Staff Profile

Research Funding Development Manager

In my role as a Research Funding Development Manager, I support academic colleagues with their applications to UK funding bodies to enable their research. In particular, I support the School of Mathematics, Statistics, and Physics, and the School of Computing. I also work flexibly within the team to respond to research development opportunities across the SAgE Faculty, including facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration across the University.

The Research Funding Development Team provides:

• Advice on funder strategy;
• Information on funders' forthcoming plans and opportunities;
• Support for large and complex funding applications;
• Visits and information sessions from funders;
• 'In-house' funding information sessions (for the University, Schools and Groups);
• Advice on finding funding;
• Advice on preparing funding applications;
• Lay review of funding applications.

Please get in touch if I can help in any way with your research funding.

Background

I studied BA(hons) Fine Art at Falmouth College of Arts after leaving school. During my first year, I made brightly-coloured Cell Paintings inspired by microscopy images in the medical books in the art school library. Although I didn't understand the images or their figure legends, my interest was piqued. I studied further science A-levels, later earning a place at UCL to study BSc(hons) Molecular Cell Biology (for which I was awarded first class honours), followed by PhD Physiology sponsored by the British Heart Foundation. I moved to the University of Bristol for my post-doctoral research, and was awarded a Kidney Research UK Intermediate Fellowship in 2017 to begin to develop my independent research. This fellowship also afforded me the freedom to transfer to Newcastle University to work within Dr Daryl Shanley's systems biology group.

Art gave me an unusual backdrop through which to understand biology; I have frequently used my diverse skillset in public engagement and science communication activities, for example leading the Brain Art competition for local school children as part of the Bristol Neuroscience Festival 2016.

For my PhD, I investigated novel phosphatidylinositol transfer proteins (PITPs) in the heart. I discovered that unlike the other PITPs, RdgBbeta binds and transfers phosphatidic acid (PA), closing the PI cycle by enabling PA to be returned to the plasma membrane for PI, and therefore PI(4,5)P₂ , resynthesis. This mechanism had eluded researchers since the 1970s.

My interest in the mechanics of intracellular signalling has overarched all of my research. Joining the laboratory of Prof Craig McArdle at the Laboratories of Integrative Neuroscience and Endocrinology (LINE) at the University of Bristol, I learned how to use high content imaging (HCI), starting with the IN Cell Analyzer 1000 and 2200 systems. We used HCI to explore Gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) signalling at the single cell level, working alongside mathematicians and statisticians to develop mathematical models. We wanted to understand why GnRH is secreted in pulses, and what significance this has for the subsequent release of the reproductive hormones, LH and FSH.

Joining Bristol Renal, I used HCI to develop an assay for ER stress in kidney podocytes, with the aim of using it to screen for novel treatments for diabetic nephropathy. My Kidney Research UK Intermediate Fellowship enabled me to explore the interface between blood pressure signalling (Angiotensin II) and inflammation (TNF), themes that I had begun working with during my PhD. With this, I sought to develop my own mathematical models and statistical methods for exploring signalling dynamics at the single cell level.

This experience and ability to communicate with researchers from diverse backgrounds makes me ideally suited to support the School of Mathematics, Statistics, and Physics, and the School of Computing, in my current role within SAgE as an RFDM.

• Article

  • Pisapia F, O'Brien D, Tasinato E, Garner KL, Brown CDA. Development of a Highly Differentiated Human Primary Proximal Tubule MPS Model (aProximate MPS Flow). Bioengineering 2024, 11(1), 7.