Published on: 17th June 2020
The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust is delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Rebecca Shipley as UCL’s appointed non-executive director on the Trust board.
Professor Shipley is Director of the UCL Institute of Healthcare Engineering and Vice Dean for Health within the UCL Faculty of Engineering Sciences. In these roles, she coordinates interdisciplinary research activities within healthcare engineering across UCL Engineering, the UCL School of Life and Medical Sciences and the hospitals within the UCL Partners academic health system.
Her research interests lie in mathematical and computational modelling in medicine and biology, including cancer, tissue engineering and human physiology, and with a particular emphasis on multidisciplinary approaches which integrate data from biological experiments, imaging and clinical sources. She co-founded the UCL Centre for Nerve Engineering, which brings together physical, engineering, life and clinical scientists to tackle nerve injury repair, and includes extensive collaboration with the RNOH.
Most recently, she has been one of the leaders of the UCL-Ventura initiative to manufacture CPAP breathing aids at scale to help keep Covid-19 patients from needing intensive care. The team from UCL Engineering, UCLH and Mercedes HPP reverse-engineered an existing, off-patent device within 100 hours from first discussion to prototype and then secured regulatory approval 7 days later. The design and manufacturing instructions have been made available globally at no cost, and 10,000 devices have been manufactured and delivered to the Department of Health and Social Care.
Dominic Dodd, Chair of The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust, said: “I am delighted to welcome Becky to the RNOH. She brings an outstanding track record of research, teaching and innovation which will be of great value to the trust in our next chapter as a clinical and academic centre of excellence.”
The appointment is for a four-year term from June 2020.