Postdoctoral Researcher Medal Winner 2025: Pamela Swiatlowska

Postdoctoral Researcher Medal Winner 2025

Pamela Swiatlowska

Pamela is a British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence Fellow at the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London and a visiting Postdoctoral Researcher at Queen Mary University London (QMUL).

She completed her undergraduate studies at the Intercollegiate Faculty of Biotechnology MUG-UG (Poland) and the University of Glasgow. She then conducted her Master Research Project at the University of Virginia (USA) as a BioLab Fulbright Scholar. During that time, she co-authored two Nature Medicine publications on Oct4 and Klf4-dependent phenotypic switching of smooth muscle cells in atherosclerosis. In 2019, she earned her PhD from Imperial College London where she investigated mechanical properties of cardiac myocytes using the Scanning Ion Conductance Microscopy. She then transitioned to a Postdoctoral Researcher role at the New York University (2019) and the School of Engineering and Material Science at QMUL (2020).

One of her main areas of interest is the investigation of cardiovascular mechanobiology that looks at how cells sense and respond to their mechanical environment using cross-disciplinary approaches. Her recent studies show how Piezo1, mechanosensitive channels, can lead to vascular smooth muscle cell phenotypic switching in atherosclerosis (Sci Adv 2022, doi:10.1126/sciadv.abm3471;  Adv Sci 2024, doi:10.1002/advs.202308686). The ongoing work centres on understanding nuclear mechano-genomics in cardiovascular diseases, such as heart failure, atherosclerosis.

Pamela now serves as the Imperial College London Cellular Mechanosignaling and Functional Microscopy Centre Advisor Board Member.

In 2022, she received the British Society for Cardiovascular Research prestigious Bernard and Joan Marshall Early Career Investigator Runner-up Prize.

Her contribution to the academic community include: participation in the Postdoctoral Committees, leading on a sustainable lab work team (LEAF programme), promoting Women in Science activities, co-organizing seminars and conferences. She promotes science by actively participating in public engagement activities such as Festival of Communities and Pint of Science.

Her long-term cardiovascular research developed into a growing interest in policymaking.  In 2024, she participated in the Royal Society “Pairing Scheme – Week at Westminster” to better understand the policy making process, where she shadowed Baroness Neville-Jones.

Pamela will be awarded the Medal and give a talk about her research during the Biologists @ 100 conference which is being held jointly between BSCB and The company of Biologists on 24-27 March 202 at ACC Liverpool, UK.

The Postdoc medal was established in 2020 to recognise early career researchers who have made a major contribution to UK/Ireland Cell Biology during their postdoctoral training. You can read more about the medal here.