22 THE KNOW
Keele scientist to job swap
with Oxford mathematician
Keele’s Professor
Alicia El Haj has
received a £195,000
‘discipline-hopping’
award from the
Engineering and
Physical Sciences
Research Council
(EPSRC) to spend a
year exchanging places
with the University
of Oxford’s Professor
Sarah Waters.
F
rom February, Professor El Haj
has joined Oxford’s Regenerative
Medicine Group, which spans Maths,
Computing and Biomedical Engineering,
for two days a week. She is exploring how
the practical application of mathematics
in biomedical research can be used
within her own research in regenerative
medicine and remote control healing. The EPSRC first launched its discipline-
hopping award last year with the aim
of providing researchers with an opportunity
to spend time in a different research or user
environment, in order to better understand
the need for and potential of research in
engineering, physical sciences, mathematical
sciences or ICT to have an impact in
addressing health challenges.
Professor El Haj, a Royal Society Research
Fellow and a cell engineering professor,
is researching how to heal the body by
remote control. Her research explores how
to steer and guide stem cells injected into
the body to a specific location, and remotely
activate them, from outside the body. Professor El Haj, founding director of ISTM,
said: “I’m honoured to have been awarded
this innovative EPSRC grant, and to be one
of the first to take part in this new scheme.
Mathematician Professor Waters investigates
the use of maths in regenerative medicine
for modelling, and will be meeting clinicians
and tissue engineering teams at Keele to
explore new interdisciplinary research areas.
“This interdisciplinary collaboration will
allow Keele University and the University
of Oxford to build on our strong existing
research links, and I’m excited to be working
with Oxford’s Regenerative Medicine
Group to further develop my research in
regenerative medicine.”