Our Editors
Dr Richa Joag, PhD
Dr Richa Joag earned her BSc degree in Life Sciences from the University of Mumbai, India, and MSc degree in Zoology from the University of Pune, India. She received her doctoral degree in biology through an international PhD program at the Jagiellonian University in Poland and Exeter University in the UK. Her PhD focused on various aspects of sexual conflict in three arthropod species using the experimental evolution approach and transcriptomics. She has five research publications in peer-reviewed journals. Since 2017, she has been working as a freelance scientific editor and has gained experience in proofreading, editing (copyediting and substantive editing), and formatting scientific manuscripts and dissertations in various areas of life sciences and biomedical science.
Dr Philip Miller, PhD
Philip Miller, PhD, holds an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from Florida State University (2008) and a graduate degree in Cancer Biology from the University of Miami (2014), with a specialization in breast cancer. Over the past decade, Dr. Miller has dedicated his professional efforts to breast cancer research, and he currently serves as an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University. His contributions to the field are underscored by his publication record, which includes 13 peer-reviewed manuscripts, including two first-author studies, in the areas of cancer cell line models, cancer animal models, and breast cancer. Additionally, Dr. Miller has demonstrated his commitment to scientific communication through his role as an editor for Oxford Science Editing since 2015, and he has helped prepare over 250 manuscripts for submission and publication.
Dr Philippa Cranwell, MSc, PhD
Philippa gained an MChem in chemistry from the University of Southampton, then a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Cambridge. After completing her PhD, she moved to ETH Zurich for postdoctoral studies working with Professor Erick Carreira. She returned to the UK to an academic position at the University of Reading. In 2022 she moved to become head of research at a local SME, working with external customers and preparing marketing material and case-studies. In October 2023 she officially took the plunge to become a freelance writer, supporting OSE with preparation of technical articles. Philippa has published extensively within organic chemistry and chemistry education, written three textbooks, presented work at numerous national and international conferences. Her areas of expertise include organic chemistry, analytical chemistry and biochemistry.
Leona Rodrigues, BSc, ELS
Leona has been working in the academic editing and publishing industry for over 15 years. She has helped over 500 ESL researchers/authors achieve their dream of getting published in reputed academic journals. She has a deep understanding of the expectations and standards of prominent publication houses (Elsevier, Nature, BMJ etc.) in academic research. She is an expert at understanding the needs of ESL authors, specifically, and works on subject matters ranging from biochemistry, genetics, and metabolic disease to machine learning, epidemiology, and nursing.
Joyce Fernandez, BEng
Joyce Fernandez is an accomplished academic editor, having edited thousands of academic documents authored by researchers from around the world. She has a Bachelor of Engineering (Chemical Engineering) degree, and she worked for more than 9 years as an academic editor at one of the world’s leading providers of editing and other academic services. There, in addition to independently editing manuscripts, she was also responsible for reviewing the work of freelance and junior editors. Since leaving this firm in 2019, she has been working as a freelance editor with a few different editing companies and specializes in editing documents in physical sciences, particularly materials science. Over the past 14 years, Joyce has built expertise in editing manuscripts written by authors whose native language is not English, especially academics from China, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.
Dr Jay Freeman, PhD
Dr Jay Freeman obtained his BSc in Chemistry from York University and his MSc in Advanced Organic Chemistry from the University of East Anglia (UEA). His PhD research on the synthesis of derivatized amino acids and their use in the self-assembly of supramolecular transition-metal structures was conducted at UEA and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. For the next decade, he worked for a Cambridge-based independent drug-discovery company as a medicinal chemist, designing and synthesising kinase and epigenetic inhibitors, and then at University College London on the development of biopolymer-based drug-delivery systems. During this time, he was named as an inventor on a number of patents and co-authored several journal articles.
