Hereworth Boys School

1994 - 1995

I am currently employed on a project for King’s College University’s Imaging Division, I work at St. Thomas’ Hospital with the London Eye rolling around through the northern windows.  In my department there are around 150 researchers and clinicians working on different ways of human imaging for medical application using MRI, (magnetic resonance imaging), PET and SPECT (radiation imaging), CT  (X-ray), Echo, and new cancer chemotherapies.  My project is in the development of a new MRI scan to image the way the blood flows along the major artery leaving the heart supplying the body with oxygen rich blood; the aorta.  This new scan will be used for a variety of purposes, but our focus is creating a means of diagnosing stiffening, diseased arteries before hypertension, (high blood pressure), becomes serious.  Using this new diagnosis, the onset of arterial disease can be detected early and measures can be taken to reduce the risk of life threatening damage to the heart and to the major organs to which the aorta supplies blood.  An MR scanner is an interesting machine which aligns protons in your body using a strong magnetic field, and then subtly disturbs their alignment with radio waves.  As the disturbed protons fall back into alignment they give off small electrical signals which are picked up with sensitive coils laid around the body.  Images then have to be reconstructed from these small signals.  So, I spend most of my days scanning volunteers to optimise the quality of the new scan, and then writing software to decode the signals to get images from our scan.

I left Hereworth in 1995, along with Gary Exeter’s math classes, (where I learned all about some chap called Al Geebra).  Following this, I went on to Wanganui Collegiate School, and then in 2001 I began a degree in Mechanical Engineering at Canterbury University.  I did this as I heard about a fluid dynamics course within the degree and thought that sounded interesting.  Luckily for me a particularly inspirational professor and fluids lecturer called Tim David joined the department when I did, and started the school of Bioengineering.  I did my Honours project with him simulating fluid movement in the eye causing retinal tearing.  I suppose that this really sparked my interest for medical engineering applications.  Later I was offered a PhD project at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane developing a new artificial heart design.  Actually called a BiVAD, (bi ventricular assist device), this device is plumbed in to both the left and right sides of the failing heart, and the device itself is implanted just below the diaphragm.  It is an ‘assist’ device, because it assists the failing heart’s poor function, as opposed to a TAH (total artificial heart) where the ventricles are actually removed.  These devices suffer numerous issues including clotting and infection.  However the issue I focused on for my PhD was physiological control of the BiVAD.  I was trying to make it passively responsive to the body’s need so that it would speed up when more flow is needed, (such as during excersise), and slow down when less is needed, (in order to allow the patient to sleep for example).  The design was actually a flexible double pump where elevated pressures would deform the pumps making them less efficient, and visa versa.  It was an interesting project confirming my ambition to remain in medical engineering and continue to develop medical technologies for the fantastically dynamic human cardiovascular system.

I suppose it has been quite a long path of study since Hereworth, but I don’t regret any of this time.  It was impossible to predict back then the type of work that I would be doing now.  From choosing subjects later in high school, to selecting an undergraduate degree, then considering postgraduate study and finally working; there was little linearity in this path.  But interestingly now as an engineer with a background in biological fluid dynamics, I find that I am a minority in medical research permitting me to partake in a range of different, interesting projects. 

Nick's Hereworth Memories

• Bedtime stories by Tony Robinson
• Albert Geebra, Gary Exeter's class
• Lockup duty in the haunted Sturge Wing
• Mr Holder's fantastic Self-Saucing Chocolcate pudding, (and his terrible Bread and Butter Pudding...he got wild one night when 8 trays, (from the 8 dorms), were returned to the kitchen hardly touched!!)
• Mr Exeter playing Ukelele Lady on guitar.  He would always replace the lyrics 'If you like, to linger where it's shady', with 'if you like, to kiss her where it's shady'.  I think he must have thought that nobody would notice!
• Crazy Mrs Cooper's music classes.  Every boy's school needs a crazy music teacher.
• A fantastic, inspirational art room with paint on the walls.  The messiness was fantastic for young boys.  The clay-work room was equally as great!
• A bag of sweets each for the Saturday night movie.  And a HUGE dissapointment when this was replaced with a small bag of chips.  Cutting expenses eh Tony?