Previous event highlights

On 29 April 2025, CATO ran a masterclass on advancing your academic career with an intermediate fellowship, and how to win one.

The aim of this masterclass was to provide information about various schemes available, advice about making a high-quality application, common pitfalls and how Imperial College can provide support. 
Delegates also had a chance to ask questions of the panel of knowledgeable speakers with a variety of experience in reviewing applications at fellowship selection panels and supporting applicants.

A total of 23 delegates attended, from within the Imperial College Academic Health Science member partnerships and affiliates, and was comprised of doctors, other non-medic clinicians and allied health professionals. 

Speakers:

Professor Sejal Saglani, Professor of Paediatric Respiratory Medicine, Imperial College - My Intermediate fellowship interview experience

Dr Tabitha Turner-Stokes, Imperial Post-Doctoral, Post-CCT Research Fellow, Imperial College - How I won my Clinician Scientist Award

Prof Iain McNeish, Chair in Oncology, Imperial College - Insights from CRUK Fellowship Selection Panels

Professor Jeremy Levy  (Host and CATO Director) and Dr Chioma Izzi-Engbeaya (CATO Deputy Director) also joined the speakers for the panel discussion.

From the feedback, delegates found this masterclass excellent.

Examples of some of the comments about the session:

"This was a great programme, absolutely filled with very helpful information, really enjoyed Tabitha's talk with all the practical tips and difficulties she encountered."

"Always great. Well done CATO."

"Lots of excellent practical tips, especially from those who have recently been through this application. Also, advice for females/LTFT trainees was excellent."

"Jam packed with helpful tips and advice."

"Really good to hear from people from all different positions. "

On 4 March, the CATO team ran an in-person multiprofessional event for clinical PhD Fellows, at The Wolfson Education Centre, Imperial College Hammersmith Hospital Campus.

The aim of the workshop was to share insights from clinicians who had completed their PhDs in the last few years and are pursuing successful postdoctoral research careers, facilitate networking with other clinical PhD fellows, and share strategies to overcome challenges and avoid common pitfalls. Topics to be covered included writing up, preparing for your viva, publishing papers and next career steps.

This FREE, in-person CATO event was attended by 24 clinicians who were undertaking PhDs (including doctors, physiotherapists, nurses, dietitians, pharmacists, etc) within the Imperial AHSC and partners.

Speakers were:

Dr Chioma Izzi-Engbeaya, (Deputy Director of Clinical Academic Training/host) - Next steps after finishing your PhD

Dr Bibek Das, (NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer, Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College) - Building a clinical academic career

Dr Gemma Clunie, (Lead Clinical Academic for Allied Health Professions/Honorary Clinical Research Fellow, Imperial College London) - Avoiding the cliff edge

Dr Malick Gibani, (Clinical Lecturer, Department of Infectious Disease - Faculty of Medicine) - Planning for the end of your PhD and next steps

We received plenty of positive feedback from the delegates. Comments included:

“The speakers covered a wide range of scenarios, and they were knowledgeable. I was able to discover the available choices I had to progress my career”

“All the talks were informative and practical. Rather than being vague. Exact examples of funding and key metrics were given”

“Talks generally useful and well directed at aims of workshop”

This online CATO Masterclass, Chaired by Prof Jeremy Levy, was an excellent opportunity to showcase opportunities for clinicians to build industry links during fellowships, featuring personal insights from awardees.

Dr Francesca Conway shared her experience with an MRC/AstraZeneca fellowship, Dr George Adams discussed his NIHR/Zinc innovation fellowship, and Dr Joe Zhang (now leading Data Science at the Artificial Intelligence Centre for Value Based Healthcare) highlighted his industry collaborations during a Wellcome PhD in AI and digital health. Dr Tamir Rashid, Clinical Reader in Liver Regeneration at Imperial College, spoke about engaging with industry whilst undertaking research at doctoral or postdoctoral levels.

We were also delighted to hear from Dr Prashanthini Jeyarajan, who works across the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College, with the Corporate Partnerships team, to bring businesses together with our leading experts to get ideas from the lab to the real world.

An impressive 57 colleagues, coming from various clinical professions (both medic and non-medic) across all Imperial College AHSC organisations, joined the Masterclass to hear our presenters talk about their innovative and exciting projects.

Some comments from delegates:

"Really great to hear about peoples experiences and the different paths they have taken to get there. All the speakers were really inspiring!"

