By 
Senior Lecturer and Head of the Medical Bioinformatics Research Cluster
Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology, Queen’s University Belfast
+44 (0) 28 9097 2802 i.overton@qub.ac.uk
Since August 2017, I have been Head of the Medical Bioinformatics Research Cluster and lead the Data Intensive Biomedicine Research Group at the Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology (CCRCB), Queen’s University Belfast.
Scottish Crucible was without doubt the most productive and stimulating professional development training programme that I have ever attended. I participated in the 2010 cohort, soon after taking up a five-year Scottish Government Personal Research Fellowship at the MRC Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh. Scottish Crucible provided rich fertiliser for intellectual development across a whole range of areas; including in public engagement, policy, innovation, winning funding, collaboration and knowledge exchange.
I particularly valued the opportunities to interact with so many highly talented people in an environment that was carefully crafted for me to benefit from their knowledge and experience; including experiential learning. My work was therefore energised by Scottish Crucible because it instilled critical insights to enhance my competency across many areas. For example, in contributing to the development of Diagnostics and Knowledge Exchange partnerships with LifeArc (formerly MRC Technology); in publishing a patent; and in becoming a founding member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh ‘Young Academy of Scotland’ (2011), where I have led the writing of policy advice documents at national and European levels.
I have become very active in public engagement, including as a STEM ambassador; working with press officers leading to research being featured in national and local media; developing an interactive activity on bioinformatics/precision medicine for a stall at the CCRCB open day; and delivering outreach lectures (such as: www.forthvalley.ac.uk/news-events/renowned-scientist-talks-to-fvc-students) – some of these activities simply would not have occurred without the impetus from Scottish Crucible.
My group’s research has been funded from a range of sources, including the Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust (UoE-ISSF), Marie Curie Actions, Prostate Cancer UK and Carnegie Trust.
Recent Publication:
Lubbock et al. “Overcoming intratumoural heterogeneity for reproducible molecular risk stratification: a case study in advanced kidney cancer.” BMC Medicine (2017) 15:118
