Team

Sarah joined the Wales Cancer Research Centre as a Research Partner in October 2018. She was keen to get involved in this area of research as cancer has affected her both personally and through family experience.

Sarah has had skin cancers (basal cell carcinomas) removed from her neck and lower back, the most recent of which was diagnosed in early 2020. From a family perspective, her step-dad has been successfully treated for prostate cancer, but her auntie (her mum’s twin sister) was diagnosed with liver cancer which had spread to her lungs in November 2019, and she died a few weeks later.  Unfortunately, Sarah has also lost other family members to various forms of cancer, one of whom lived with her throughout their illness and died at home.

Sarah has always had an interest in health and care research and so joined the public involvement community in May 2017. Since joining she has been afforded the opportunity to contribute to a number of studies. She is a member of the PRIME SUPER group, the Consumer Panel for Data Linkage Research, chair the National Centre for Population Health & Wellbeing Research (NCPHWR) PPI Group, and has been involved in planning Health & Care Research meetings/conferences. She also sits on several funding boards, providing public member input and perspective to funding decisions, and is a co-facilitator for the First Steps training course. As well as being Research Partner for our centre, she is a member of the Trial Management Groups (TMGs) for two cancer studies (PATHOS and ADVANCE) and the Cancer Research Strategy for Wales (CReST Cymru) writing group.  She is also a Public Partner with Health Technology Wales, sitting on the Assessment Group and PPI Standing Group.

Dr Kathy Seddon is an elearning specialist. A Churchill Fellowship allowed her to set up an online collaboration between European schools she researched the success of their online collaboration in her Exeter University Doctorate  "Teacher Motivation, Learning and Practice in an International Online community" She is an honorary Fellow of Exeter University. Kathy has a number of publications arising from her thesis and from her work with the National College for School Leadership in  their online communities.

After the death of her husband from a glioblastoma she wanted to put her research skills to use as a ‘Research Voice’ for Marie Curie working on ‘missing data’ and 'Impact of research'. Kathy is a Research partner at the WCRC and has helped (PPI) with a number of completed projects. She has been a co-applicant on key pieces of research such as Bereavement, RAMBO, and PETROS. She has an interest in ethical approval, brain tumour research and in MDRG groups 

Dr Stephanie Smits is a behavioural scientist based in Cardiff University's Division of Population Medicine who works in the area of screening, prevention and early diagnosis of cancer. She is currently applying her behavioural science expertise to explore experience, completion and outcomes in bowel cancer screening for people with multi-morbidity in her Health and Care Research Wales fellowship. She has expertise in areas such as cancer awareness, screening, behaviour change, psychological theory and engaging hard to reach groups in research. She has an interest in bringing together data from different sources, including qualitative research, surveys and routinely held data, to reduce inequalities in cancer and improve outcomes at different stages of the patient pathway.

Eleanor joined the Wales Cancer Research Centre in 2018. Eleanor’s role involves undertaking responsibility for both our centre and the Cardiff Experimantal Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC) in their reporting and finance requirements. Eleanor is involved in a variety of projects within our centre including supporting the development of early phase research activity, supporting the development of Cardiff's ECMC renewal bid, and the Cancer Research Strategy for Wales.

Eleanor has a background in research, the arts, and arts administration. She has worked with numerous arts organisations including Welsh National Opera, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Voluntary Arts Wales. Eleanor has experience supporting high level projects with complex stakeholder groups, and has both planned and conducted qualitative and quantitative research activities.