Dr Emma O’Dowd
is a consultant respiratory physician at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. She joined the NCRI Screening, Prevention and Early Diagnosis Group as a trainee in 2016 and became a group member in 2018.
Why did you get involved with the NCRI Group as a trainee?
I got involved with the NCRI as a trainee when I was coming towards the end of my PhD. I was looking at ways to move forward with a research career and to network and learn from other specialists in the field I thought was a great opportunity.
How has it benefitted your career?
Being a group member has benefited my career by allowing me to meet lots of other professionals. I’m a member of the NCRI Screening, Prevention and Early Detection Group, which covers multiple cancer types. So learning from what’s happening in other tumour types that might have some relevance to lung, which is my area of interest, has also been really helpful.
What is the best thing you have been involved in as part of the NCRI Group?
The best thing that I’ve been involved with as part of the NCRI group is the trainee project. As part of the SPED Group, we’ve had an opportunity to work across all of the tumour sites with lots of the other NCRI trainees and do a large review of all trials looking at screening prevention and early detection. It has been an excellent opportunity to produce something that has a meaningful output.
What would be your advice to other early career researchers?
My advice to other early career research is if you’re given an opportunity or there is an opportunity to join an NCRI Group, then I would go for it because it gives you lots and lots
of opportunities to network and to review other trial protocols and learn how to advance your career and write trials yourself as you’re moving forward so I would take whatever opportunities are available. I’ve certainly not regretted joining the NCRI group.