In an interview with the Free Press Journal, Dr Adam Hodgson, Founding Director of The Julia Garnham Centre at The University of Sheffield , UK, reveals the intention behind Julia Garnham Centre, why University of Sheffield is pivotal to it, how students can help and what sort of placements they can avail. Excerpts from the interview :
Could you tell us about the Julia Garnham Centre and why was it created?
The University of Sheffield and Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust officially opened the Julia Garnham Centre in March 2022. The Centre is a new genomic pre-screening facility, which helps NHS geneticists to diagnose blood cancers. Based in the University of Sheffield’s Firth Court building, the new remote NHS work placement centre provides students with essential experience and training in genetic analysis. The students prepare anonymised cancer cases, making them ready for NHS Geneticists to analyse, which helps to save time for Sheffield Children's and speeds up the time it takes to report these types of cancer results. The Julia Garnham Centre is the first of its kind in helping the analysis of genetic karyotypes for leukaemia patients.
The centre is named after Julia Garnham, an inspirational geneticist who worked for Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust’s genetics department for over 30 years helping to diagnose genetic disease, including many cancers. Julia, who sadly passed away in 2018, dedicated her career to ensuring high quality preparations and offering excellent training and development for scientists managing the genetic analysis to ensure patients, including those with cancer, received a high quality and timely diagnosis, a core ambition of the new centre.
Dr. Adam Hodgson, Founding Director of The Julia Garnham Centre at The University of Sheffield , UK.
What type of training is provided to students?
The Julia Garnham Centre develops genetic training materials in collaboration with clinical experts in the Sheffield Children’s to prepare students for placements and careers in genomic pathology. The centre currently specialises in karyotype analysis training and pre-screening, which is an essential technology used for the classification, prognosis and monitoring of cancers of the blood and blood forming tissues.
Could you tell us about the types of placements that are offered to the Undergraduate and Postgraduate students from the School of Biosciences?
The Julia Garnham Centre offers placements as part of selected undergraduate and postgraduate taught courses in the School of Biosciences. Placements last for a single academic semester and are scheduled to accommodate student lecture timetables. The flexible scheduling of Julia Garnham Centre offers improved access to placements as students are able to attend lectures and the centre during a typical study day. This way of delivering placements has been attractive to many students, including many international students, since the centre was officially launched earlier this year.
What criteria do students have to meet to work with Julia Garnham Centre?
Students must be registered to selected undergraduate or postgraduate taught programmes in the University of Sheffield’s School of Biosciences, and more information is available on our website: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/garnham-centre.
Please tell us about the centre’s impact and how the students are central in making a difference?
We're dedicated to supporting the NHS to deal with cancer backlogs in order to save lives and we're proud that our students are helping to make this difference.
