I work as a Research Technician within the OsKOR group reporting to Dr Karina Wright and providing technical support for the acquisition and processing of human tissues for multiple projects. Although this role is based at the RJAH Orthopaedic Hospital, it is also linked to the Birmingham Biomedical Research Centre.

I returned to education after starting a family and obtained a BSc in Biochemistry from Liverpool University. In 1997, I embarked on a PhD based in the Charles Salt Centre at the RJAH under the supervision of Dr Christopher Sharp investigating the biomechanical and biochemical properties of osteoarthritic bone.

Following completion of my PhD and further additions to my family, I returned to the RJAH in 2004 and started working on a project investigating the stress response of cells from the intervertebral disc (Grammer and European Spine Journal Award, 2010). Since 2010 I have been involved in various projects with Professor Sally Roberts and Dr Karina Wright. Primarily, these projects involved tissues and cells from the intervertebral disc but also included investigations into the purity of commercially prepared proteoglycans and the potential of blood biomarkers to predict neurological outcome in spinal cord injury patients. In 2014, I was awarded a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Travelling Fellowship to investigate the integration of intervertebral disc tissue at the vertebral interface of human lumbar spines.

At the end of 2018, I started working with Dr Heidi Fuller on a GOSH and SPARKS funded project investigating the proteomic profile of cells from different clinical severities of Spinal Muscular Atrophy patients. The aim of this work was to identify molecular differences between the different clinical types and to utilise these differences for more targeted treatment and/or as biomarkers to monitor treatment strategies.