You will benefit from interdisciplinary learning alongside scientists and clinicians currently working in the National Health Service (NHS) and Public Health England (PHE) as well as recent Biomedical Science graduates.
Lectures are delivered by subject experts who are clinical or research specialists in their field and are invited from many institutions from across the UK. Most of the lectures are given by guest speakers who are acknowledged experts in their field from within the NHS, Public Heath England (PHE) or are highly respected researchers. This ensures the course remains up to date and relevant to your future career and also enables you to develop a strong network of contacts. The programme also draws upon the expertise and research experience of a number of Blizard Institute academics, some of whom are described below.
Michele Branscombe is a senior lecturer in infection science and the programme lead. Michele is primarily interested in the teaching of clinical microbiology to healthcare scientists, nurses and clinicians and encouraging discussion between the professions. She holds membership of the Institute for Learning and Teaching and in 2007 became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
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Professor Dan Pennington is a professor of molecular pathology, Centre Lead for the Centre for Immunobiology at the Blizard Institute, and module lead for the Immunology module on the programme. His research interests include immunology; T cell development; the thymus; host immune response to cancer; and immunology of the gut. His lab’s recent work has built on observations that immune surveillance of organs is critically contributed to by sets of unconventional T cells, some of which may be constitutively resident within particular, non-lymphoid tissues such as the gut. Intriguingly, these intraepithelial T cell populations not only have direct anti-pathogen and anti-tumour effector function but are also associated with anti-inflammatory immunoregulatory responses that are implicated in many autoimmune pathologies.
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Dr Olivier Marchès is a non-clinical lecturer in microbiology and teaches on the ‘Molecular biology and pathogenesis’ module on the programme. His main research interest has been to decipher the molecular cross-talk established between the enteropathogenic (EPEC) and enterohaemorrhagic (EHEC) Escherichia coli (E.coli) bacteria and their host with a long term aim being to identify new tracks to follow for development of therapeutics or control strategies for infections. A key element in EPEC and EHEC pathogenic strategy is their use of a type 3 secretion system to inject virulence proteins called effectors directly into host eukaryotic cells, proteins that subvert normal cellular functions. The main interest is to study the function of the effectors injected into the host tissues by pathogenic E. coli and the cellular pathways they subvert with a focus on the effectors used by the bacteria to manipulate mucosal immunity. He has also been a member of the Higher Education Academy since 2017.
Dr Anna Ridley is a Lecturer in Immunology and Infection. She is one of the Core teaching team for MSc Biomedical Science (Medical Microbiology), MSc Clinical Science (infection Science) and MSc Clinical Microbiology, a Lecturer in Immunology in the Nanchang University Joint Programme (Basic Immunology) and a Problem Based Learning (tutor) for undergraduate medical students – MBBS. She is interested in defining the phenotype and function of T cells from patients with inflammatory arthritis. Using cellular techniques, she has screened compounds identified by artificial intelligence with the aim of finding new treatments for this disease. A further interest is the innate immune system in inflammatory arthritis and specifically how neutrophils, an abundant but understudied population, are involved in disease pathogenesis.
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