How does it work?
The OxWEST Mentoring programme connects women* and non-binary Oxford students studying STEM subjects at any level with industry experts, academic leaders, or experienced students. This will enable students to make better career choices and allow mentors to connect with young talents. We will pair up mentees with a mentor who is working in the subject/field that they have expressed interest in to ensure both mentee and mentor can get the most out of the experience.
OxWEST’s Mentorship Programme is run on a volunteer basis. We introduce the mentee and mentor to one another via email. We will then keep in the background and check in once in a while to ask how things are going and to encourage you to keep up with your meetings. We also evaluate our mentorship programme through short questionnaires as well as open feedback questions.
OxWEST’s Mentorship Programme is run on a volunteer basis. We introduce the mentee and mentor to one another via email. We will then keep in the background and check in once in a while to ask how things are going and to encourage you to keep up with your meetings. We also evaluate our mentorship programme through short questionnaires as well as open feedback questions.
how do i get involved?
Applications for the 2024/25 mentorship scheme are now open and close on 25th October 2024. Have a look below to check out the amazing range of mentors who are volunteering for our programme this year and follow this link to apply!
If you have any questions, please contact us via email. We look forward to welcoming you to the programme!
If you have any questions, please contact us via email. We look forward to welcoming you to the programme!
2022/23 Mentors
academic
Dr Emilia Skirmuntt
Postdoctoral Research Scientist Biology and Evolution, Virology "I am a research scientist and am interested in finding the answers to co-evolution of viruses and their hosts. Part of my job involved working on vaccines against different pathogens." Hobbies: Fencing |
Ping Lu
Post-Doctoral Researcher AI in healthcare, biomedical imaging "I want to answer: how to help doctors make quick triage of infectious diseases." Hobbies: Pistol, Archery |
Alison Brindle
Head of Communications Communications, Science Communications, Internal Communications "I was a scientist and became a communications specialist, so have experience working in different settings and changing career mid-life. I also recently started working part time and can talk openly and honestly about maintaining work-life balance." Hobbies: knitting, sewing |
Laura Coates
Associate Professor/Honorary Hospital Consultant Medicine, Rheumatology, Arthritis, Clinical Research "Something I am interested to learn more about is how to optimise therapy for individuals with psoriatic arthritis." Hobbies: Running, mountain biking, coach gymnastics |
Nicola Dinsdale
Postdoctoral Research Associate Engineering/Comp Sci (biomedical imaging and deep learning) "As a research associate in biomedical imaging, I am interested in how we can get deep learning and AI to the clinic to improve patient care." Hobbies: windsurfing |
Irina Chelysheva
Postdoctoral Medical Bioinformatician Medical Bioinformatics "I am analysing big data (particularly NGS) to reveal the immune responses to the vaccine trials, and I am also performing various statistics for COVID-19 Oxford Vaccine trial." Hobbies: my children |
Zhinuo (Jenny) Wang
Research Associate Biomedical engineering, computer science Question I want to answer: What are the key drivers of progression to heart failure for patients who’ve had a heart attack? Can we use modelling and simulation to find out? Hobbies: Playing the violin |
Dr Arun Prasad Pandurangan
Research Associate, University of Cambridge Bioinformatics Tackling antimicrobial drug resistance. Hobbies: Playing cricket, tennis, travelling and music |
Dr Mari Mulyani
Environmental Scientist, University of Oxford Environmental science and Policy The roles of human institutions and collective actions in addressing climate change and environmental problems. Hobbies: Singing |
Angela Russel
Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, Oxford University Chemistry, pharmacology Can we develop drugs to instruct the body to heal itself? Hobbies: Cooking |
Tori Ford
Founder and Executive Director of Medical Herstory, Primary Healthcare DPhil student Primary Healthcare, Gender & Health "I’m Tori Ford, and I’m the founder of Medical Herstory, an international award-winning non-profit on a mission to eliminate sexism, shame, and stigma from health experiences. We advance gender health equity through medical education, patient advocacy, and undoing stigma. In addition to my activism, I am a passionate academic leading feminist health research. I am a PhD student in Primary Health Care at the University of Oxford. One of my biggest questions is how do we eliminate medical sexism, shame, and stigma through storytelling?" Hobbies: Figure skating |
