The Team
Dr Sara Jane MacLennan
Lead – ICANTREAT
I am a psycho-oncologist and a health psychologist with expertise in qualitative research methodology. I pursue an interdisciplinary approach building multi-stakeholder working in cancer care and have established global partnerships of academics, patients, non-profit organisations, professional organisations and policy makers. My research strategy focuses on understanding the impact of cancer and treatment on individual’s lives and methods for involving different stakeholder groups, particularly patients, in the design and delivery of care.
Dr Aravinda Guntapali
Team Member– ICANTREAT
My academic journey started in Hyderabad, India with a BSc in Genetics, Chemistry and Zoology. Due to my interest in health inequalities, I changed my track to a Masters in Anthropology (Hyderabad Central University) to gain an in-depth understanding of the impact of socio-economic and demographic factors on health inequalities including access to care. To improve my skills further in quantitative methods, I have done another Masters in Demography at the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai.
Solveiga Zibaite
Team Member– ICANTREAT
Solveiga Zibaite is a research assistant at the Academic Urology Unit at the University of Aberdeen since 2022. Solveiga is a social anthropologist (MA University of Edinburgh, MSc University of Amsterdam). She undertook her doctoral studies with the End of Life Studies Group at the University of Glasgow. Her PhD thesis is an ethnographically informed study of Death Cafés in the United Kingdom using neo-tribal theory.
Dr Amudha Poobalan
Team Member– ICANTREAT
I am a Medical doctor by background, trained in academic Public Health and have over 20 years of experience as a Public Health educator and researcher. I graduated from Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore in India and worked as an infectious disease clinician before pursuing academia. I am a Senior Lecturer in Public Health based at the School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition at the University of Aberdeen (UK) and have a Senior Fellow status of the UK Higher Education Academy. I am a committee member (Country Director) of International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association (HETL). I lead the Master of Public Health (MPH) programme and teach on several undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. I have supervised 51 Masters and 6 Doctoral students to date.
Dr Steven MacLennan
Team Member– ICANTREAT
I am a sociologist and health services researcher. My research focuses on key questions in healthcare research, such as: when we are deciding whether a new treatment works, are we measuring the outcomes that matter most to stakeholders including patients? And, if we know a particular test or treatment works, how can we best make sure that it is used?
The first question can be answered by developing Core Outcome Sets, which are minimum sets of outcomes to be collected in all studies in a clinical area. The second can be answered using an approach broadly termed ‘implementation science’ which is an interrelated set of research processes aiming to understand what helps or hinders the uptake of clinically effective practices and subsequently designing interventions to overcome the hindrances and positively influence the facilitators.
Dr Sheela Tripathee
Team Member– ICANTREAT
Dr Sheela Tripathee is a Research fellow at the Academic Urology Unit at University of Aberdeen. Sheela joined AUU in January 2019. She has previously worked at University of Dundee and the Rockefeller University New York. Sheela’s current research focus is on how health systems and context impact health behaviour change and health outcome.
She is currently working in NIHR-funded ‘CATHETER II Randomized Control Trial’ exploring patients’ experience of living with long-term catheter and various catheter washout policies, and health care professionals’ perception of ‘Catheter II’ trial delivery and outcomes.
