The Society honours its newly elected Fellow Members

Membership

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.124.42

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Each year, The Society elects new Fellow Members, recognising the experience, commitment, and contributions of these distinguished physiologists. Learn about a few of this year’s cohort in interviews conducted by Physiology News. Apply by 1 May 2022 for a chance to be part of next year’s group: physoc.org/join/fellow.

Dr Etain Tansey, Queen’s University Belfast, UK

What do you value most about being a member of The Society?

I joined The Society as an Affiliate Member whilst a first-year PhD student at Trinity College Dublin. Since then, The Society has opened many doors for me. The first time I presented my PhD research was at a Physiological Society conference, and the rigorous questioning together with helpful comments helped hone both my presentation skills and research focus. I became a Full Member upon acquiring my first academic position and I learned first-hand the myriad of opportunities that membership brings.

I have attended and organised conferences, workshops, seminars and guest lecture series, all sponsored or co-sponsored by The Physiological Society. I have also received several travel awards that allowed me to attend conferences, present and receive feedback on my research, and broaden my peer support network.

Two of my colleagues and I were awarded a David Jordan Teaching Award, which has demonstrably enhanced our ability to carry out educational research. The support of The Society has been exceptionally important for my personal and career development. I am an Education and Teaching Theme Lead and this has given me a platform to reach out to members interested in best practice in physiology education, to discuss our practice and input into policy. I am delighted to be a Fellow Member of The Society. This accolade is recognised in my home institution but also worldwide as a marker of one’s commitment, experience, and achievements in the field of physiology.

How did completing a degree in physiology help you get to where you are now?

I completed a degree in Natural Sciences in Trinity College Dublin. This degree was fantastically diverse in so far as I studied mathematics, chemistry and biology at first year and then branched into the different areas of chemical and biological sciences, including botany, zoology, ecology, genetics, microbiology, biochemistry and of course, physiology.

I especially enjoyed physiology and spent two years studying full-time as my specialist moderator subject. Together with completion of a lab-based research project, this training in physiology meant that I was equipped with the scientific knowledge and skills required to complete a PhD following graduation. My PhD focused on cardiovascular physiology, the autonomic nervous system and hormonal status. Completing a PhD in physiology meant that a career in academia was possible.

What were the moments that had a decisive impact on your career trajectory?

During the second year of my PhD studies, a position became available for a Postgraduate Student Physiology Teaching Scholar. The role involved teaching physiology to students in their 3rd and 4th years. Apart from supplementing my PhD stipend very nicely, which I confess was a serious consideration in my application for the post, this experience gave me immense personal satisfaction and reward and was fantastic for my own knowledge gain and career development.

“While we teach, we learn” the Roman philosopher Seneca is reported to have said, and I really did. I didn’t know that I would enjoy teaching until I tried and I am glad I went for the opportunity when it presented itself. Consequently, although I was in a permanent position in a pharmaceutical consultancy company at the time, when a friend told me about an advertisement for a Lecturer (Education) position at Queen’s University Belfast, I recognised the opportunity to combine two of my passions, and I was offered the job. I am someone who rarely says no when an opportunity presents itself and I think that has meant that I have gained experience and been offered roles that have ensured that I could progress my career during my time at Queen’s.

What do you enjoy about the sector you work in, and what is challenging about it?

Job satisfaction is important to me. Currently no two days are alike, and I enjoy the variety; it maintains my motivation. In 2020, we launched a new medical curriculum at Queen’s University Belfast and although it was a challenging time to do so, I enjoyed being a part of the first-year curriculum design team.

Meeting new students year on year keeps me enthusiastic and motivated; it is nice to know that I play a small part in their future. One of the most rewarding aspects of my job has been on the student support side. I was an Advisor of Studies for 9 years and during that time it was gratifying to meet with, support and mentor students as they progressed through their degree.

I remain up to date with educational innovations and actively contribute to these developments. I engage in physiology education research and scholarship and benefit from discovering new practices, feedback, and networking at conferences where I present my findings. My current research focuses on the use of ultrasound to teach basic cardiovascular concepts and the factors that influence STEM education in Northern Ireland.

I am Associate Director of my centre and of course, some decisions can be challenging, but this
position gives me scope to have a say in how things evolve and help improve the university experience for students and staff alike. I love working as part of a team, I work with great people, both physiologists and non-physiologists, in a busy teaching centre that is responsible for educating the next generation of doctors, dentists, pharmacists, biomedical scientists and human biologists. Most of the time it is a lot of fun!

Dr Sue Deuchars, University of Leeds, UK

What do you value most about being a member of The Society? Which member benefits have you found most useful over the years?

I certainly value the support of The Society over the years, right from when I was a PhD student giving my first oral communication. I appreciate the frank and useful advice that people have provided over the years about my research, career and how I can get involved with The Society. I have particularly welcomed the opportunities to act in my various roles as Trustee and on the Conferences Committee since working with the amazing staff and other members of The Society has made me so aware of all activities of The Society. These include grants, policy work, outreach work and conferences. I am also pleased to see how seriously The Society takes equality, diversity, and inclusion matters.

