Dr Stacey Holloway

Meet Dr Stacey Holloway, a proton therapy researcher based in the Proton and Advanced Radiotherapy Group

I became interested in medical physics as a physics undergraduate. An NHS medical physicist came to give a talk about her role in the hospital. Before then I did not know physicists worked in hospitals! I then took modules in medical imaging and eventually trained in the hospital prior to my research career at UCL.

I now work in the Proton and Advanced Radiotherapy Group. My particular area of interest is in proton therapy planning and how we can incorporate patient anatomy changes that occur over the course of a radiotherapy treatment plan (due to tumor shrinkage, weight loss, daily motion, etc). This is a really exciting field: the NHS will treat its first high-energy proton patient this year at the Christie Hospital in Manchester, and a proton therapy centre is currently being built at UCLH and will treat its first patients in 2020.

My research has contributed to improved safety for NHS patients and workflow efficiency in the clinic. My current research is making use of Artificial Intelligence (with a population of patients) to better understand how a patient’s anatomy changes over time, so as to support clinicians to make the best decisions for those patients.

I love the multidisciplinary nature of this field of research. I work with students, patients, CERN physicists, data scientists, hospital physicists, clinicians and other researchers. It is also hugely rewarding to see your work impacting clinical care and improving patient care and outcomes.

I would advise anyone considering studying or pursuing a career in this field to shadow a clinical scientist or medical physicist in a hospital and get some hands on experience. One of my favorite placements while training was spending a week working with patients in rehabilitation engineering.