Biography

Daisy qualified as a clinical doctor in 2008 and completed her specialist training in both Geriatric Medicine and General Internal Medicine in 2022.

She was awarded an MRC-ARUK Centre for Musculoskeletal Ageing Research funded fellowship to complete her PhD from the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing at the University of Birmingham.  This was an investigation into immunesenescence in frailty and sarcopenia and was supervised by Professors Janet Lord and Elizabeth Sapey.

Following her PhD she was awarded a NIHR funded academic clinical lectureship post in Geriatric Medicine.  She has held this post since 2018.  During this period of time she has diversified her research interests and has been successful in a number of grant applications as both principle and co-investigtaor.  Notably an Academy of Medical Sciences Starter Grant for Clinical Lecturers for the investigation of acute sarcopenia recovery in a Covid-19 model and a UK Spine Knowledge Exchange grant for investigation of senescence and biomarkers in an extensively clinically characterised cohort. 

She is a member of the steering committee for Geriatric Medicine Research Collaborative (GeMRC) and has played an active role in study design, set up, recruitment, analysis and dissemination of all projects to date.  These have included the international project collecting outcomes in older patients with Covid-19.

Since 2022 she has been speciality lead for Geraitric Medicine for the MBChB course.  She has overseen the transition of the curriculum from 4th to 3rd year and adapted the content to align it with the standardised MLA curriculum.  She has a Fellowhsip from the Higher Education Academy for recognition of her teaching activities. 

She is a member of the current SUSTAIN cohort at the University of Birmingham which aims to equip future leaders in research with effective skills to drive future change in the research landscape.  She is also an active member of the Research and Academic Committee at British Geriatrics Society. 

Clinically she works as a visiting consultant at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham.   

ISTRC 2023 summary

I stepped out of my car in Newcastle city centre to the cheers of 52,000 Newcastle supporters celebrating the 3^rd goal in the Newcastle United versus Paris Saint Germaine Champions League game.  The atmosphere was contagious and set the tone for a friendly and supportive international conference. 

My overwhelming impression from ISTRC 2023 was of making multiple connections with many different researchers from all over the world.  The design of the conference and in particular the conference dinner meant I talked meaningfully to people I had never met before which had been one of my aims prior to the conference.  As someone who had been out the loop for a while with maternity leaves and does not find networking naturally easy the conference facilitated numerous new connections which will be incredibly valuable for my ongoing academic career.  In addition, to all the networking opportunities I found the conference a really supportive place to present my work and I really valued all the feedback from the audience.  This helped me reconsider the data I had presented and think about how I might extend the research further.  I also really appreciated the variety and quality of all the speakers and I was exposed to types of research I would not normally seek out.  The programme represented the different important methodologies in sarcopenia research and subsequently I learnt a lot and thought about sarcopenia differently.