Join us at the next Inaugural Lecture where our new professors will be showcasing their work. These lectures are an excellent opportunity to discover the latest developments in research.

Heather Milburn, Professor of Respiratory Medicine

Title TBC

Heather Milburn is a consultant in respiratory medicine who has had a varied and exciting career to date.

Heather did not begin her career in medicine straight away. She studied Biochemistry and Physiology at the University of Southampton followed by an MSc in Occupational Hygiene at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. As part of this, she carried out a research project on the subclinical neurological effect of lead. This research required Heather to visit workers in factories that handled a lot of lead and found their reaction times were decreased despite having lead levels considered acceptable.

This research led Heather to a post at Guy’s as part of an MRC studentship in anaesthetics where she met the Dean, Professor Roy Spector, who encouraged her to study medicine. Heather opted to complete the first two years of medicine in just one year, no small feat!

After early clinical training, Heather moved to the Royal Free Hospital where she worked with bone marrow transplant patients and looked at their lung immunology. She found that by treating the inflammatory response in the lungs of these patients, instead of the infection alone, the survival of patients greatly increased.

Heather then returned to a clinical job in GKT where she has continued research into respiratory infections and other disease complications such as the relationship between Tuberculosis (TB) and vitamin D.

Heather has seen the area of medicine change enormously since she first started her career. She believes that everyone should be given the opportunity to pursue their interests; there is always a way around conventions, even if it takes you longer to get there.

Snezhana Oliferenko, Professor of Evolutionary Cell Biology

A comparative approach to understanding cell biology

Snezhana Oliferenko is a Professor of Evolutionary Cell Biology specialising in the dynamics of cell growth and division. She began doing research in her second year of undergraduate studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University and knew she would continue along this career path from then on. 

Snezhana became a graduate student working with Lukas Huber at the Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna. The IMP allowed Snezhana to meet several outstanding researchers – some of whom she collaborates with today – and many of the skills to set her up for life in science. “Two key lessons I learnt at the IMP is that it is important to stand up for your research but also to listen to criticism. This really helped me develop scientific thinking” says Snezhana.

Snezhana then moved to Singapore for postdoctoral training with the fission yeast geneticist Mohan Balasubramanian who encouraged her to “study whatever she wanted”. This lead to her eventually setting up her own laboratory in Singapore and developing a comparative biology approach in two fission yeast species to understand the mechanisms underlying cellular remodelling during division.

At the end of 2013, Snezhana relocated to the Randall Centre for Cell & Molecular Biophysics here at King’s. Two postdocs, Ying Gu and Masha Makarova, moved alongside her, helping to set up the new lab. Funding from Wellcome Trust meant that the Oliferenko Group could grow and branch into new directions such as lipid metabolism and its influence on constraining cell biology. 

Snezhana is convinced that it is important to be research active but also to be a good mentor and a colleague and to have fun doing science.

To hear Heather and Snezhana’s inspiring stories in their own words please join us on Wednesday 30 May 2018.