Social Media Committee

Ourania Varsou, BSc, MBChB, PGCert, PhD

EFEM Social Media Committee Lead/Website Curation

Ourania is a lecturer in Anatomy at the University of Glasgow College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences and holds a BSc and an MBChB. Ourania completed her PhD at the Aberdeen Biomedical Imaging Centre with a project investigating new functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging measures for patients with minor acute focal neurology. She has a PgCert and is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a University of Glasgow Recognising Excellent in Teaching Fellow, currently undertaking further postgraduate studies in Academic Practice. 

Ourania teaches anatomy to science, medical and dental students, from sub-honours to honours levels, with her specialist areas including the head and neck region and imaging with a focus on ultrasound. She also develops and delivers bespoke face-to-face and online teaching on health humanities, as an invited faculty member, for several external international institutions.

Ourania’s research includes imaging, clinically-applied anatomy, and scholarship of teaching and learning. Ourania is a strong advocator of health humanities, writing her own poetry, and serving as an elected member of the international steering committee for The Doctor as a Humanist. She is also an editor for Consilience which is an online peer-reviewed science poetry journal.

Currently, Ourania represents the College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, alongside another colleague, on the University of Glasgow Library Committee. In 2020, she was appointed to the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Young Academy of Scotland where she will serve as a member for five years. Ourania is passionate about sustainability and health humanities.

Marcello Trucas, MD, PhD
Twitter/X Coordinator

Lecturer in Human Anatomy for the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Cagliari

Ph.D. in Experimental and Clinical Hepatology (Morphology oriented) at the Department of Anatomical Sciences - Sapienza University of Rome. Member of the Italian Society of Anatomy and Histology and Full Member of the Anatomical Society. He specialized in Clinical Pathology, developing skills in immunology and therapy of thromboembolic diseases. Research activity focuses on morphological features of immune-mediated and inflammatory diseases of different organs, through immunohistochemistry, molecular biology, and electron microscopy techniques. He deals with the morphology of the liver in conditions of autoimmunity and fibrosis, and microvascular changes in sickle cell anemia. He has recently started working as a researcher in the Neuroanatomy Lab, Dept of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Cagliari, a facility with long-dated expertise in the neurochemical anatomy of the human and rat nervous system in normal and pathological conditions analyzed with immunochemical and morphometric methods. The experimental models are those of neuronal activation and plasticity elicited by environmental and behavioral stimuli, such as depression, traumatic compression, spinal cord injury, hypoperfusion/reperfusion, and chemotherapeutic drugs.
Other interests in Anatomy concern Anatomical Dissection and the History of Anatomy.

Paula García, MSc
Member

Anatomy demonstrator at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

Graduated with a First Class MSc in Human Anatomy from University College Cork, Ireland, where she developed her thesis investigating the relationship between visuospatial thinking and performance in anatomy examinations. 

She currently teaches anatomy and clinical skills to students from a variety of medical and biological sciences courses at the University of Birmingham. 

Her main interests are in anatomy and medical education research, as well the use of new technologies in teaching in the same field.

Caterina Franco, MD

Instragram Coordinator

Current PhD Researcher in Molecular Genetics, Biotechnologies and Experimental Medicine at The University of Brescia. Member of the Italian Society of Anatomy and Histology (SIAI) Caterina graduated from the University of Brescia discussing a thesis regarding the link between oxidative stress and essential hypertensive disease, analyzing the possible role of melatonin supplementation in maintaining oxidative balance and limiting cardiovascular damage. She has been interested in cadaver dissections, learning the technique both in Italy and in Vienna during her medical degree. Over the years, she has investigated the role of oxidative stress and its effect in various experimental models, including a mouse model of autism. She is interested in the field of public health and tropical diseases, which is why she took part to the Tropical diseases and International medicine Course. She is working on her PhD thesis that is focused on tuberculosis infection and in particular on the possible changes that the lung epithelium may undergo following exogenous stimuli in order to better define the role that these changes may have on the spread of the infection. Additional interests include topics related to Human health and rights all around the World.

Judith Esther Linares Gómez

Member

Judith is a Second Year Undergraduate Medical Student at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in Dublin.

She is especially interested in the study and research of neuroanatomy, regenerative medicine research, stem cell use, head and neck anatomy, and surgery.
Her aspiration is to become an ENT or neurosurgeon in the future and she is really passionate about learning about anatomy and morphology, promoting their teaching, and carrying out research to keep expanding the knowledge on this field of science.

She is very passionate about global health, human rights, and surgery, being involved with the Friends of Doctors without borders Society at RCSI and the Red Cross in Spain, whilst also on the process of co-writing a literature review on telemedicine in surgery in underdeveloped countries.

Additional interests include playing the violin, piano and flute, painting, sports, a love for ballet, horse riding, and taking care of and spending time with animals.

Eilidh Ferguson, BSc, PGCert, PhD, FRAI, Cert. FA-III

Member

Eilidh is a senior lecturer in Anatomy at the University of Glasgow. She is the anatomy programme lead for Medicine and Glasgow Access to Medicine Programme (GAP), which won the Times Higher Education Award for widening participation in 2019. She coordinates and teaches anatomy across both professional and BSc degree programmes.

Eilidh completed her PhD in juvenile facial identification at the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification, University of Dundee. Her research focussed on the growth and development of the juvenile face and considered potential methods of identification from facial photographs. Following this, she continued to research facial identification methods at Face Lab, Liverpool John Moores University on an MoD-funded project. During this time, she was part of a team providing training courses in facial image comparison and 3D laser scanning.

She then took up an opportunity to travel to the USA, after being awarded a fellowship to conduct research at the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency in Hawaii. She provided identification services to the Department of Defense for skeletal remains recovered from WWII, Korean, and Vietnam wars, and her research focussed specifically on the segregation and identification of a large commingled assemblage from the Korean War. Eilidh is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) and a certified Forensic Anthropologist who has been involved in forensic casework in both in the UK and Internationally. She is also an elected councillor of the Anatomical Society and currently holds the position of Meetings Officer of the society.