Summary
Victoria is a Diabetes UK Grand Challenge senior fellow in the Department of Bioengineering and an Honorary Consultant in Diabetes, Endocrinology and General Internal Medicine. Her research interests are in islet biology, advanced optical imaging platforms and the gut brain axis. She is currently leading a multidisciplinary team of stem cell biologists and material scientists working towards beta cell replacement therapies for type 1 diabetes.
Victoria graduated from the Royal Free and University College London School of Medicine in 2002, with a first class intercalated BSc in Medical Physics and Bioengineering. In 2006 she moved to Imperial as an Academic Clinical Fellow and in 2008 was awarded an MRC clinical research training fellowship under the mentorship of Professor Sir Steve Bloom. During her PhD she studied the physiological effects of combination gut hormone administration on food reward processing (fMRI), glucose metabolism and energy expenditure in humans. As an NIHR Clinical Lecturer she developed novel imaging techniques to investigate brown adipose tissue physiology. In 2016 , she took up a prestigious Diabetes UK Harry Keen Clinician Scientist Fellowship with which she has worked on rodent vagal deafferentation models to investigate the peripheral pathways of action of gut hormones and cutting edge longitudinal functional imaging platforms for pancreatic islets. Since moving as a faculty member to the Department of Bioengineering in 2020, she has developed her interest in fundamental islet biology, calcium imaging, vascularised islet-on-chip platform development and regenerative medicine approaches for diabetes.
Victoria is the course lead for the Masters in Engineering for Biomedicine and contributes as Module Lead, Lecturer, Project Supervisor and Tutor on the MB BS course (Endocrinology), Endocrinology BSc, Clinical MRes, Diabetes and Obesity and Functional 'omics MSc and Molecular Bioengineering courses. She completed her Masters in Education in University Learning and Teaching (Medicine) with Distinction in 2016, with a particular interest in the role of Generalists as medical educators.
Victoria has led at Faculty and Departmental level for Athena SWAN and has twice won a Julia Higgins award for supporting Women in Academia.
Publications
Journals
Alonso AM, Cork SC, Phuah P, et al., 2024, The vagus nerve mediates the physiological but not pharmacological effects of PYY3-36 on food intake, Molecular Metabolism, Vol:81, ISSN:2212-8778
Hirani D, Alabdulkader S, Miras AD, et al., 2023, What can functional brain imaging teach us about remission of type 2 diabetes?, Diabet Med, Vol:40
Yaganoglu S, Kalyviotis K, Vagena-Pantoula C, et al., 2023, Author Correction: Highly specific and non-invasive imaging of Piezo1-dependent activity across scales using GenEPi, Nature Communications, Vol:14, ISSN:2041-1723
Alhakami A, Salem V, Alateeq D, et al., 2023, The Arab COVID-19 Anxiety Syndrome Scale (C-19ASS): COVID-19 anxiety syndrome and psychological symptoms in the Saudi Arabian population, Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, Vol:30, ISSN:1063-3995, Pages:1083-1094
Pantazis P, Pantazis P, Yaganoglu S, et al., 2023, Highly specific and non-invasive imaging of Piezo1-dependent activity across scales using GenEPi, Nature Communications, Vol:14, ISSN:2041-1723, Pages:1-16