"Really fantastic talks, really very encouraging"

A YouTube recording of the masterclass is available here: https://youtu.be/OHKnuNb3c8A

On Tuesday 3 December 2024, the CATO team hosted 2 back-to-back Writing skills workshops facilitated by Pete Moore of ThinkWrite Consultancy. These in-person workshops were specifically targeting clinical academic researchers from various clinical professions from within Imperial college and the AHSC partnerships.

The workshops were held at I-HUB (Translation & Innovation Hub), Imperial College White City Campus

Writing targeted grant proposals … reducing time while increasing success

This workshop was tailored for clinical academics seeking Doctoral fellowship grants or higher and focused on honing the skill of securing funding by tailoring proposals to meet the specific requirements of diverse funding bodies, leading to time saving and allowing researchers to focus on their work or pursue additional funding opportunities.

 Writing Quality papers … a strategic approach to getting published in your target journal

This workshop was aimed at clinical academic/clinical researchers from all clinical professions working towards research fellowship awards/research grants with the aim of teaching them a solution for the most important problem they would face when writing a document that has to convey detailed information while at the same time communicating an argument to a busy readership. It also aimed to give participants the opportunity to practice the main skill that they would need to implement this solution.

Both workshops were each attended by 19 delegates and from the feedback of both sessions, 100% of the attendees felt that the objectives of the training were successfully met.

What delegates enjoyed about the workshops

“Excellently run, really high-quality facilitation; The best workshop of this kind I have ever attended”

“Pete was so interactive and has a wealth of knowledge to delve into. A great teacher”

“How to be more focussed by thinking of a message in my analysis. How to hunt for THE message in others' work”

Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers a real opportunity in healthcare, not only to automate some of the problem-solving carried out by doctors and other healthcare professionals, but also to make quicker and better decisions and apply problem-solving techniques that humans alone could not.

This CATO Masterclass, Chaired by Prof Jeremy Levy, was an excellent opportunity to hear about a wide variety of current AI research projects focussing on healthcare issues.

The aim of the session was to share with a wider clinical audience of research active and interested clinicians (at any stage of training and from any profession), a flavour of the range of AI work being done here at Imperial/RMH, often in non-clinical departments, to encourage future collaborations, and to allow the non-clinical PhD fellows to engage with a clinical audience so we can better use AI tools in healthcare settings. 

We were delighted to have Professor Aldo Faisal, Professor of AI and Neuroscience from the Departments of Computing and Bioengineering, introduce the session. Prof Faisal, head of the prestigious UKRI AI4H doctoral training programme at Imperial College, shared insights from his ground-breaking research on neurotechnology, human-robotic interaction, and more.

Following Prof Faisal’s introduction, a number of the current AI4H PhD fellows gave brief overviews of their research, to give a flavour of the huge array of environments in which AI tools are being used.

• Sam Channon-Wells, MD, Clinical Research Fellow in Paediatric Infectious Disease (samuel.channon18@imperial.ac.uk): Development of a new data driven molecular taxonomy of paediatric infectious and inflammatory disease
• Ruoyu Hu, Research Postgraduate, Computing (ruoyu.hu18@imperial.ac.uk): An AI platform for learning to laugh: New approach to develop a sense of humour
• Oskar Fraser-Krauss, Research Postgraduate, Computing (o.fraser-krauss23@imperial.ac.uk): Dynamic graph machine learning for early detection and characterisation of antimicrobial resistant outbreaks from acute care data

• Simon T Williamson, MD, Clinical Research Fellow, Department of Brain Sciences) (s.williamson23@imperial.ac.uk): Developing neuromorphic AI-based closed-loop control brain stimulation to treat Alzheimer’s disease
• Aizaan Anwar, MD, Research Postgraduate, Computing (a.anwar20@imperial.ac.uk): Digital Pathological Speech Processing and Artificial Intelligence for Brain Tumour Diagnostics
• Alex Ranne, Research Postgraduate, Computing (alex.ranne17@imperial.ac.uk): AI-driven robotic catheter system for ultrasound-guided endovascular surgery

 Finally, Dr Richard Sidebottom, consultant radiologist at the Royal Marsden Hospital, introduced his work leading the Radiology and AI Research Hub at the Royal Marsden, and his ongoing project using AI to use images and clinical data from symptomatic patients with breast cancer who had mammography scans to improve care and management.

An impressive 128 colleagues, coming from various clinical professions across all Imperial College AHSC organisations, joined the Masterclass to hear our presenters talk about their innovative and exciting projects.

You can catch up with what was covered by watching the recording of the session online