Professor Nasir Rajpoot and Dr Emma Pickwell-MacPherson receive Wolfson Research Merit Awards

Two University of Warwick academics have been recognised by the Royal Society’s Wolfson Merit Award scheme, awarded to outstanding scientists to support their research careers at UK universities.

Dr Emma Pickwell-MacPherson, of the Ultrafast and Terahertz Photonics Group in the Department of Physics, and Professor Nasir Rajpoot, an expert in cancer histology image analysis, will receive additional funding to support their research at Warwick over the next five years.

The Wolfson Research Merit Award scheme is funded by the Wolfson Foundation with support from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and administered by the Royal Society. It supports individuals of outstanding ability to undertake independent, original research at UK universities.

Dr Pickwell-MacPherson’s research aims to improve terahertz imaging and spectroscopy techniques for non-invasive diagnosis and monitoring of skin conditions including, but not limited to, skin cancer. She has recently joined the Physics department at the University of Warwick to strengthen and diversify the Ultrafast and Terahertz Photonics Group.

She commented: "This prestigious award will help pave the way for setting up research efforts and collaborations in the UK to further research medical applications of THz technology. I am excited to be joining the Physics department at Warwick and also look forward to having close connections with the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust.”

Professor Nasir Rajpoot is the founding head of Tissue Image Analytics (TIA) Lab in the Computer Science department at Warwick, where a major focus of research is on developing novel machine learning based algorithms for analysis of digitised microscopic images of cancerous tissue slides with applications to computer-assisted diagnosis, prognosis and stratification of cancer. The award will support his work on digital profiling of tumour microenvironment.

Professor Nasir M Rajpoot said: “I am delighted to accept this prestigious award. My research focus is on studying cellular patterns in the tumour microenvironment in order to help us better understand tumour-immune interactions and predict cancer progression, response to therapy, and survival. This award will provide significant prestige in helping us achieve our research objectives.”

21 September 2017