UCL EGA Institute for Women’s Health
Annual Alumni Newsletter 2015
Foreword by Peter Brocklehurst
Welcome to the second newsletter of the Institute for Women’s Health Alumni. This initiative is championed by
Joyce Harper to ensure a regular process of communication which will complement our other communication
strategies. UCL had produced a new 20 year strategy www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-2034 which has education at the heart
of all UCL does. This has increased our enthusiasm for expanding our education provision within the Institute and
several of these initiatives are described in the Newsletter. Our contribution to undergraduate education as well
as an expanded programme of postgraduate education, including short courses, will steadily increase over the
coming year. Please keep an eye on the website for new updates, or even better, join our Facebook page (see
page 2) to hear news as it happens on all aspects of the Institute’s work.
Annual Alumni Event, UCL, Wednesday 8 July
2015, 6-9pm, South Cloisters
We are busy planning an alumni event to top last
year’s great success. Once again, the event is being
held on the evening of the 2014-15 students’
graduation ceremony. We will be having drinks and a
BBQ, and some networking activities. If you have not
received an email invitation for the evening and
would like to attend, please contact Angela Poulter
(a.poulter@ucl.ac.uk) urgently.
Over 50 people attended the first alumni event in
July 2014. It was a fantastic evening, with some
students returning to the UK especially for the event.
To ensure people spoke to someone new, we did
speed networking, getting students of similar
professions and geographic locations to talk
together. And it was a pleasure to see the students
from 2012-2013 graduate on that day at the Royal
Festival Hall.
News from 2014-2015 MSc Students
This year we have 38 students from the UK and
from Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Greece, India,
Iraq, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia,
Spain, and the USA. We have had a great year so
far and the students are now preparing to start their
projects.
Our MSc students, Natasha Liou, Amy Duruji,
Karimah Douglas, Shrina Patel, have been active
student academic representatives (StARs) this year.
Natasha was appointed Faculty of Population Health
StAR, and awarded both the university-wide Staff
Choice StAR of the Year award and the UCL Union’s
StAR of the Year award. We are very proud of her.
Natasha truly has been a star, and an excellent
representative of her peers, of our Institute, and our
Faculty.
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UCL EGA Institute for Women’s Health
Annual Alumni Newsletter 2015
Social Media
We know that Facebook is not for everyone, but it is an easy way to keep a wide audience up to date with news
and events. The Institute Facebook page can be found by searching for UCL EGA Institute for Women’s Health.
And for those of you who have not joined the MSc Alumni page yet – you can find this at UCL IfWH Graduate
Student Society. Other pages you might want to like are: UCL Centre for PG & D, Centre for Reproductive and
Genetic Health, and the Embryology and PGD Academy.
Joyce has made a LinkedIn Page for those that use this. Please search for Joyce Harper. Joyce is also now on
Twitter @ProfJoyceHarper.
News from Research Students
Currently we have 43 graduate research students in
the Institute. Nine research students were awarded
their degrees in 2014. In March 2015, research
students Dimitrios Koutoukidis, Penny James, Bola
Grace, and Subha Mitra organized a very successful
7th IfWH research student conference.
Our students have been busy presenting their
research externally too. Panicos Shangaris won
prizes for his presentations at the Neonatal Society
and at the Society for Reproductive Investigation,
also in March 2015. Congratulations to current PhD
student Rebecca Spencer on the birth of her baby
daughter Matilda in December 2014.
New Teaching Fellow
Dr Helen O’Neill (MSc, 2008) returned to the
Institute to take up a Teaching Fellow post in
autumn 2014. Helen has been busy ever since
contributing to MSc teaching and developing new elearning short courses. Helen was a special guest at
Women in Science – forging new pathways, held at
the University of Westminster in February 2015.
News from 2013-2014 MSc students
In 2013-2014 we had 36 students from as far afield
as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Nigeria, Kenya, and
Australia alongside a solid cohort of UK and EU
students. It was a high achieving year with 11
students gaining an overall Distinction and 11 a
Merit. 16 students achieved a Distinction in their
projects with supervisors at IfWH, UCL, and beyond.
We are looking forward to seeing them at their
graduation on 8th July 2015.
Graduates from 2013-2014 have taken up diverse
career opportunities, from lab-based work in
academic contexts in London, Oxford and Poland,
and donor recruitment work in a London-based egg
and sperm donor bank, to management consultancy
for a global partnership. Several students are
pursuing research degrees, at UCL, in Edinburgh,
and Sheffield and another is working as a research
midwife at Queen Mary’s College London.
A number of students have continued with their
clinical careers, for example in specialty training
placements in core medical training and clinical
genetics, and as a Junior Clinical Fellow in Obstetrics
and Gynaecology in the UK, and another as a Senior
Lecturer/ Consultant Obstetrician-Gynaecologist at a
teaching hospital in Nigeria.
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UCL EGA Institute for Women’s Health
Annual Alumni Newsletter 2015
The Future of Education at the Institute
This year we are developing an exciting integrated BSc in Women’s Health, and propose to include modules that
represent all four IfWH departments. We are also considering setting up an MRes in Reproductive Science and
Women’s Health, consisting of four taught modules and a substantial research project. Ideas for the future might
include an MSc in Women’s Health, or a BSc in Women’s and Child Health in collaboration with the Institute of
Child Health. We would love to hear your views on these initiatives. Helen and Joyce have created two online
distance learning CPD programmes with the help of the IVF and PGD teams: Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis
and The IVF Laboratory. In May 2015, the Institute also ran a face-to-face short course on research methods
Making Research Work for Women’s Health Services. We are aiming to develop our CPD offer in the future.
