DrJoana Salgado Soares Dos Santos

I am a Bioengineer, specialising in Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering. During my PhD in Chemical Engineering at Imperial, I worked on the development of a 3D platform to study leukaemia. This platform was developed to be a biomimicry of the bone marrow, allowing the serum-free, cytokine-free, feeder-cell-free long-term culture of acute myeloid and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, in order to follow disease progression and response to treatment, moving towards personalised treatment based on individual disease characteristics. During my research, my connection with the medical field through my understanding of the biology of leukaemia led me to work as a Graduate Teaching Assistant supporting undergraduate and postgraduate laboratory classes in the Faculty of Medicine.

I have been a Teaching Fellow in the Faculty of Medicine since 2019, having worked on the development of standalone online courses on professional and critical thinking skills, supporting the development of the Research Skills Domain across Phases 1 and 2 of the MBBS, teaching cohorts of 20 to 300 students on basic science, physiology, reading and critiquing science, data analysis and statistical methods. Part of my roles involved working with an extensive number of academic and clinical colleagues to support them in the development of their teaching methods, in line with Imperial's Learning and Teaching Strategy. This has also led me to become specialised in digital tools to support learning, having used and supported others in the use of Mentimeter, Padlet, Articulate Rise, Articulate Storyline, WondaVR, Miro, and others, following principles of universal design and inclusivity.

In my current role, I teach and organise teaching and assessment in the 3 intercalated BSc courses in the Department of Surgery and Cancer:

iBSc in Anaesthesia and Critical Care

iBSc in Surgical Design, Technology and Innovation

iBSc in Cancer Frontiers

I am a trained academic tutor, working to support the study skills of undergraduate medical students since 2020.

I am a co-lead of the short-module Precision Medicine in the BSc in Medical Biosciences.

I have a PGCert in University Teaching and Learning and I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy since 2021.