Dr Josie Thomas

Research support duties

A significant part of my week involves working with Jo Tozer, our department Research Manager, to manage our diverse portfolio of research funding.

We allocate duties across award stages and these include:.

• Pre award support including application development , eligibility advice and seeking institutional or funder guidance for specific scenarios. 
  
  
• Post award support including award set up, budget updates, monitoring expenditure to ensure compliance and reporting to funders on expenditure in line with requirements.
  
  
• Assistance for visiting researcher processes and collaboration agreements.

Research support team contact is facilitated through our joint email:
archaeology-research-support@york.ac.uk

Biography

I hold a PhD from the University of Leeds in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. I worked in research for 8 years as a postdoc. I worked on Drosophila Melanogaster aka the fruitfly for four years and worked on DNA and protein analysis methods. I specialised in tissue culture of insect cells and expressed a fully active protease into cell culture media, proving that the protein was in fact soluble rather than membrane bound. This protein belonged to a family of peptidases that are related across species and fruit flies are often used as a model system for the human counterparts in protein studies. This family of peptidases are involved in neuro-regulation and implicated in Alzheimer's disease.  My final project involved working in the field of Bioengineering to develop a model system for studying myelin formation. Myelin is the protein sheath on the surface of nerves which transmit information around the brain. Its absence results in diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis.

After leaving active research, due to lack of grant funding I ventured into research administration and student support at Leeds and later at York. In BioArCh I find the science based work fascinating and sometimes my background can be useful in considering staff time and resources after experiencing life at the research coalface.

Voluntary work

I am also a volunteer lay member of the South Yorks NHS Research Ethics committee. We review applications for clinical trials across the NHS. This involves assessing patient safety and the viability of the research and then interviewing the research team via Zoom. My science background is useful for interrogating some of the molecular techniques involved and its been really useful and valuable to assist the NHS in this way. The team of ethics committees across the UK are responsible for reviewing all the Covid 19 trials and played a huge role in ensuring that vaccine trials were expedited in a safe manner.