He has been a full-time Freelance Science Editor and Writer for almost ten years, during which time he has edited around 1500 papers – several hundred of which have been for OSE – on almost every aspect of the chemical sciences. However, he enjoys new challenges and always seizes opportunities to edit in subject areas beyond his main expertise when they arise, a tendency that has seen his portfolio expand into molecular biology, medicine, physics, biomaterials, cell biology, and even the arts and humanities.
While he has extensive experience in formatting, scientific writing, and figure preparation, his speciality is advising scientists for whom English is a second language and facilitating the publication of their research in high-impact journals.
Andrew Apudo, MSc
Andrew Apudo is a full-time Life Science Editor with publishing experience. Andrew obtained his first degree, BSc in Plant Ecology and Environmental Science, from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, and afterwards, an MSc in Botany, from the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he investigated the physiological mechanisms of adaptation of aquatic submergent plants to increased eutrophication in lakes in south-west China. Andrew has published four papers in international journals and has over 10 years of experience editing papers in the Life Sciences, in subjects ranging from Botany, Marine Biology, Freshwater Biology, Environmental Toxicology, Ecology, Environmental Science, to Plant Biochemistry. Andrew has been editing with Oxford Science Editing for 6 years.
Andrew also regularly prepares written resources for dissemination of current or emerging science for different focus groups, including public service practitioners and members of the private sector, for example, on climate change, and climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Dr Nisha Devi, PhD
Dr Nisha Saroj Devi obtained her PhD in medicinal chemistry and drug design from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, Chennai. Her doctoral work focused on the design of multi-target drugs acting on the inflammatory pathway. She has published four research manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals and has presented her work at international conferences. She began her career as a scientific editor in 2020, and has since edited manuscripts covering a wide range of subject areas, including cell and molecular biology, immunology, microbiology, pharmaceutical chemistry, and computational drug design. She is passionate about science communication and has worked on projects designed to convey complex scientific concepts to a non-science audience.
Dr Aditi Gandopadhyay, PhD
Dr. Gangopadhyay is a computational structural biologist who obtained her MSc with distinction in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Presidency College, Kolkata. She completed her PhD in bioinformatics ofrom the University of Calcutta. She completed her postdoctoral studies on the identification of serotype-specific hits against dengue by drug repurposing, from the University of Calcutta. Her areas of expertise include molecular and cell biology, computational biology and chemistry, structural bioinformatics, computer-aided drug discovery, infectious diseases, pharmaceutical sciences, zoology, and botany. Her postdoctoral studies concerned understanding the serotype-selectivity of viral proteins, and her specialisations include structural bioinformatics, infectious diseases, and computer-aided drug design. She has authored several articles in SCI journals, and has over 6 years of experience as a scientific editor.
Helen Robinson, MPH
Helen Robinson qualified as an occupational therapist at Brunel University in London and practised for almost 30 years in diverse settings ranging from central London to rural South Africa. She obtained a Master of Public Health degree from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa in 2011. She regularly applies critical assessment and reporting skills as a medicolegal expert witness in personal injury cases.
An associate of the Professional Editors’ Guild of South Africa, she is a highly versatile editor who edits clinical research reports, journal articles, medical textbooks and academic work across a wide range of subjects. Helen is particularly experienced in editing for authors whose first language is not English, and she values the opportunity that editing provides to contribute to the effective communication of new knowledge and its translation into public health policy and best practice.