What have you learned over the course of your work about how to balance productivity and mental health?

I have always been an electrophysiologist, where it was important to stay in the lab while the experiments were running since you never knew if the next experiment would be a success. This meant that you have to be very flexible with time, which is especially hard when you have children and they need picking up! Therefore, I found that working part- time (which I did for 19 years) meant that I did not begrudge having long days in the lab since I had my days off with the children. It meant less money but better productivity on the days in the lab and a good work-life balance. Talking to others about problems in the lab also kept me sane – the physiology community is very friendly and people always try to give good advice to enhance your research.

How did completing a degree in physiology help you get to where you are now?

Gaining a degree in physiology opened the world of neurophysiology research to me – it allowed me to pursue a career in something that I feel passionate about, from researching new circuits in the central nervous system to learning about how production of new cells may be a useful therapeutic direction. To also be able to pass on knowledge to students is also a real privilege – their enthusiasm, questions and sheer brilliance keep on inspiring us!

How has your work/life changed due to COVID-19?

My work has changed a lot due to COVID-19 in terms of delivery of teaching, gaining access to the research labs and a loss of those critical chats over a cup of coffee, poster viewing session or a glass of wine. It means that we have to be more inventive about how we discuss research directions but with online conferences evolving all the time, it has meant that we can “attend” conferences from all over the world. This is also really important to me as we all consider our carbon footprints. One of the most powerful talks that I heard recently was Professor Hugh Montgomery at our Extreme Environmental Physiology conference in 2019: he spoke eloquently and passionately about the impact of climate change. I think that moving forward, we all need to consider how we conduct and disseminate research to reduce the environmental impact.

Dr Alun Williams, Manchester Metropolitan University

What were the most difficult parts of running of your experiments?

Most of my research has involved human subjects, which naturally depends on their willingness to participate. But many of my studies have involved elite athletes and that brings its own challenges. One of those is that the professional support staff (coaches/ medics/scientists) who work day to day with the athletes are often, quite understandably, wary of letting “strangers” near their athletes (precious commodities?). Their main concern, quite rightly, is making sure the athletes are ready to perform on the next Saturday or whenever their next competitive event is, and they don’t want anything to disrupt their preparation. So from our point of view as researchers, it has sometimes been difficult to convince those professional support staff to allow us access to the athletes, and when they do see the value in what we’re doing and agree, we have needed to be very flexible to fit in with their schedule so any inconvenience has been ours and not theirs. Sometimes we haven’t been successful in gaining access to the athletes. But when we are, the relatively easy bit has then been gaining individual consent from the athletes – by the time we’ve reached that stage, most of the athletes are very interested and keen to take part, which is nice.

Have you collaborated across different sectors, and if so, what lessons did you learn?

I’m a physiologist, but also a sport scientist. Sport science research can be mono- disciplinary, but more often than not is multi- or inter-disciplinary. So that has required, at a minimum, awareness and some reasonable knowledge of things like biomechanics and psychology, and as well as coaching, strength and conditioning principles, as well as sport rules and regulations. Frequently, input from biomechanists and psychologists has helped the design of protocols and studies in general, while input from coaches has helped make studies have practical relevance to the challenges they face in elite sport. Some of our current research addresses eligibility criteria for sex categories in sport, and for that it has certainly been important to have a broad view of the practical and ethical issues those topics raise, factoring them into experimental design where possible. So I’ve learned to educate myself outside of my home discipline to at least a level that, I hope/believe, lets me have sensible conversations with specialists from other sectors who know much more than I do about important things to consider when designing, conducting and reporting our research.

How did completing a degree in physiology help you get to where you are now?

I’ve mentioned that as well as a physiologist, I’m a sport scientist. My first degree was in sports science at the University of Brighton, which was a multi-disciplinary degree. However, I’m glad that the course at the time also let students specialise quite heavily in a particular discipline if they so wished, and for me that was certainly physiology. I’ll forever be grateful for the dedication of the tutors there, their skills and knowledge, and the passion they showed for their subject. I remember them not being afraid to address big questions in their teaching, even if there was no clear answer that they were looking for – partly because there was no “right” answer to be found. I remember them addressing questions like the relative contributions of genes and environment on human physical performance (otherwise known as nature vs. nurture), and the relationship between exercise intensity and training response, sometimes taking concepts to their ridiculous extreme to make us think – e.g. what would the acute physiological responses and chronic training adaptations be if a running training session involved sprinting at ‘maximum speed’ for e.g. 4 minutes, i.e. maximum effort applied continuously, with no “pacing” involved. I don’t recommend trying it! That first degree set me up well for an MSc and then a PhD that investigated different types of exercise training, which in turn helped me investigate how genetics and training are related.

Is there a role model you aspire to be like?

