senior Clinical Data Coordinator – Covance (Contract Research Organisation (CRO))
2001 to 2008 Senior Data Manager – Novartis Horsham Research Centre (Pharmaceutical company)
2008 to 2009 Principal Data Manager – Novartis Horsham Research Centre
2010 to 2012 IIS Project Lead – Novartis Horsham Research Centre
2013 to 2017 Senior Manager, Data Management – INC Research UK Ltd (CRO)
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Current Job:
Clinical Trial Data Management Specialist
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Employer:
Institute of Cancer Research – Clinical Trials and Statistics Unit.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Helping to defeat cancer
What did you want to be after you left school?
A physiotherapist
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Not really, I was shy so just focussed on my work
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
I would do something with animals
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Depends on my mood!
What's your favourite food?
Pasta
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
To live by the sea somewhere warm, to go into space just once but then come home, for my body to feel 21 again
Tell us a joke.
Q: Did you hear the one about the germ? A: Never mind, I don't want to spread it around
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