Annual fellowship awards fund vital first steps in research
Annual fellowship awards fund vital first steps in research
10 July 2023
This year we’ve awarded five pre-doctoral fellowships and one post-doctoral fellowship, offering a unique opportunity for staff to develop their research skills and take forward their own project.
Our fellowships – funded jointly with the NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre – enable staff to take time out from their professional role and focus solely on research, in many cases laying the foundations to progress to a PhD project.
Every year we award fellowships to medics and clinical staff working in a wide range of healthcare professions, opening up exciting new opportunities across the Trust.
“The fellowships are a great opportunity for anyone who wants to take time out of their clinical role to explore whether research is the right path for them,” said Dr Caroline Alexander, Lead Clinical Academic for Therapies at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and a member of our Research Fellowships committee.
“The chance to take a year out to focus on research acts as a springboard for our fellows to further their career while driving forward a project that will lead to better care for patients at our hospitals.”
Sugha, Obstetrics and Gynaecology Specialist Registrar
Sugha is among those who will receive a fellowship to support her research project this year. Her project aims to help women who have been diagnosed with a miscarriage make informed decisions about their care using a new AI tool.
Sugha will apply machine learning to develop and test the application, which will create personalised statistics for each patient to help guide their decisions around miscarriage management. The aim is to optimise the pathway for these women during what can be a difficult time.
The project will also include a pilot study using radiomics to identify predictors of miscarriage at 12 weeks from earlier ultrasound images.
“I’m really excited to carry out this research,” said Sugha, who is based at Queen Charlotte’s & Chelsea Hospital and has worked at the Trust for the last two years. “It will give me that dedicated time away from my clinical commitments to devote myself fully to research.
“It’s a very competitive field, but I would love to develop my career path to involve research and improve clinical practice for the future.”
"The fellowship will give me that dedicated time away from my clinical commitments to devote myself fully to research."
Sugha Murugesu, Research Fellow
This year’s cohort of fellows will each receive a grant of up to £85,000 to progress their research project over the next 12 months.
The projects awarded funding this year cover a range of different fields, including an initiative to improve nutrition for patients admitted to critical care following major trauma and a study investigating the use of auditory-visual aids to reduce delirium in ICU patients after heart surgery.
Since the programme was launched in 2009, we’ve awarded more than £5 million to support over 100 research fellowship projects. Many of our previous fellows have seen their research lead to positive changes at the Trust, helping to drive forward improvements to patient care at our hospitals.
One of those is Layla Bolton, who recently completed her research project examining the barriers preventing some patients with venous leg ulcers being referred for specialist care.
Layla’s work helped to identify the main barriers that get in the way of some patients receiving timely care in hospital – and as part of her NIHR clinical doctoral fellowship she’s now working with national wound care experts to address these issues and ensure patients receive the best possible support.
“I really enjoyed having the freedom to pursue a research project that’s important to me as a nurse and important to my patients as well,” Layla said.
“A lot of the time nursing priorities are not highlighted and not researched, but the fellowship gave me the opportunity to fix a problem that’s going to be massively impactful for my patients.”
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If you’re a member of staff at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust with a passion for research, you may be eligible to apply for our Research Fellowships programme. Applications for our next funding round open on 16 October 2023. You can find out more here.
