16 Mar 21. Dr Nick Spath gains PhD

Congratulations to Dr Nick Spath, Clinical Research Fellow, who recently successfully defended his PhD thesis investigating manganese-enhanced MRI of the myocardium in different forms of heart disease.

Dr Nick Spath has successfully defended his PhD thesis, titled “Manganese-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging of the myocardium”, supervised by Professor David Newby & Professor Scott Semple.

Nick’s PhD was an investigation into the potential of manganese-enhanced MRI of the myocardium in hypertrophic, dilated & ischaemic cardiomyopathy (different forms of heart disease).

We asked Nick how he felt about gaining his PhD.

“I feel fortunate that my time in research provided great opportunities to gain experience in cardiac imaging which is highly valuable for return to clinical work.

I hope that the work undertaken can provide a robust foundation for further ongoing studies.”

Nick is currently working on ongoing studies from grant applications stemming from this work, which are looking into reversible forms of heart disease (reversible ischaemia, takotsubo cardiomyopathy), as well as a randomised controlled trial using manganese-enhanced MRI to quantify myocardial recovery in patients with heart failure & diabetes.