As Admissions Tutor for Biomedical Sciences, Dr Sam Boateng plays a key role in admissions decisions; he is one of many people personally involved in deciding the future of prospective students.
Sam lectures in biomedical science, teaching the Part 1 Physiology module. He also leads an ambitious research programme looking at, among other things, the mechanisms of heart failure.
Sam is involved in school visits and other outreach activities and if there's any time left in the day for himself, he does what he can to stay healthy. Oh, and did we mention that he's a father of three!
Broken hearts
Broken hearts are a personal thing for Sam. He has lost family to heart failure so Sam is intimately aware of the impacts of cardiovascular disease and it is this that pushes him to work long hours in his lab in search of a cure.
“It's not the money that drives me. If I didn't have a job doing this then I would still do it as a hobby. I am fortunate that it puts food on the table, but that's not the reason I do it."
Sam's research, which is funded by the British Heart Foundation, is helping to understand the causes of heart failure. He is looking at specific proteins in the heart that detect how hard the heart is working and prompt it to respond to the body's requirements - such as increased pumping.
If the heart is put under long periods of stress, however, those protein sensors stop working normally and the heart doesn't cope with stress as it should.
“This is when you get into a downward spiral that leads to heart failure."
Previous research has revealed that the protein sensors don't work normally in a failing human heart. Sam's research is now helping to answer the next big question of how and why these sensors are affected by prolonged stress.
“The idea is that understanding the mechanism that leads to disease will help with both prevention and future cure.”
Building your research skills
Sam is one of the researchers you have an opportunity to work with as part of your final year/summer research project. These projects are a chance to get valuable hands-on experience working in a lab as a contributing member of a research group.
Beyond that, it will help you develop practical laboratory skills and qualities such as initiative, independence, critical thinking, and data collection and analysis, which are all highly valued by employers.
Working alongside someone like Sam could be one of the most rewarding and memorable components of your coursework; it could help to shape your future, and, maybe, bring us one step closer to mending broken hearts.
The next chapter of your story could be here at Reading – meet the team