Izzi Mear
Teaching and Design Engineer Engineering (I am originally a mathematician with heavy computer science leanings and did a PhD in Aeronautics, now I teach computer programming to engineers) "I stopped doing academic research after my PhD but have been teaching in HE for 6 years after a career break from academia to work for an outreach charity doing science communications. I may start doing educational research in the future as improving teaching and learning is what I spent my day to day on. If that's of any interest to anyone, I am happy to be a mentor. It is not about my career, but I have lived experience of navigating the academic world as a mixed race, non-binary, neurodivergent person." Hobbies: Too many to list. Board games and Permaculture are the big ones at the moment. |
Danielle Perro
Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Epidemiology Women’s health "Question I want to answer: Does adolescent period pain increase the risk of having chronic pain in adulthood? I'm an avid science communicator, and would love to support my mentees in communicating their science, or more generally, entering the scicomm/public engagement space." Hobbies: Baking (& eating baked goods), art, dance, complaining about the British weather! |
Ron Roy
Professor of Mechanical Engineering Acoustics and ultrasound "Question I want to answer: How one can use cavitation noise and acoustic feedback to control cavitation activity and associated physical effects. At this point my role is largely academic administration, for I am head of department." Hobbies: Reading, hiking, cooking, movies, my grandson |
Julia Ramirez Gonzalez
Postdoctoral Research Assistant Materials Question I want to answer: Can we monitor Li-ion migration during charge and discharge? My curiosity has led my career path; taking me through different fields, such as mechanical engineering, materials science and solid state chemistry. Hobbies: dance, pottery, collages, cycling and tea blending |
Nicola Courtier
Faraday Institution Research Fellow Engineering / Maths Question I want to answer: how can we use modelling and control to learn how to charge lithium-ion batteries quickly, safely and make them last longer? "After my PhD at Southampton, I was awarded the EPSRC Doctoral Prize to research perovskite solar cells before moving to Oxford." Hobbies: Looking after my houseplants, practising yoga, and visiting places by train |
Joana Pinto
Postdoctoral Researcher Biomedical Engineering; Neuroscience Question I want to answer: How brain vessels and blood flow regulation are related to neurodegenerative diseases (e.g. Alzheimer's Disease) |
Nora Martin
Postdoctoral Research Assistant Physics Question I want to answer: I use computational models to study the phenotypic variation introduced through random mutations, in order to gain a deeper understanding of biological evolution. |
industry
Gabriel Hattori
Applications engineer in Structural Mechanics, COMSO Computational mechanics Providing technical support and training. Also participating in pre-sales meetings with prospective clients. Hobbies: reading, doing research |
Arwa Raies
Senior scientist AstraZeneca "I am a computer scientist, and my research experience includes applications of machine learning and data science in drug discovery, bioinformatics, cheminformatics and natural language processing." Hobbies: playing classical piano |
Dr Annie Ng
Senior scientist Kheiron medical technologies Day to day job: Manage a team, strategic planning, review data analysis, engage with internal/external stakeholders; design studies to validate AI products; write publications to disseminate study results. Hobbies: Tennis, dancing, standup comedy, sci fi, philosophy |
Sian James
Consultant in Manufacturing Alloyed Ltd Designing a new organisation and facility for additive manufacturing. Hobbies: Cooking, Cotswolds Radio, scuba diving, theatre, arts & crafts |
Amelia Adcroft
Energy Modelling Analyst Aurora Energy Research "I help to develop an optimisation model describing the energy market, with the ultimate goal of helping the transition to renewables. This means writing and running code and discussing with other modellers how the code changes are affecting our market forecasts. I only started working a month ago so I can probably give better advice about job searching than about a later career." Hobbies: I enjoy baking meringues, knitting, and playing French horn in a wind orchestra. |
Isabel Brooks
Associate Consultant Candesic "I'm a consultant at a life science specialist management consultancy. I work with biotech, medtech & pharma to optimise business strategy, and advise private equity clients looking to make high-impact investments in the life sciences. As someone who withdrew from a DPhil to pursue consultancy full-time, I have first-hand experience of the push-pull between academia and industry. My goal is to help STEM women navigate similar career decisions and embark on the right path for them." Hobbies: Running along the Thames, wild swimming (preferably not in the Thames!), and cooking for friends |
