Welcome to my e-portfolio.

2012 - present PhD "Modelling and Analysis of the Tumour Microenvironment of Colorectal Cancer"

In order to understand cellular biology on a systems level, relationships between molecular components must be understood not only at a functional level but also localised in the spatial domain. This is due to the fact that proximity of key proteins provides a powerful surrogate for functional complexes. As a consequence, new bioimaging techniques, such as the Toponome Imaging System, have been recently proposed to visualise the co-location or interaction of several proteins within individual cells, taking into account heterogeneity of neighbouring cells within the same tissue specimen. Such techniques could hold the key to understanding complex biological systems such as the protein interactions involved in cancer. I am working on developing new algorithmic approaches that analyse the large amounts of multi-tag bioimage data (also known as localised proteomic or toponomic data) from cancerous and normal tissue specimen in order to begin to infer protein networks and unravel the cellular heterogeneity at molecular level. In addition to this, I am working on developing a spatial model for the healthy and cancerous colonic crypt architecture, which can be used to validate and objectively compare a wide variety of image analysis frameworks for both multiplex immunofluorescence imaging and digital histopathology.

I am supervised by Dr. Nasir Rajpoot and Dr. Mike Khan.

2011 - 2012 MSc Systems Biology, University of Warwick

Mini-project 1 "Towards Protein Network Analysis for Colon Cancer using the Toponome Imaging System". Supervised by Dr. Nasir Rajpoot and Dr. Mike Khan.

Mini-project 2 "The patter of tiny feet". Supervised by Dr. Rob Cross and Mishan Britto. This project considered how the sliding velocity of copolymerised fast and slow microtubules changes along different kinesin motors.

2007 - 2011 MMath and BA Mathematics, Oxford University

2005 - 2007 A Levels, Taunton's College, Southampton

If interested in any of the publications, please feel free to ask me via email.

1. V. N. Kovacheva, D. Snead, N. M. Rajpoot, "A Model of the Spatial Microenvironment of the Colonic Crypt", In Biomedical Imaging (ISBI), 2015 IEEE 12th International Symposium on (pp. 172-176). IEEE. 2015. [PDF]
2. V. N. Kovacheva, K. Sirinukunwattana, N. M. Rajpoot, "A Bayesian Framework for Cell-Level Protein Network Analysis for Multivariate Proteomics Image Data", Proc. SPIE 9041, Medical Imaging 2014: Digital Pathology, 904110 (March 20, 2014); doi:10.1117/12.2045028. [Abstract] [PDF]
3. V. N. Kovacheva, D. B. A. Epstein, N. M. Rajpoot, "Advances in Discovery of Complex Biomarkers for Colorectal Cancer Using Multiplexed Proteomics Imaging", Oncology News (2014) 8 (6): 191-193. [PDF]
4. V. N. Kovacheva, A. M. Khan, M. Khan, D. B. A. Epstein, N. M. Rajpoot, "DiSWOP: A Novel Measure for Cell-Level Protein Network Analysis in Localised Proteomics Image Data", Bioinformatics (2014) 30 (3): 420-427. [Abstract] [PDF] [Preprint] [Supplementary Materials]

16 - 19 Apr 2015 IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging: From Nano to Macro, New York. Poster "A Model of the Spatial Microenvironment of the Colonic Crypt".

11 - 13 Dec 2014 12th Annual Rocky Mountain Bioinformatics Conference, Snowmass, Colorado. Presentation "A Model of the Colonic Crypt Microenvironment".

4 - 5 Dec 2014 Digital Pathology Congress, London. Presented poster "A Spatial Model of the Colonic Crypt Microenvironment".

1 - 2 Sept 2014 BBSRC Midlands Symposium, University of Warwick. Presentation "Searching for multiplex biomarkers of colon cancer from multi-protein image data".

15 - 17 July 2014 PGBiomed/ISC, University of Warwick. Presentation "Searching for multiplex biomarkers of colon cancer from multi-protein image data".

26 - 27 June 2014 Inter-disciplinary inter-DTC conference (id2), Oxford. Presented poster "A Bayesian Framework for Cell-Level Protein Network Analysis for Multivariate Proteomics Image Data".

16 - 20 Feb 2014 SPIE Medical Imaging: Digital Pathology, San Diego. Presented poster "A Bayesian Framework for Cell-Level Protein Network Analysis for Multivariate Proteomics Image Data".

8 - 12 July 2013 2nd Biomedical Image Analysis Summer School: Modalities, Methodologies & Clinical Research, Paris.

16 - 17 May 2013 Inter-disciplinary inter-DTC conference (id2), UCL CoMPLEX. Presented poster "Protein Network Analysis for Colon Cancer".

9 Sept 2012 ECCB '12, Basel, Switzerland. Workshop "Imaging Analysis and Computational Modeling for Cancer and its Therapy".

Oct 2015 - Mar 2016 Institute of Advanced Studies Early Career Fellow, University of Warwick, Coventry.

Jan - Mar 2016 Research Assistant, University of Warwick, Coventry.

10 Jan - 10 Feb, 27 Oct - 27 Nov 2014 Research Associate, Qatar University, Qatar.

Oct 2015 - Dec 2015 Teaching Assistant for Mathematics in Computer Science (1^st year Undergraduate course)

Oct 2015 - Dec 2015 Teaching Assistant for Programming (Masters course)

Oct 2015 - Dec 2015 Teaching Assistant for Statistics (Masters course)

Oct 2015 - Dec 2015 Teaching Assistant for SYSMIC (Masters course)

23 - 26 Sept 2014, Introductory Maths sessions for 30 MSc students, University of Warwick

28 Jan 2013, Seminar on Current Bioimaging Informatics Research Projects at Warwick, held as part of an MSc course

Nov 2015 - Present, Code Club leader

8 April 2015, Career shadowing for 4 Year 12 pupils.

24 March 2015, Careers Information Session in Bishop Ullathorne School, Coventry

18 March 2015, Girls into STEM event, WMG Academy, Coventry

11 - 14 March 2015, Big Bang Fair – stand assistant

15 Oct 2014 Biology Workshops for Lark Rise Academy

6 - 11 Sep 2014 British Science Festival, Birmingham - science busker

24 June 2014 Big Bang West Midlands - general volunteer

13 - 16 March 2014 Big Bang - University of Warwick Faculty of Science stand

31 Aug 2013 Science Busking, Coventry City Centre

3 - 8 July 2012 Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, "Tiny Motors" stand

Violet Kovacheva

v.n.kovacheva (at) warwick.ac.uk

Systems Biology DTC