DrRebecca Speakman

Rebecca Speakman is currently on secondment as the Postgraduate Widening Participation Manager based in the central Outreach team.  Her work focuses on defining widening participation at the postgrdauate level and exploring opportunities to increase postgraduate applicants from those from disadvantaged and underrepresented backgrounds. 

Rebecca's substantive role is School Partnerships Co-ordinator (Secondary) where she runs visits to the Wohl Reach Out Lab for secondary school pupils to take part in hands on STEM activities.  She trains PhD students and postdoctoral researchers to deliver these sessions as well as running health and safety training for student Ambassadors.  Another part of her role is running the Year 12 Work Experience programme which offers participants the chance to experience researcher life at Imperial.   

Prior to her work in Outreach, Rebecca was a Research Associate in the Section of Airways Disease at the NHLI. She graduated with a BSc in Biomedical Science from the University of Southampton in 2005 and subsequently went on to obtain her PhD from the Division of Infection, Inflammation and Repair in the School of Medicine at Southampton in 2009. Her PhD investigated the role of the proteinase elastase as an inflammatory mediator in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).  She continued in the field of COPD in her post-doctoral position at the NHLI and in particular was interested in the defective function of macrophages in this disease.