Staff with cardiovascular research interests

Professor Raymond Bond

Professor of Human Computer Systems

Raymond has research interests within human-computer systems which has mainly included applications of biomedical and healthcare informatics (digital health). Raymond's work has involved the application of human-computer interaction and data science/machine learning techniques to healthcare research. His work has involved health data analytics as well as the modelling, processing and visualisation of medical data to enhance clinical decision-making, including the creation of interactive decision support systems. He also has research interests in computerised simulation-based training in healthcare, usability engineering/UX data analysis methods to improve medical devices, eye-gaze analytics in clinical decision making, and is also involved in designing and evaluating digital health and wellbeing interventions. Raymond has over 350 research outputs and has chaired/co-chaired a number of conferences: 1) 32nd International BCS Human Computer Interaction conference, 2) the 45th/ 46th Annual Conference of the International Society for Computerised Electrocardiology, and 3) the 31st Annual European Conference of Cognitive Ergonomics).

Raymond initiated a UX-Lab which is an outlet for transferring usability engineering knowledge to the medical device industry and other industries. Raymond has been a grant holder on research projects funded by EPSRC, ESRC, HSC, FP7, H2020, InvestNI, Samaritans Ireland, Innovate UK, Higher Education Academy, InterTrade Ireland and the Royal Irish Academy.

Raymond obtained his BSc(hons) and PhD in the School of Computing and Mathematics (Ulster University). He is a senior fellow of the UK higher education academy. Before academia, he worked in the web industry and later held Research Associate positions in the subject areas of Connected Health and Computerised Electrocardiography. He also coordinated the Computing and Engineering Professional Education Centre for Northern Ireland (CEPEC-NI) where he managed computing science related outreach activities and summer schools.

Dr Victoria McGilligan

Senior Lecturer

Professor Declan McKenna

Professor of Biomedical Sciences

Research Interests

Translational research in Dr McKenna’s laboratory is focused on the role of microRNAs (miRNAs) in disease. His main disease focus is prostate cancer and he is investigating how miRNAs can be used to improve the diagnosis, prognosis and potential therapeutic intervention of this disease, with particular emphasis on developing serum profiling as a valuable clinical tool. He is also interested in hypoxia-related mechanisms of prostate cancer progression and is currently investigating how hypoxia impacts upon miRNA expression and other molecular pathways in tumour cells.

Dr McKenna’s research is aligned with the Personalised Medicine and Stratified Medicine strategic initiatives at Ulster University and includes collaboration with colleagues in academia, industry and clinical institutions through funded research projects.

Teaching Interests

Dr McKenna contributes to teaching on a number of on-campus and distance-learning undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Biomedical Sciences at Ulster University. He is module co-ordinator for Haematology modules at BSc, PgCert and MSc level, and also contributes to modules on Molecular Pathology of Disease, Stem Cell Biology, Biomedical Professional Practice and Study Skills. He has several years experience as Placement Tutor for students studying on the BSc(Hons) Biomedical Sciences DPP(Path) programme.

He is also a registered member of the STEM Ambassador programme in Northern Ireland and has a long-standing collaboration with the W5 Science Discovery Centre, Belfast to deliver STEM activities for schools and the general public. He makes regular contributions to the annual NI Science Festival, RTE Brainstorm and other initiatives promoting Public Engagement in Science.

Dr McKenna is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) and has also been awarded Chartered Science Teacher (CSciTeach) and Chartered Biologist (CBiol) status by the Royal Society of Biology.

Administrative Roles

Dr McKenna is currently Academic Division Head for Bio- and Healthcare Sub-school. He sits on committees for Global Engagement and Recruitment, Employability and also represents Ulster on several external working groups related to Biomedical Sciences.

Dr Taranjit Singh Rai

Senior Lecturer

Overview:

Dr Taranjit Singh Rai has more than 10 years of research experience in the field of ageing, cancer and ageing associated diseases. Taranjit has a PhD from PGIMER, Chandigarh, India and Post Doctoral training at the Beatson Institute of Cancer Research, Glasgow. Taranjit has won several awards for outstanding research and teaching such as young scientist and UWS STARS Award. Taranjit has been educated in entrepreneurship at Babson College, Boston, USA where he finished a Saltire foundation fellowship programme, which is a condensed MBA style entrepreneurial course. Taranjit has published more than 25 collaborative papers in high impact peer-reviewed journals (h-index of 19 and >1500 citations) such as Genes and Development, Nucleic Acids Research, Nature, Nature Cell Biology, Nature Genetics etc. He has presented his research at various national and international conferences and is a keen public speaker. His work has been highlighted in national and international newspapers and in the mainstream media (BBC).