Not exactly one I aspire to be like, because I could never do that. But two scientists I’ve worked with are/were both utterly brilliant, though quite different to each other I would say. Professor David Jones, who I met at the University of Birmingham when he supervised my PhD, had a brilliant physiologist mind. He also openly asked simple questions about an idea or set of results: “So, what’s the answer?” and “Show me the pictures” to cut immediately through to what mattered, and try not to make things more complicated than they actually were. I was delighted when, later in his career, David joined Manchester Metropolitan University where we worked together some more. Professor Hugh Montgomery, who introduced me to the study of the genetics of physical fitness, also has a brilliant physiologist mind. He always seems to be one or two steps ahead of everyone else in terms of ideas, and is a brilliant communicator. Hopefully I can echo some of their qualities, on my good days at least.

Professor Eric Flitney, Retired, Previously Northwestern University

What were the moments that had a decisive impact on your career trajectory?

I first became interested in becoming a physiologist over half a century ago, while still an undergraduate student attending a field course at the Gatty Marine Biology Laboratory in St Andrews. I was in the laboratory one evening when one of the PhD students called out from a dimly-lit side room to ask if I would like to watch his demonstration. When I peered inside, I could see that he was crouched inside a wire cage recording the electrical activity of a crab nerve.

I had read about the ionic basis of the action potential as part of my undergraduate studies but I had never seen real action potentials propagating along a living nerve. I was fascinated by what I saw that night: with each pulse of the stimulating electrode the oscilloscope beam swept across the screen, briefly illuminating the room and leaving an image of the change in nerve membrane potential in its wake.

Hodgkin and Huxley had shown that the action potential was caused by precisely coordinated changes in the movement of Na+ and K+ ions across the axonal membrane. These movements were thought to result from the opening and closing of specialised areas of membrane, called gates, but nothing was known of their molecular structure, so the nature of the conformational changes responsible for choreographing the gating process could only be surmised.

It occurred to me that here was an important problem that should be addressed, so with the audacity of youth and little else, I promised myself that when I became a physiologist, I would be the one to solve it! In the fullness of time I did became a physiologist, but I added nothing to the body of knowledge about ion gating because I decided to spend my career studying muscle instead. Some years later I met again with the PhD student whose enthusiasm had first ignited my interest in physiology; his name was Professor Reginald Chapman who served on the Executive Committee of The Society for many years and eventually became one of its senior officers.

The notion of becoming a physiologist was reinforced during my first encounter with The Society. The occasion was engineered by my friend and mentor Professor D K Hill, who invited me to be his guest at one if its scientific meetings, this one at UCL. I was then a 20-something PhD student and the event was to leave a lasting impression on me. I was fortunate to see several luminaries of my chosen field, two of whom were Nobel Laureates, describe their most recent findings on muscle.

The opportunity to meet people afterwards at the traditional Society dinner and discuss their experiments informally was a bonus and I remember being surprised when they showed as much interest in my work as I had in theirs. I realised later that one of the assets of The Society was the willingness of its older, more experienced members to advise and encourage the younger ones. Looking back, I think my introduction to The Society at the UCL meeting was pivotal in my decision to become a physiologist.

What are the main challenges you’ve encountered during your career?

As a newly-appointed lecturer I realised that the time available for my research might not be as much as I would have liked, given that I would be doing my share of the department teaching and administrative loads as well. My head of department at the time was Professor J F Lamb, whose aim was to raise the research profile of the department within the wider community of physiologists. This was reflected in the way he allocated our duties: those active in research received somewhat lighter teaching and administrative loads than those who were not so interested, or else had expressed a preference for teaching, or were good administrators.

This arrangement helped mitigate the problem somewhat, but it was not ideal. Realistically, the situation could only by improved by increasing the total number of hours worked, over and above any contractual obligations, which meant working some evenings and weekends, and that is what many of us did.

The necessity to obtain sufficient funding to continue with research was a challenge that persisted throughout my career. The department had set aside a sum for new appointees to help them kick-start their research, so that they would have preliminary results to support a grant application.

I benefited from the scheme in my first year, to the tune of a storage oscilloscope and a hard-wired instrument for signal averaging. I found getting modest sums of research funding relatively easy in the early stage of my career. The research charities in particular were especially supportive of new appointees. It might surprise younger members of The Society today to know that a reasonable idea, supported by a few preliminary results and presented in a succinct manner, would be more likely to succeed than not. I recall one occasion when an application I had made was returned to me, with a note expressing interest in the proposal and offering suggestions on how to amend it to increase its chances of success. It seemed like I was taking an exam after having been given all the answers to the questions!

The need to maintain continuous funding for an on-going programme of research, particularly one in which individuals were employed on soft money, was more challenging and required considerable time and effort. The burgeoning cost of research in the 1980s exacerbated the problem and led to a substantial rise in the number of grant applications. Competition for support increased accordingly; the result of a straw poll among colleague suggested the success rate could be as low as 1 in 5 applications. This result was alarming, but as the funding situation worsened, a 20% success rate would come to seem “pretty good”, which was even more disturbing. The inevitable result was that inordinate time and energy was swallowed up writing lengthy grant proposals and less on conducting research, which was very wasteful. Predictably, this caused morale to plunge, and some colleagues for whom I had high regard decided that the struggle was not worth the risk to their health and gave up research altogether.