Gemma Bale

Assistant Professor at Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge

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Gianna Angelopoulos Assistant Professor in Medical Therapeutics

Dr Gemma Bale is the Gianna Angelopoulos Lecturer in Medical Therapeutics. Her work focuses on developing new, non-invasive brain monitoring techniques for the measurement of cerebral oxygenation and metabolism in areas where traditional brain monitoring isn’t possible.

Gemma studied Physics (BSc) at Imperial College London where she became interested in using optics for medical applications. To pursue this, she undertook a Masters in Photonics Systems Development at UCL and the University of Cambridge, and discovered near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) – a non-invasive technique that can monitor the brain.

During her PhD, she developed a broadband NIRS device to monitor metabolism (via cytochrome-c-oxidase [Bale et al., Journal of Biomedical Optics, 2016]) in baby brain injury non-invasively [Bale et al., Biomedical Optics Express, 2014]. By analysing the data obtained by this instrument, Gemma demonstrated that NIRS measurements can diagnose brain injury during intensive care, days earlier than MRI [Bale, Journal Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism, 2018]. She further led the development of miniature broadband NIRS devices which are being used internationally to monitor metabolism in a range of cerebral conditions.

Since completing her PhD in 2016, she has made key advances in combining the principles of NIRS and diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) to measure cerebral blood flow and metabolism simultaneously and continuously in a single instrument for the first time. She then demonstrated this device on animal models of brain injury [Rajaram, Bale, et al., Biomedical Optics Express, 2017] before translation to the intensive care unit this year. To undertake this development she brought new techniques to the UK as a result of working as a visiting scientist at University of Western Ontario, Canada (2016-2017) and Institute of Photonic Sciences, Barcelona (2019). Gemma is currently on secondment as a Programme Director at ARIA where she is building a programme in optics for planetary health.