Lisa Simpson
BSc (Hons)
DPhil Student
I am a postgraduate student on the British Heart Foundation 4-year studentship scheme (2016 cohort) working towards a DPhil in Cardiovascular Science.
My main research interest is endothelial mechanotransduction. I am currently working under the supervision of Professor Ellie Tzima within the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine based at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics.
I graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 2014 with a 1st class BSc (Hons) in Physiology. I moved to Oxford in 2015 to gain further lab experience as a Research Assistant within the Clinical Cardiovascular Research Facility (CCRF) in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. My primary responsibility was to collect and process human umbilical cord samples for the Oxford Cardiovascular Tissue Bioresource in collaboration with NHS Blood and Transplant. I extracted and cultured primary vascular cells from the vein, artery and cord tissue and also managed the maternal, fetal and neonatal clinical data collection for the Bioresource. I assisted with experiments on human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) derived from normal and hypertensive pregnancies to examine differences in cell growth, proliferation and gene expression.