Alumni

Kaivan Khavandi is Senior Vice President at Glaxo Smithkline Beecham with responsibility for inflammation and respiratory disease. After qualification from the University of Manchester he was awarded an Academic Cardiology Training Post at King’s College London. His PhD, entitled “The role of oxidant activated PKG in small artery function in health and obesity” resulted in in the discovery of the mechanism by which intraluminal pressure regulates Ca²⁺ sparks in vascular smooth muscle cells.

Jade Taylor is an American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California (Davis) in the lab of Professor Manuel Navedo. Jade qualified from the University of Manchester with a first class degree in Physiology and Pharmacology in 2016. During her degree she spent a sandwich year with Mark Nelson at the University of Vermont.

Mia is a tenured senior lecturer in Pharmacology at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. After her undergraduate degree in biology at University of Malaya, Mia spent a year in Manchester completing a Masters degree in Cardiovascular Sciences. Her project was in our lab and looked at small artery function. She then gained funding from the Malaysian Health Department to undertake a PhD in small artery physiology in Manchester. Her PhD, awarded in 2020, focused on the role of oxidant activated Protein Kinase G in vascular endothelium.

Viktoria is a lecturer in Cardiology at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. Viktoria spent three years (2016 – 2019) at the microvascular group as a post-doctoral research associate. Funded by the British Heart Foundation, her project investigated the cross talk between the sarcoplasmic reticulum and the BK channel via Ca2+ spark vasoregulation and how this is influenced by oxidant activation of Protein Kinase G. Her paper on this area is here.

Hala is a tenured senior lecturer in Pharmacology at the University of Jordan. Between 2018 and 2023, Hala completed her PhD on the role of oxidant activated Protein Kinase G on the vasodilatory Ca2+ signalling in the endothelium and vascular smooth muscle cells of the pulmonary microcirculation and the implications of this for regulation of pulmonary artery pressure. During this time she also had two children! Hala is pictured here presenting her research at Europhysiology in Copenhagen in 2022.