Professor Alison H McGregor

Alison McGregor is a Professor of Musculoskeletal Biodynamics in the Department of Surgery and Cancer, where she manages the Human Performance Group. She trained as a physiotherapist at King’s College Hospital qualifying in 1989 and then went on to study Biomedical Engineering at Surrey University which led to a PhD project in spinal mechanics and low back pain at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School.

 

Research

Her research focuses on the musculoskeletal system with respect to:

• • mechanisms of injury;
•  • effects of injury on function and
• • injury management.

To date her work has largely focused on the lumbar spine by considering its function to be a composite of interacting systems including a:

• • passive or skeletal system which permits segmental joint motion;
• • muscular system which provides the muscles to create motion these body segments;
• • control system (the central nervous system) which co-ordinates the muscles and body segments 

This approach has been used to investigate several aspects of funciton. She has also investigated aspects of management and surgical care pertaining to the surgical  management of low back and leg pain including:

• surveys of practice,
• clinical cohort studies,
• development of evidenced-based information [www.tso.co.uk/bookshop]
• a  large randomised controlled multi-centre clinical trial investigating optimal post-operative management  

She has also led with Professor Anthony Bull a programme of research into rowing performance, with a focus on rowing kinematics and mechanisms of injury.  This work has been in association with the GB Rowing team and on-going studies are contributing to the Team’s preparations for the 2012 home Olympic Games.

Alison is one of the investigators in the Medical Engineering Solutions in Osteoarthritis Centre of Excellence Funded by the Wellcome Trust and the EPSRC led by Professor Ross Ethier where she leads an initiative into the use of technology to further rehabilitation of this common disease process [http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/osteoarthritis/objectives/objective9].

Education

• Deputy Head of Department of Surgery & Cancer for Educational Strategy & Quality
• Vertical Theme Lead for Scientific Advancement of Medicine: the Clinician Scientist which seeks to integrate Science across both the undergraduate and graduate entry curriculum,
• Course Director for the BSc Pathway in Surgery and Anaesthesia
• Chair of Examinations for the BSc Course in year 4.

External Interests

As a result of her work in the field of back pain she currently is Elect for the Society for Back Pain Research [http://www.sbpr.info/] and serves on the executive of the International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine [http://www.issls.org/home.aspx].  She currently sits on the London Committee of the Research for Patient Benefit, NIHR scheme and also on the scientific panel for the Charity DISCS.