Anna Morris
Group HR Manager Oxford Metrics Plc Head of Human Resources for a group of technology companies. Hobbies: I crochet...a lot! |
Julia Maddocks
Company Director KMG Systems Ltd "HR, IT, H&S, Software, Export; Varied. I’ve worked in mental health, community arts, training and development as well as engineering." Hobbies: Fitness, craft, dog walking |
Dr Paula Dobrinic
Senior scientist Immunocore "I am developing next generation sequencing assays and bioinformatics approaches for immune receptor analysis. The aim of my research is to accelerate and improve drug discovery in Immunocore." Hobbies: "I love podcasts and books." |
Smriti Roy
Software Engineer SAP Labs India Building high scale software for Industry. Write backend code with Java and other frameworks. Hobbies: Singing, Keyboard player, Reading, Travelling |
Dr. Vanessa Johnen
Manager PwC Strategy & Germany GmbH Strategy Consulting in the Pharma & Life Science Industry Hobbies: Sailing, reading |
Lillian Elsner
Founder Jack Fertility Previously Head of Strategy at Arctoris. Hobbies: Rowing, tennis, gardening |
Dan Woodward
Cheminformatics Research Scientist Exscientia Job description: Gathering requirements for new programs and tools, writing the code to implement these programs, writing tests to ensure these programs work in the desired way, updating documentation indicating the usage and providing support to computational drug designers on using the programs and tools created. Hobbies: Avid film watcher, regularly going to gigs/DJ nights and reading a lot of sci-fi and fantasy books |
Mona Dalers
Senior Energy Modeller Aurora Energy Research Job description: Aurora's modelling team is responsible for developing power market models for markets in the UK, EU, US and Australia. My current role is leading the North America and Australia modelling team, which means I am involved in day-to-day problem solving with my team, code reviews and planning longer term model developments. My background is in maths, with a BSc and MSc from the Technical University of Berlin. Hobbies: Outside of work I enjoy cycling, bouldering and a good beer at the pub. |
Assoc. Prof. Nicola Burgess-Brown
Director, Enzymology and Protein Engineering, Exact Sciences Innovation Protein Biochemistry/ Molecular Biology Day to day job: Managing a team developing proteins for cancer diagnostic products. I am still a visiting scientist at the University of Oxford and enjoy contributing in ongoing collaborations with academia. Hobbies: Exercising |
Christina Kamaraki
Engineer OxfordPV Day-to-day job: Conducting experiments including solar cell fabrication and characterisation, data analysis and interpretation with main aim the improvement and commercialisation of next generation solar cells. My background is in Physics with a BSc and MSc from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a PhD from University of Bath. Hobbies: Lindy Hop dancing, Board games, travelling |
student
Maximilian Strobl
DPhil Student, University of Oxford Applied Mathematics, Oncology Can we use patient- calibrated, mathematical models of tumour ecology and evolution to improve the scheduling of cancer treatment? Hobbies: Sailing, swing and Scottish dancing, table tennis, hockey, fishing |
Sumali Bajaj
Graduate student Infectious disease modelling- statistician Planned career path: Research Hobbies: "I play badminton for the University of Oxford and row for my college. I also enjoy dancing and cooking." |
Elisa
Graduate student Biotechnology and genomics Planned career path: Academia Hobbies: Basketball |
Maike Meier
DPhil Student, University of Oxford Mathematics Planned career path: teaching-focused academia. Hobbies: Basketball |
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Amber Ridgway
PhD student Biosciences Planned career path: Post-Doc Hobbies: cycling, vegan cooking, reading, yoga, teaching |
Lia Yeh
Third year DPhil in Computer Science Researching quantum computing Hobbies: Karaoke, dance, frisbee, listening to music, cooking, and watching movies, anime, and cartoons |
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Carla Wagener
DPhil student Ecology Question I want to answer: Does the microbiome impact adaptive phenotypic plasticity in wild animals? "Although I am currently studying towards my DPhil I have had an active career in academia for the last three years and have gained valuable experience in navigating the competitive and often time demanding field that is academia. I really wish at my previous university we had more mentorship and leadership of women working in STEM fields." Hobbies: choral singing, swimming, piano |
Spatika Jayaram
First year DPhil student Neuroscience Career plans: Academia/Industry/science communication Hobbies: Music and writing |