Celebrating Alumni Achievements and News
This section of the newsletter is to celebrate some
recent alumni achievements and news. Do get in
touch with Joyce or Angela with updates.
Eridan Rocha Ferreira (PhD, 2014) now holds a
Neonatology Research Associate post at IfWH. Laura
Thei (PhD, 2014) is pursuing research as a
Postdoctoral Researcher in the Division of
Psychiatry, University of Oxford. David Carr (PhD,
2013) started as a clinical lecturer in Obstetrics &
Gynaecology at St George’s Hospital in April 2015.
Dimitrios Kafetzis (MSc, 2011) has recently moved
to Dubai to start a new job with Bourn Hall IVF
international group. Okan Atilan (MSc, 2013) is
currently working as a Trainee Embryologist at the
Nicosia IVF Clinic and has begun his PhD in Medical
Biology & Genetics at the Near East University.
Ratri Wulandari (MSc, 2013) began her PhD in
ovarian cancer research at Imperial College London
in October 2014 and is expecting a baby in August
2015. Julia Pudner (MSc, 2014) is getting married in
June 2015 and heading off to Florida Keys on
honeymoon. Aya Harada (MSc, 2011) published her
book on first trimester scan and prenatal diagnosis
in Japan in April 2014, got married in October 2014,
and gave birth to her son Tomonori in January 2015.
Outreach
We have continued to develop our outreach
programme this academic year, including visits to
the Institute from several high schools, and visits by
staff to schools of all stages to talk about UCL and
our research. Helen O’Neill gave a full day of talks
with Graham Snudden (BlueGnome) at Saffron
Walden County High School, as part of British
Science Week in March 2015. Joyce Harper spoke
at the school on the same day on How a woman
succeeds in a man's world.
We also ran our second summer school in June
2014, with nine students from three schools visiting
the Institute for a week. The students spent time in
different laboratories, research groups and clinical
units, meeting students and getting a feel for life at
UCL. At the end of the week the students completed
a multiple choice test to consolidate their learning.
We will be running the same Summer School in
2015 with 14 school students from different
schools.
Staff Awards
Angela Poulter, Graduate Administrator, was
delighted to receive a UCLU Student Choice
Teaching Award in June 2015. The education team
were also recently awarded a SLMS Education
Award in recognition of their development of a suite
of Moodle pages for our MSc programmes, including
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an innovative welcome page for offer holders.
UCL EGA Institute for Women’s Health
Annual Alumni Newsletter 2015
Giving to the Institute for Women’s Health Education Fund
As alumni of UCL and IfWH, you may feel you are in a position to give something back to UCL. This could involve
talking at one of our careers afternoons for current students, supervising an MSc project, or taking a student on
for an internship. We are also setting up an Institute for Women’s Health Education Fund to enhance the
education we can provide to our students. Soon there will be an online giving option on our website – keep an
eye out for this. By donating you could help to sponsor a student, contribute to the purchase of educational
equipment, or assist in our provision of events for students and alumni. We are currently encouraging donations
to fund new chairs for the Theobald Seminar Room – if you donate, we will acknowledge your donation by adding
a plaque with your name, programme, and year of graduation to the chair.
International Women’s Day 2015
An IfWH team led by Judith Stephenson organised a
series of public events to mark International Women’s
Day and to challenge the way society sees women.
The week began with Seven, a ground-breaking
documentary play portraying seven women’s rights
activists from around the world, with each of their
stories read by a senior UCL male academic, including
the UCL Provost, Michael Arthur, and IfWH Director,
Peter Brocklehurst.
Other events ranged from a public debate with Joyce
Harper and Nicky Hudson (De Monfort University) on
the science and social effects of egg-freezing,
including the role of employers in sponsoring women
to freeze their eggs, to screening of the film Honor
Diaries which features nine courageous activists
speaking out about gender inequality, forced
marriage, the right to education and female genital
mutilation. There was also a comedy show Viva La
Vulva by comedian and political activist Kate
Smurthwaite, and a UCL Lunch Hour Lecture by Anna
David, How can we improve growth of small babies
before birth?
News from Joyce Harper
The Embryology and PGD Academy is now offering
more training courses. Alumni will get a discount on
the fees for these, so take a look at the website:
www.embryologyandPGDacademy.com
Joyce has always emphasised through her teaching
the role that we all have in making a difference in
women’s health. In January 2015 she held a first
brainstorming session to set up a network, to
connect people around the world to discuss
women’s health issues. Global Women Connected
(GWC) was born.
Many alumni are involved in the project. Keeley
Monsen (MSc, 2011), Tharni Vasavan (MSc, 2014),
and Helen O’Neill post on women’s health issues to
open up discussion on the GWC Facebook page.
You can also follow GWC at globalwomenconnected
on Instagram, where an image and a comment from
a woman are uploaded every day to showcase their
lives, on Twitter: @1GlobalWomen, and on the
website: www.globalwomenconnected.com. In the
next phase, Joyce wants to expand the global reach
of the project and would love more alumni to get on
board.
Any ideas and comments you have on this newsletter or anything to do with alumni or the Institute, please let
Joyce know (joyce.harper@ucl.ac.uk). The IfWH is writing an annual report and the one for 2014 is near
completion. This is a hefty document summarizing the achievements of the Institute in 2014 with an update on
research projects from each research theme. Look out for this – we will post it on the UCL EGA IfWH Facebook
Page.
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