Success Stories

Hear from our award winners

Name:  Adrian Rodriguez - Blizard Institute  Award:  Lay Communications Prize winner, 2025 (£500 towards registration and travel for conferences) Chosen Event:  British Cardiovascular Society Annual conference in Manchester, June 2026

 
 
 
This week, I had the chance to attend the British Cardiovascular Society Annual conference in Manchester. The conference offered a diverse programme, featuring both clinical and basic science presentations. These were delivered across multiple sessions and areas at the huge and impressive Manchester Central Convention Complex. As a wet-lab scientist, I found some of the clinical talks challenging to follow but they were nevertheless insightful and provided a valuable perspective outside my usual area of expertise.  
 
On the second day, I had the opportunity to present a poster including part of my PhD research alongside some of my more recent and ongoing projects as a postdoc. It was rewarding to see many of the attendees interested in my work, with quite a few of them stopping by to discuss the research and wanting to learn more about it. One of the highlights was meeting the first authors of several key papers I had read repeatedly throughout my PhD. It was great to finally put faces to those names and discuss their work in person. I also received valuable feedback on my research and some exciting potential collaborations may emerge soon! 
 
I would like to thank the John Vane Academy for supporting and funding my attendance at this conference. It was an excellent experience which I hope to repeat at next year’s meeting!

Name:  Christopher Bishop - Blizard Institute Award:  Lay Communications Prize winner, 2025 (£500 towards registration and travel for conferences) Chosen Event:  14th Annual Euro ELSO Congress in Dublin, May 2026

 
It was a pleasure and a privilege to use my JVA Lay Science Communication Prize to fund my attendance at the European Chapter of the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (Euro ELSO) Congress in Dublin, Ireland in the spring of 2026. 
 
The annual Euro ELSO Congress brings together health professionals, researchers and industry partners with the aim of disseminating the latest clinical experimental science, experience and innovation in the use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) for life threatening cardiac and respiratory failure.  
 
As a PhD student within the Blizard Institute's Centre for Trauma Sciences (C4TS), my research is exploring the potential use of ECMO to support patients who develop severe cardiogenic shock associated with traumatic haemorrhage. Part of this work was the establishment of a UK-first clinical development and research programme for veno-arterial (cardiac) ECMO at the Royal London Hospital Major Trauma Centre (RLH MTC) as part of the ambitious Transform Trauma initiative. 
 
For the Congress I presented a poster entitled 'Code Red ECMO - From trauma shock to survival: A UK-first integrated clinical and research programme for VA-ECMO in major trauma haemorrhage-associated cardiogenic shock'. This detailed our clinical experience and key learnings with the emergency deployment of ECMO for critically bleeding trauma patients who required bridging to cardiac recovery - a cohort of patients in whom all other treatments had failed and would most likely not survive without ECMO. 
 
It was a fantastic opportunity to showcase our research, and to hear of the experience of other ECMO researchers worldwide who are also exploring this relatively novel application of this lifesaving intervention.