LOCATION

Churchill Hospital, Headington, Oxford, OX3 7DQ

DPHIL START DATE

12 October 2020

PROJECT TITLE

Optimising laser lithotripsy

SUPERVISORS

Professor Ben Turney and Professor Robin Cleveland

I am currently a first year DPhil student in the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences focusing on urological stone disease. My research is focused on laser lithotripsy in the treatment of stone disease.  Lasers are one of the key tools in the surgical treatment of urological stones, and this is a rapidly evolving field with many recent new laser types and technologies becoming available. My project investigates in vitro methods for comparing laser performance in a controlled manner on key aspects such as stone ablation rate, degree of retropulsion and particle size.

I graduated with a first class honours degree in Mathematics from Imperial College London in 2008, before re-training as a graduate medic at the University of Cambridge and graduating in 2014. I completed my Academic Foundation Programme in the East Midlands and my Core Surgical Training in Thames Valley. I then did a junior fellowship with the stone team in the Urology department of Oxford University Hospitals where I began to work with Professor Ben Turney on in vitro laser experiments. I am continuing in this field under the supervision of Professor Turney as a DPhil student.