Dr Shailesh Jain, PhD
Dr Shailesh Jain received his doctoral degree in Molecular Microbiology from the Ulster University, Northern Ireland. After pursuing postdoctoral research for a year at the University of Manchester, UK, Shailesh started his career in the publishing industry. He has published five academic research manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals and has presented at several prestigious conferences. He currently works as a part-time freelance scientific editor, with a focus on editing manuscripts written by authors whose first language is not English. His areas of specialization include Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, Genomics, and Proteomics
Dr Pauline Addis, MSc, PhD
Dr Pauline Addis loves good science and good science communication. She obtained her BSc (Hons) from Imperial in 2003 and her MSc from Hartpury University in 2007, for which she was awarded the Dodson & Horrell trophy for top student. She then undertook her PhD at Newcastle University in equine biomechanics, investigating how changing mechanical properties of tendon with age affect horses’ gait. The PhD led to several publications, presentations at international conferences and public engagement events such as Bright Club. During her PhD Pauline gained a deep understanding of anatomy, physiology and how to gain the co-operation of an excitable foal. After graduating in 2012, she stayed at Newcastle, switching from horses to humans, and spent 11 years in the Faculty of Medical Sciences demonstrating the impact of medical research for two iterations of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). In this role, Pauline worked with researchers in areas from fundamental biology to public health, via cancer research, genetics and neuroscience, and therefore has an enviably broad understanding of a massive range of medical research. In 2023 she moved to the NIHR Innovation Observatory at Newcastle University, a national horizon scanning organisation. Here, she specialises in synthesising evidence from a range of sources and presenting it in formats ranging from peer-reviewed journals to Pecha Kucha. Pauline also acts as a peer reviewer from various journals and therefore understands the importance of submitting a clear, concise manuscript.
Dr James Allen, PhD
Dr James Allen is an experienced biochemist who headed a research group in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, UK, from 2006–2011. His research spanned mitochondria, biophysics, enzymology, parasitology, microbiology, bioinorganic chemistry, bioenergetics, evolution, structural biology and cell biology. Dr Allen has published over 40 papers in international journals, most as a principal author, and has peer reviewed extensively. James took his first degree in Chemistry at Oxford then undertook a DPhil, also at Oxford, on the structure-function relationship of an intricate bacterial respiratory enzyme. He did postdoctoral work on cytochrome assembly in bacteria, before being awarded a BBSRC David Phillips Fellowship to investigate mitochondrial biogenesis in trypanosome parasites. Dr Allen’s technical expertise includes a wide range of biochemical, biophysical and genetic approaches, including bacterial and eukaryotic genetics and molecular biology; protein chemistry; protein purification; enzymology; enzyme kinetics (rapid reaction and steady state); absorption and other spectroscopies; protein-protein interaction methods; electrochemistry and bioinformatics.
Dr Dean Rea, BSc, PhD
Dr Dean Rea obtained a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of East Anglia. This included an intercalated year conducting synthetic organic chemistry research within the Medicinal Chemistry Department at GlaxoSmithKline. This was followed by a PhD in Structural Biology within the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick, focusing on structure-function relationships in peptidase enzymes, primarily involving protein crystallography, enzymology, and molecular biology. He subsequently explored plant circadian clock proteins, microbial aromatic degradation enzymes, carotenoid dioxygenases, microbial transcriptional repressors, bacterial cell wall biochemistry, and antibiotic resistance.
Since 2015, alongside scientific editing and proofreading, Dean has worked in ecological restoration of the uplands in the Peak District and other areas of the UK. This includes tree-planting for woodland creation; hedge-planting for farmland biodiversity enhancement; re-wetting and blanket bog restoration for biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and flood mitigation through building stone and timber dams, spreading heather brash, and planting sphagnum moss; and ecological monitoring, specialising in botanical and bird surveying.
Dean has co-authored more than 30 scientific papers, many as first author, and now applies his broad knowledge of the life sciences to scientific editing and proofreading, alongside conducting practical conservation, ecological restoration, and biodiversity monitoring work.
Dr Arshad Makhdum, MSc, PhD
Dr Arshad Makhdum obtained an undergraduate degree in Applied Chemistry from the University of Greenwich. He went on to earn an MSc and PhD in clinical pharmacology from University College London (UCL). Postdoctoral studies in allergic disease took him to the position of Senior Research Fellow at UCL. Then, he was recruited to the Scripps Institute in San Diego (CA, USA), where he focused on exercise-induced asthma. He also taught physicians and surgeons the basic science underpinning allergic disease at this elite research centre. Dr Makhdum returned to the UK and started a career in academic publishing, reaching the position of Publisher at Elsevier (Oxford, UK) and Senior Editorial Project Executive at Phase II Communications (Surrey, UK).
