Dr Helen Mulvana she/her

My Research

Sound waves let us both look inside the body and gently stimulate it, so with one modality we can learn how tissues behave and also deliver therapies. My research is about engineering ultrasound so we see better and treat smarter.

My group (four postdocs, five PhD students) studies how ultrasound interacts with tissue. Changes to the returning signal help us detect and diagnose disease, and careful signal design lets us steer cellular responses for drug delivery and healing. Current projects use microbubble, nanobubble and nanodroplet contrast agents, super-resolution, quantitative and contrast-enhanced imaging for pancreatic cancer and pressure injuries, and low-intensity ultrasound for fracture and wound repair. Biomimetic cell models let us ask why things work, not just whether they do. I’m also exploring some new ideas that exploit the sonochemical properties of ultrasound fields.

I’d love to collaborate with neuroscientists, chemists working on sonochemistry and drug delivery, cell biologists curious about mechanotransduction, and clinicians with a problem ultrasound might help with.

CDT projects

My favourite projects have started with a clinical or biological question that needed an engineer, a physicist and a biologist in the same room. I’d like to supervise projects in sonostimulation and neurostimulation, ultrasound-triggered chemistry, contrast agents for earlier diagnosis, and non-invasive therapies.
As a supervisor, I’m hands-on early, then step back as students find their feet. I’d rather a student came to me with a half-formed idea or a failed experiment than sat on it for a week. My students have gone on to postdoctoral research, engineering roles in industry, publishing and ultrasound start-ups.

Equity, diversity and inclusion

I want my group to be somewhere people from any background feel they belong. I chaired the James Watt School of Engineering’s first Athena SWAN committee, securing Bronze in 2015, and was Programme Director of VisNET, an EPSRC Inclusion Matters project using the power of networks to help 30 women postdocs across three universities overcome barriers to international collaboration. Many of its practices were adopted across the College. As Vice President for Ultrasonics in the IEEE UFFC Society, I’ve led initiatives widening participation for women and people from under-represented regions.