We are pleased to announce that the 2025 John Clifton Postdoctoral Fellowship in Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering has been awarded to Dr Elizabeth Powell. Neonatal care was a passion of John’s, so we are delighted that Elizabeth’s project will have a positive impact on this area.
The Fellowship is open to postdoctoral researchers and aims to provide an opportunity to implement their own research ideas, gain leadership experience, and strengthen their research record. The Fellowship has been funded from a generous endowment from former Head of Department and Joel Chair, Professor John Clifton and his daughter Carolyn.
We were delighted to host Carolyn at our inaugural Festival of Research on Friday 13th June where the 2025 John Clifton Postdoctoral Fellowship was announced.
It's been great to support the John Clifton Fellowship in its second year; once again, we have received an outstanding set of applications. Congratulations to this year's awardee, Dr Elizabeth Powell, for proposing an excellent high-impact project based on strong clinical collaboration. I am grateful to the Clifton family for giving us the opportunity to support our postdoctoral researcher community in such an impactful way.
The winning project
Name: Dr Elizabeth Powell, Senior Research Fellow
Title: MRI-based non-invasive mapping of placental exchange
Summary: The placenta mediates maternal-fetal oxygen, nutrient and waste exchange. Placental vascular structure abnormalities lead to complications including fetal growth restriction and pre-eclampsia, with implications for maternal, fetal, neonatal, and lifelong health. Placental exchange quantification using MRI has not been attempted but, if feasible, would allow non-invasive assessment during pregnancy. Placental vasculature can, in principle, be reproduced in silico, allowing realistic simulations of function, an essential step for developing and validating MRI techniques. Recent works have developed algorithms for growing computational models of placental macrovascular trees; however, models including the crucial exchange mechanisms remain naive, limited to randomly-oriented cylinders with no exchange modelling.
Aim: To develop realistic computational placental microvascular phantoms and associated MRI water exchange (WEX) techniques for quantifying placental exchange.
About Professor John Clifton
John Clifton joined the University College Hospital Medical School (UCHMS) Medical Physics Department in 1957 and was appointed Head of Department in 1962. Following the re-uniting of UCHMS and UCL in 1981, he was appointed Professor of Medical Physics, and Joel Professor of Physics Applied to Medicine in 1990. Throughout his career, Professor Clifton made major contributions to the introduction and development of new clinical radiotherapy techniques at UCLH. Following his retirement in 1992, John Clifton maintained close links to our department and generously endowed the undergraduate prize named in his honour. On his death in January 2023, John left a substantial gift of money in his will to the department, to which his daughter Carolyn added a further generous donation.
To honour John’s legacy, the department has launched this new fellowship scheme in Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering.
Image: Professor Clifton’s daughter, Carolyn, congratulating new fellow, Dr Elizabeth Powell at the 2025 Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering Festival of Research