Research Interests:

Taranjit is interested in the role of cellular senescence in health and disease. Senescent cells accumulate in tissues of humans and other organisms with age. Cellular senescence is thought to promote cell and tissue ageing. Clearance of senescent cells from tissues of model organisms has been shown to be beneficial in multiple ageing diseases such as cardiovascular, osteoarthritis and more recently in Alzheimer’s. Taranjit is interested in utilizing novel senescence signatures to predict patient outcomes, risk stratification and personalized medicine. Taranjit’s group is using various senescence model systems to test compounds for their ability to eliminate/kill senescent cells. Such compounds are called senolytics. The laboratory utilizes artificial intelligence, machine learning tools and collaborates with mathematicians, programmers and bioinformaticians to predict the vulnerabilities of senescent cells with hope of finding new therapeutic drugs. Taranjit is looking for talented PhD students to join his laboratory. Support is also available for talented postdoctoral candidates to apply for fellowships from EMBO, Marie-Curie and other funding bodies.

Teaching Interests:

Cell/Molecular biology, Epigenetics, Ageing, Chromatin, Bio-entrepreneurship.

Grant Reviewer:MRC, BBSRC, AR UK, Dunhill Medical Trust etc.

Journal Reviewer:Nature Communications, Genome Research, Aging Cell, Ageing Research Reviews, Oncotarget etc.

Professor Mary Ward

Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics

Mary Ward graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a BSc Hons Human Nutrition and Dietetics and from Ulster University with a PhD in Nutritional Biochemistry where she is currently a Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Her research at the Northern Ireland Centre for Food and Health (NICHE) is focused on B-vitamins involved in 1-C metabolism. She has vast experience of conducting highly controlled nutrition intervention studies in different population and clinical groups.

A particular interest of Mary's is the interaction between B-vitamins and a common polymorphism in the folate metabolising enzyme methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) which has led to the novel discovery (Patent EP2139488) that vitamin B2 (riboflavin) appears to be an important modulator of BP in individuals with a genetic pre-disposition for hypertension.

To date Mary has published more than 50 scientific papers in top-ranked journals across several disciplines. She has attracted significant external funding (over £4M) from government agencies in the UK and Ireland, the EU, Charities and Industry.

Mary is currently Deputy Director of the Wellcome Trust-Wolfson Northern Ireland Clinical Research Facility at the City Hospital Belfast and was Chair of the Nutrition Society (Irish Section) from 2009-13.

Research Interests

• B-vitamins and related genetic factors involved in one-carbon metabolism
• Gene-nutrient interactions
• B-vitamin requirements in health & disease (CVD, cognitive health, bone health, coeliac disease, pregnancy)
• Controlled dietary intervention studies in humans.

Teaching Interests

• Clinical Nutrition
• Nutrition and Metabolism
• Nutrition Research

Administrative Roles

• Course Director BSc Hons Dietetics

Dr Steven Watterson

Lecturer in Computational Biology (Hypertension)

Dr Steven Watterson is a Computational Biologist at the Northern Ireland Centre for Stratified Medicine with research interests in cholesterol metabolism and its role in cardiovascular disease, and also in the development of new mathematical and computational biology approaches to studying biological systems.

Steven has a first class MPhys Hons in Physics from the University of Edinburgh, a PhD in mathematics from Trinity College, Dublin and has studied non-equilibrium systems with Dr Chris Jarzynski at Los Alamos Laboratories.

He spent six years as a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh investigating the role of cholesterol metabolism in innate immunity in the lab of Prof Peter Ghazal at the Division of Infection and Pathway Medicine.  Here, he was part of the team to first uncover how cholesterol metabolism is regulated in response to cytomegalovirus infection.

Whilst at the University of Edinburgh, Steven also held joint appointments with the Centre for Synthetic and Systems Biology.

Steven is a member of the Life and Medical Sciences Advisory Committee of the Royal Irish Academy and currently serves on the editorial board of Frontiers in Synthetic Biology.  He is also a member of the European Atherosclerosis Society and the Genetics Society.

Research Interests

Steven’s research focuses on the networks of interactions that exist between genes, proteins and small molecules that determine biological function.  In particular, Steven is interested in how the dynamics of these networks alter in disease, how they vary within and between populations and how they can be reprogrammed therapeutically.

Teaching Interests

Steven current serves as module coordinator for
BSc
BIO123 – Mathematical and Computational Methods 1
BIO337 – Mathematical and Computational Methods 2
MSc
BIO826 – Mathematical and Computational Methods