Dr Sarah Atkinson

Overview

Sarah attended Queen’s University, Belfast, where she was awarded a BSc Hons in Biological Science. Building upon her undergraduate degree, she moved to Ulster University and completed an MRes in Biomedical Sciences focusing on diseases of the front of the eye and this was followed by her successful doctoral investigations in angiogenesis.

Her post-doctoral research projects have all had the primary focus of improving diagnostics and allowing stratification of eye diseases. On sabbatical to the University of Dundee, Sarah became interested in development of siRNA therapies and has continued this research, applying it to a number of corneal dystrophy-related eye diseases.

She is currently a lecturer at the Northern Ireland Centre for Stratified Medicine within Ulster University.

Sarah consistently publishes her research findings in high impact peer reviewed journals including Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science (IOVS) and British Journal of Ophthalmology (BJO).

One of her publications in the top ranked Dermatology journal; Journal of Investigative Ophthalmology (JID), was identified by Faculty of 1000, a post publication peer review faculty who select papers important in its field.

Research Interests

As part of the Stratified Medicine team at Ulster, Sarah has a key role in the application of stratified medicine to the diagnosis and treatment of conditions, which can result in blindness. Her initial objective is to identify novel markers to allow diseases to be stratified and follow this with the development of very specific and potent personalised treatments in the form of molecular drugs known to target only the disease causing allele.

Teaching Interests

Sarah is currently the Course Director for the part-time and full-time PgCert, PgDip and MSc Stratified Medicine courses. She is involved with teaching on both the Undergraduate and Postgraduate Stratified Medicine programs.