£1.3M UKRI "Future Leaders Fellowship" Grant Awarded to Tracy Underwood, Senior Physicist at Leo Cancer Care
Dr Tracy Underwood, a Senior Physicist at Leo Cancer Care, has been awarded a prestigious “Future Leaders Fellowship” from the UK government grant body UKRI (UK Research and Innovation). These fellowships support talented researchers in developing their careers and building world-class teams, whether in businesses or universities.
“The Future Leaders Fellowships provide researchers and innovators with the freedom and generous long-term support to progress adventurous new ideas, and to move across disciplinary boundaries and between academia and industry. The fellows announced today provide shining examples of the talented researchers and innovators across every discipline attracted to pursue their ideas in universities and businesses throughout the UK, with the potential to deliver transformative research that can be felt across society and the economy.”
Dr Underwood has been awarded approximately £1.3m to develop translational research at Leo Cancer Care over an initial 5 years, with the possibility of a 3-year extension. Her fellowship research will be divided into 3 key work packages:
Patient immobilisation
Upright Radiotherapy workflows
Supine to upright image registration
“The overarching goal is to optimise the way Leo Cancer Care’s technology is used in the radiotherapy clinic, both in terms of the patient experience and clinical outcomes. To do this I’ve pulled together an absolute dream team of external collaborators from the UK and around the world.”
Funded collaborators include:
Prof Heidi Probst (academic therapeutic radiographer at Sheffield Hallam University, specialising in breast treatments)
Prof Sue Hignett & Dr Michael Fray (Human Factors experts at Loughborough Design School)
Dr Jamie McClelland (expert in medical image computing at University College London)
Dr David Cobben (consultant oncologist at Clatterbridge Cancer Centre)
The grant will also enable Dr Underwood to extend our team in-house, bringing on new physics and engineering recruits.
To hear from Tracy herself on this fantastic opportunity and her plans, watch the interview here: https://youtu.be/0BAI3vbEZk8