Dr Makhdum has been a STEM editor and medical writer for two decades. He specializes in editing content from authors whose first language is not English. Dr Makhdum also has considerable expertise in what is required for a manuscript to be accepted in a particular journal. His areas of specialization are internal medicine, surgery, anaesthesia, allergic disease (particularly asthma), clinical pharmacology, physiology, molecular biology, and chemistry. He has been working with OSE since November 2012.
He is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, Member of the British Pharmacological Society, Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading, as well as a Member of the European Association of Science Editors, European Medical Writers Association, Medical Journalists Association, and Guild of Health Writers.
Dr Natalie Morris, BM BCh, MSc, PhD
Dr Natalie Morris earned a first class degree in Physiological Sciences at Oxford University, and completed her medical studies as a Clinical Scholar at the same university. She worked as a surgeon for 5 years in the National Health Service, and was awarded Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons (England). She has subsequently completed a PhD in clinical epigenetics, with over 50 publications and book chapters. She has edited over 4,000 medical and scientific manuscripts.
Dr Paz Etcheverry, MS, PhD
Dr Paz Etcheverry obtained her MS in Food Science and Nutrition from North Carolina State University and her PhD in Food Science and Technology from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. When she was a postdoctoral associate at Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, TX), she focused her research efforts on mineral nutrition, especially on iron bioavailability as iron deficiency is the most prevalent micronutrient deficiency in the world. Paz has published in high-impact journals including the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the Journal of Nutrition, and the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, amongst others. She now focuses on teaching undergraduate- and graduate-level nutrition courses and enjoys being a freelance science editor and nutrition/medical writer. Her areas of expertise include food science, nutrition, public health, and biotechnology.
Dr Ashley Rivenbark, PhD
Dr. Ashley Rivenbark earned a B.S. in Biological Sciences with double minors in Genetics and Botany from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, and then earned a PhD in Toxicology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine studying breast cancer epigenetics. After obtaining her PhD, she further completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center funded by the American Cancer Society that focused on epigenetic mechanisms of gene regulation.
She has achieved the Excellence in Science Award from the American Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP) and has published >25 papers, reviews, and book chapters.
She is currently a Project Manager for Climate Finance Solutions, a Contract Grant Editor/Manager for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Freelance Scientific Editor with deep experience in editing research papers, grant applications, and texts for scientists whose first language is not English.
Dr Urvi Sheth, BDS
Dr Urvi Sheth obtained her Bachelor of Dental Surgery degree from India. After practicing as a dentist for 5 years, Urvi started her career in the publishing industry. She has 13+ years of experience in academic editing and has helped several authors publish their papers in reputed scientific journals. She currently works as a full-time freelance scientific editor, with a focus on editing manuscripts written by authors whose first language is not English. His areas of specialization include Dentistry, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Orthodontics, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Internal Medicine, Paediatrics, Surgery, Oncology, and Cardiology.
Dr Richa Joag, PhD
Dr Richa Joag earned her BSc degree in Life Sciences from the University of Mumbai, India, and MSc degree in Zoology from the University of Pune, India. She received her doctoral degree in biology through an international PhD program at the Jagiellonian University in Poland and Exeter University in the UK. Her PhD focused on various aspects of sexual conflict in three arthropod species using the experimental evolution approach and transcriptomics. She has five research publications in peer-reviewed journals. Since 2017, she has been working as a freelance scientific editor and has gained experience in proofreading, editing (copyediting and substantive editing), and formatting scientific manuscripts and dissertations in various areas of life sciences and biomedical science.
