The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guideline for biographies .(July 2022) |
Vicky Forster | |
|---|---|
| Alma mater | Newcastle University Durham University |
| Known for | Paediatric cancer |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Women's College Hospital, Toronto |
| Thesis | AML1/ETO promotes a mutator phenotype in t(8;21) acute myeloid leukaemia (2012) |
Victoria Jane (Vicky) Forster is an English cancer researcher and science communicator. As of 2022 she is Patient and Community Engagement Lead at Women's College Hospital in Toronto. [1] [2]
Forster grew up in Chelmsford, Essex. She was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia aged 7. [3] She became interested in scientific research whilst at hospital, and went on to study biomedical science at the Durham University. [3] [4] She graduated from Durham University in 2008. [5] Forster completed a PhD at Newcastle University with James Allan and Olaf Heidenreich. [3] [6] On the day she finished her PhD, she tweeted, Dear Cancer, I beat you aged eight and now I’ve got a PhD in cancer research, which became a viral post. [7] [8]
Forster used the media attention to praise where she worked, the Northern Institute for Cancer Research, Newcastle upon Tyne. [7] Here she concentrated on leukemia caused by mutations in DNA. [7]
In 2014 Forster was a British Science Association Media Fellow. [9] [10] That year, she spoke at TEDx Jesmond Dene about the legacy of Janet Rowley. [11] In 2015 she won the Communications and Brand Ambassador Prize from Cancer Research UK. [12] She appeared in the science communication project Soapbox Science. [13] Forster was a 2017 TED Global Fellow researching paediatric cancer. [14] [15] Her TED talk, What can cancer survivors teach us about cancer treatment, was in Arusha, Tanzania. [16] She was listed in the 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30 [17] and was part of the BBC's 100 Women science week. [18] She has written for The Times, The Conversation, Forbes Health and The Guardian. [19] [20] [21] [22] She is a member of the Society of The International Society of Paediatric Oncology. [23]
She completed her post-doc at The Hospital for Sick Children. Her research focussed on the rare genetic disorder biallelic mismatch repair deficiency. [24] She now works at Women's College Hospital, Toronto. [25]
{{cite thesis}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)