Dr Richard Southworth
Rick Southworth is a Reader in cardiac molecular imaging in the School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences at King’s College London. After a degree in Applied Biochemistry at Brunel University, Rick went on to study for a Ph.D. in cardiovascular biochemistry at the United Medical Schools of Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospitals, working under Professors Frank Kelly, Michael Shattock and David Hearse to investigate the age dependency of cardiac susceptibility to oxidative stress. After a post-doctoral position at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, he moved to Radiological Sciences at KCL where he worked with Dr. Pamela Garlick developing and exploiting the World’s first combined PET imaging/high field NMR system (PANDA). He was appointed Lecturer in the Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering in 2008, and promoted to Senior Lecturer in Cardiac Molecular Imaging in 2016
Rick’s research group has two reciprocal aims: to use their understanding of cardiac biology to develop and validate new imaging techniques, and to then utilise those imaging techniques to better understand cardiac biology. Current projects include the development of novel PET and SPECT imaging agents for the identification and stratification of cardiac hypoxia, the non-invasive detection of oxidative stress, and the early detection of cardiotoxicity and cardiac injury caused by cancer chemotherapy and radiotherapy.