Seminar Series Launch

Join us for the launch of our brand new seminar series and hear from some of our exceptional researchers. Stay on for a networking lunch (13:00-13:30); the perfect opportunity to stimulate collaboration and foster connections.

Date: 2nd July 2024

Time: 12:00 – 13:30

Location: RILD Lecture Theatre RILD Building Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital (Wonford) Barrack Road Exeter EX2 5DW

Professor Maggie Shepherd, BRC Senior Investigator Fellow, Diabetes

Title: Research in monogenic diabetes and effective translation into clinical care

Maggie is an NIHR Exeter BRC Senior Investigator Fellow and Consultant Nurse, working in the monogenic diabetes team in Exeter since 1995. Her interests include the impact of genetic testing in diabetes, particularly the change from long term insulin to tablet treatment, misdiagnosis, patient experience, translating research findings into clinical care and increasing awareness and knowledge of monogenic diabetes amongst health care professionals. She was the first nurse awarded the Arnold Bloom prize lecture at Diabetes UK (2019) in recognition of her work.  She was an NIHR70@70 Senior Nurse Research Leader (2019-22) and one of the Women in Global Health’s 100+ Outstanding Nurses and Midwives (2020), she was awarded a prestigious Florence Nightingale Foundation Leadership scholarship (2022) and won the Aster Guardians Global Nursing Award (2023).

Dr Tom Piers, BRC Translational Fellow, Neurodegeneration

Title: Using human stem cell models to identify microglial modulators for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.

Tom Piers is an NIHR Exeter BRC Translational Fellow and Lecturer in Neuroscience at the University of Exeter. He recently established his research group in the Department of Clinical and Biomedical Sciences which focusses on mechanistic understanding of neuron-glial interactions with a particular interest in how disease-associated genetic risk alters these interactions. Tom’s previous work led to the establishment of human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) models of microglia to study the effect of late onset Alzheimer’s disease (LOAD) risk variants that map to genes expressed in this cell type. His fellowship aims to identify novel signalling pathways associated with the presence of these risk variants, using a functional genomics approach.