Slough: What is it and how to approach

Karen is Professor and Director for the Institute of Skin Integrity and Infection Prevention, University of Huddersfield, Visiting Professor, Queensland University of Technology and the Royal college of Surgeons, Dublin; previous academic editor for Wounds UK. She is elected chair of the International Wound Infection Institute and the International Skin Tears Advisory Panel (Europe). Her clinical background is in orthopaedics and tissue viability. She has over 30 years’ experience in both clinical practice and in academia. She is widely published (in excess of 140 papers) and has edited 2 text books.

Barbara is Head of Pharmacy at the University of Huddersfield. She was appointed as Professor of Pharmaceutics at the University of Huddersfield in 2010. Following her first degree in Pharmacy at Queen’s University, Belfast, she registered as a pharmacist in 1990 and practised full-time in community pharmacy until joining Aston University in Birmingham in 1992 to undertake a Ph.D. Her PhD research project at Aston was in the pharmaceutics and drug delivery field, focusing on microencapsulation for delivery of biopharmaceuticals.

Following completion of her PhD studies in 1995, she was employed in various posts at Aston University, including lecturer and senior lecturer and was Director of the M.Pharm. programme prior to moving to the University of Huddersfield in 2010 as Professor of Pharmaceutics. During this time, she also became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and supervised projects on the application of e-learning technologies in Pharmacy. She was also a Medici Fellow, specialising in driving forward innovation within the university sector and hold several patents in the pharmaceutical area. She has supervised over 20 Ph.D. students and on-going research programmes focus on chrontherapeutic delivery and delivery of antimicrobials, novel excipients for drug delivery, the mechanical properties of pharmaceuticals and excipients and the development of chewing gum delivery systems.

She has a number of successful collaborations with other universities, NHS and pharmaceutical industry leading to publications and development of new products.

Lindsay Kalan, PhD is an associate professor in the Department Biochemistry & Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University. Her PhD research focused on the interplay between microbial biosynthesis of antibiotics and resistance mechanisms. She then headed a research group in industry focused on the development of novel antimicrobial wound care devices before completing postdoctoral research in the Department of Dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania. There she made significant advances towards understanding the role of the microbiome in diabetic foot ulcers and clinical outcomes. She was awarded the Wound Healing Societies Young Investigator Award for this work. Research in Dr. Kalan’s laboratory is focused on factors shaping microbial community assembly chronic non-healing wounds and dissecting interactions within the skin microbiome mediating cross-talk between bacterial species host cells. For this work she has received the NIH Outstanding Investigator Award and the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award.