A Academic-Career break-Academic Journey,  so far

 

Academic Journey Round One:

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I obtained my DPhil at the Industrial Informatics and Signal Processing Group, Department of Engineering and Design of the University of Sussex in 2008. During my doctoral study, I developed a commercial iris-identification system for use on mobile phones, which led to a patent. My DPhil work was selected as a finalist and was presented at the 'SET for Britain', a flagship research showcase of Britain's young talents, at the House of Commons in 2007.

 

After finishing my DPhil, I started working as a postdoctoral engineer on biomedical imaging in breast cancer at the University of Sussex and the Oxford John Radcliffe Hospital (funded by GE), followed by a joint clinical and research position in diabetic retinopathy imaging at the University of Liverpool and the Royal Liverpool Hospital. In my posts at Oxford and Liverpool, I have undertaken good clinical practice training, seen patients in NHS clinics and designed and managed clinical trials, including in-house studies and joint multi-centre studies.

 

Full-time Parenting

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After my second child was born in 2014, I had a five-year career break. In those five years, I enjoyed 

holding my little ones to my heart, listening and sharing their adventures to eat, stand up, walk, laugh, go through the ill-well-ill in circles, and start building their social network. A unique full-time mum journey. Well, I did spend a significant amount of time in teaching training (so that I could get my Fellowship of Higher Education) and volunteered as my in-law's project manager for two years to extend their house. Undoubtedly, I exercised my research and engineering skills in the building work, as well as extended the QC by climbing onto the roof to check lead sealing and tiles. 

 

Academic Journey Round Two:

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Episode One: A journey of the confidence re-born​

When my little ones became six and four years old, I knew that I needed a way to return to my career ladder. As everyone around me predicted, the revolving door from full-hearted parenting to academic stuck at the career re-entry.

 

Thanks to my mentor, Professor David Clifton's kindest support, I joined the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oxford in 2018 as an academic visitor. After a 10 month proposal preparation and rounds of applications to various career re-entry fellowship schemes, I was awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) Daphne Jackson Trust Research Re-entry Fellowship in 2019 (read more on Current Reserach), when my career re-entry and confidence re-born journey started. One secret to share is that I have a book called "Everyday Confidence", and I need to read this book quite often to persuade myself that I don't need to quit the fellowship. The most challenging part of this career re-entry journey is the confidence re-build and knowing what I do know.

 

Episode Two: Academic Journey on the Bus Round and Round

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I was awarded the prestigious Fulford Junior Research Fellowship at Oxford University Somerville College in 2020, thanks to my career re-entry fellowship and the inclusiveness of my college. In 2022 and 2023, I was awarded an Enterprise and Innovation Research Fellowship of the Math, Physics, and Life Science Division and an Idea2Impact Research Fellowship at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. At the beginning of 2023, I was promoted to a faculty position at the Department of Engineering Science. This faculty membership promotion then becomes a bus ticket to allow me to move to my next adventure: funding applications. One of my recent research adventures, as the PI at Oxford, is to develop reasoning-informed model to enhance clinical capacity in India using large language models, funded by the Bills and Melinda Gates Foundation Global Challenge Grant and the George Institute for Global Health.

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My journey at Computational Health Informatics Lab ended in early 2024 when I started extending my research from AI for health to AI for health and edge computing. Meanwhile, I accepted the Stipendiary Lecturership in Engineering Science at Worcester College.

 

Journey to be continued...   

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