Dr Laura Flannelly, PhD, MS, BSN
Dr Laura Flannelly received her BSN from Hunter College-Bellevue School of Nursing, and her MS in Community Mental Health Nursing and PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Laura was a faculty member of the University of Hawaii’s Department of Nursing for 15 years and has worked in clinical settings in Hawaii and New York City. She has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles on nursing education, cognitive psychology, patient self-management, and methodological critiques of research on religion and health. She is the co-author of a book on counselling individuals with post-traumatic stress and a co-editor of a book on research methodology in healthcare. Before joining Oxford Science Editing, Laura worked for five years as a freelance editor with another company editing manuscripts on psychology and psychosocial healthcare authored by non-native English speakers. Since joining Oxford Science Editing in 2018, she has edited over 250 research manuscripts, reviews, and meta-analyses, for submission to nursing, medical, and psychology journals. The topics of the manuscripts included oncology, aging, stroke, cerebrovascular disease, coronary heart disease, transplantation, diabetes, osteoporosis, and educational methods in medical and nursing training programmes. Recently, she has edited manuscripts on the effects of visual programming on secondary school students, arts therapy for persons with schizotypal disorder, therapists as patients in psychotherapy, and families of children on the autism spectrum.
Dr Jay Freeman, PhD
Dr Jay Freeman obtained his BSc in Chemistry from York University and his MSc in Advanced Organic Chemistry from the University of East Anglia (UEA). His PhD research on the synthesis of derivatized amino acids and their use in the self-assembly of supramolecular transition-metal structures was conducted at UEA and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. For the next decade, he worked for a Cambridge-based independent drug-discovery company as a medicinal chemist, designing and synthesising kinase and epigenetic inhibitors, and then at University College London on the development of biopolymer-based drug-delivery systems. During this time, he was named as an inventor on a number of patents and co-authored several journal articles.
He has been a full-time Freelance Science Editor and Writer for almost ten years, during which time he has edited around 1500 papers – several hundred of which have been for OSE – on almost every aspect of the chemical sciences. However, he enjoys new challenges and always seizes opportunities to edit in subject areas beyond his main expertise when they arise, a tendency that has seen his portfolio expand into molecular biology, medicine, physics, biomaterials, cell biology, and even the arts and humanities.
While he has extensive experience in formatting, scientific writing, and figure preparation, his speciality is advising scientists for whom English is a second language and facilitating the publication of their research in high-impact journals.
Hemangi Palav, BTech
Hemangi is a BELS-certified editor with over 13 years of experience in scientific editing. She earned a BTech degree in Biotechnology in 2008. As a scientific editor, she have extensively worked with authors whose first language is not English. Her areas of expertise include Pharmaceutical Sciences & Toxicology, Anaesthesiology/Pain Medicine, Oncology, Public Health & Epidemiology, Diabetes/Endocrine Research, and Cardiovascular Medicine. She is also a certified Prince2 Practitioner with extensive experience in managing editorial operations and have a good understanding of the publishing process from both author and journal perspectives.
Helen Robinson, MPH
Helen Robinson qualified as an occupational therapist at Brunel University in London and practised for almost 30 years in diverse settings ranging from central London to rural South Africa. She obtained a Master of Public Health degree from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa in 2011. She regularly applies critical assessment and reporting skills as a medicolegal expert witness in personal injury cases.
An associate of the Professional Editors’ Guild of South Africa, she is a highly versatile editor who edits clinical research reports, journal articles, medical textbooks and academic work across a wide range of subjects. Helen is particularly experienced in editing for authors whose first language is not English, and she values the opportunity that editing provides to contribute to the effective communication of new knowledge and its translation into public health policy and best practice.
Shalmali Karmarkar, MSc, ELS
Shalmali Karmarkar (MSc, ELS) completed her Masters in Science (Life Sciences and Biotechnology) from Mumbai University, India. Since 2008, she has been editing academic and medical manuscripts for authors whose first language is not English. In 2015, she was certified as an Editor in Life Sciences by the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences (BELS), and she has been working as a full-time freelance editor since then.
Her areas of expertise include general medicine, obstetrics & gynaecology, pediatrics, physiology, nutrition, emergency medicine, and dermatology.
