I teach on a number of undergraduate programmes within the department of Biomedical Sciences including Healthcare Science, Biomedical Science and Biomedical Sciences (Health, Exercise and Nutruition).
Modules I deliver include: the final year Project module, Contemporary topics in Biomedical Sceince, Pathophysiology of Disease, Physiology Pharmacology and Toxicology, Human physiology and endocrinology as well as basic neuroscience and neuroanatomy to biomedical scientists. In addition, I also supervise both undergraduate and postgraduate level student projects in my specialist area of neuroscience.
Undergraduate
APS6022 – Research Project (Module Leader)
APS6008 – Contemporary topics
APS5017 – Physiology, Pharmacology and Toxicology (Module Leader)
SBM5001- Pathophysiology of Disease
SBM5005 – Sports Biomechanics and Functional Anatomy
APS4022 – Human Anatomy and Physiology
APS3007 – Human Biology
APS3012 – Research methods (Key Skills module)
Postgraduate
MBS7010 - Dissertation
I also supervise PhD students:
Current Cardiff Metropolitan University students:
Eleftheria Kodosaki
My background is in neuroscience and my research interest comes under the theme of cell replacement therapy in neurodegenerative diseases.
I have a long-standing interest in cell transplantation as a therapy for neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease. My research in this area has been largely in animal models of these diseases, although I have also had a major role in establishing an ethically approved human fetal tissue supply for the clinical application of this work and have had extended training in GMP technology. My PhD was a study of neural stem cells as a donor source for Huntington's disease and provided me with experience of both rodent and human fetal neural stem cells. Since then, I have continued to research neural stem cells, but have also gained experience with ES cell and iPS cell derived neural precursors, and in particular, I have been involved in the neural transplantation of such cells. I am also extremely interested in characterising the
in vitro culture system in which cells are grown, using molecular techniques to identify genes of interest and manipulation of culture systems to obtain the desired cell type.
I have played a key role in the development of a novel animal model for the preclinical assessment of human donor cells for neural transplantation. The model provides a novel strategy for allowing human cells to be xenotransplanted into the rodent brain without the need for immunosuppression. I would like to advance this work by undertaking a detailed characterisation of this system as well as by understanding the underlying immunological mechanism of the model. Following from this the role of inflammation in Huntington's disease is of great importance and may have important implications for therapeutic interventions, not least the ability of transplanted cells to survive in an inflamed environment. Understanding of the inflammatory pathways in Huntington's disease from pre-clinical through to clinical stage disease is increasing and deciphering the pathways involved in mediating this process is of particular interest. The communication between the periphery and central nervous system is important and how this influences on other pathophysiological process known to be ongoing in HD is still largely unknown. Finding ways to target this aspect of the disease once mechanisms are fully understood could have important implications for other therapeutics, which together could have a greater beneficial effect for the patient.
BNA (British Neuroscience Association)
Anatomical Society
RSB
Scientific advisory committee for Ataxia UK.
Review for Neurological Research, Experimental Neurology, Neuropsychopharmacology and the MRC