Dr Shailesh Jain, PhD
Dr Shailesh Jain received his doctoral degree in Molecular Microbiology from the Ulster University, Northern Ireland. After pursuing postdoctoral research for a year at the University of Manchester, UK, Shailesh started his career in the publishing industry. He has published five academic research manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals and has presented at several prestigious conferences. He currently works as a part-time freelance scientific editor, with a focus on editing manuscripts written by authors whose first language is not English. His areas of specialization include Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, Genomics, and Proteomics
Dr Pauline Addis, MSc, PhD
Dr Pauline Addis loves good science and good science communication. She obtained her BSc (Hons) from Imperial in 2003 and her MSc from Hartpury University in 2007, for which she was awarded the Dodson & Horrell trophy for top student. She then undertook her PhD at Newcastle University in equine biomechanics, investigating how changing mechanical properties of tendon with age affect horses’ gait. The PhD led to several publications, presentations at international conferences and public engagement events such as Bright Club. During her PhD Pauline gained a deep understanding of anatomy, physiology and how to gain the co-operation of an excitable foal. After graduating in 2012, she stayed at Newcastle, switching from horses to humans, and spent 11 years in the Faculty of Medical Sciences demonstrating the impact of medical research for two iterations of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). In this role, Pauline worked with researchers in areas from fundamental biology to public health, via cancer research, genetics and neuroscience, and therefore has an enviably broad understanding of a massive range of medical research. In 2023 she moved to the NIHR Innovation Observatory at Newcastle University, a national horizon scanning organisation. Here, she specialises in synthesising evidence from a range of sources and presenting it in formats ranging from peer-reviewed journals to Pecha Kucha. Pauline also acts as a peer reviewer from various journals and therefore understands the importance of submitting a clear, concise manuscript.
Dr James Allen, PhD
Dr James Allen is an experienced biochemist who headed a research group in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, UK, from 2006–2011. His research spanned mitochondria, biophysics, enzymology, parasitology, microbiology, bioinorganic chemistry, bioenergetics, evolution, structural biology and cell biology. Dr Allen has published over 40 papers in international journals, most as a principal author, and has peer reviewed extensively. James took his first degree in Chemistry at Oxford then undertook a DPhil, also at Oxford, on the structure-function relationship of an intricate bacterial respiratory enzyme. He did postdoctoral work on cytochrome assembly in bacteria, before being awarded a BBSRC David Phillips Fellowship to investigate mitochondrial biogenesis in trypanosome parasites. Dr Allen’s technical expertise includes a wide range of biochemical, biophysical and genetic approaches, including bacterial and eukaryotic genetics and molecular biology; protein chemistry; protein purification; enzymology; enzyme kinetics (rapid reaction and steady state); absorption and other spectroscopies; protein-protein interaction methods; electrochemistry and bioinformatics.
Dr Arshad Makhdum, MSc, PhD
Dr Arshad Makhdum obtained an undergraduate degree in Applied Chemistry from the University of Greenwich. He went on to earn an MSc and PhD in clinical pharmacology from University College London (UCL). Postdoctoral studies in allergic disease took him to the position of Senior Research Fellow at UCL. Then, he was recruited to the Scripps Institute in San Diego (CA, USA), where he focused on exercise-induced asthma. He also taught physicians and surgeons the basic science underpinning allergic disease at this elite research centre. Dr Makhdum returned to the UK and started a career in academic publishing, reaching the position of Publisher at Elsevier (Oxford, UK) and Senior Editorial Project Executive at Phase II Communications (Surrey, UK).
Dr Makhdum has been a STEM editor and medical writer for two decades. He specializes in editing content from authors whose first language is not English. Dr Makhdum also has considerable expertise in what is required for a manuscript to be accepted in a particular journal. His areas of specialization are internal medicine, surgery, anaesthesia, allergic disease (particularly asthma), clinical pharmacology, physiology, molecular biology, and chemistry. He has been working with OSE since November 2012.
He is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, Member of the British Pharmacological Society, Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading, as well as a Member of the European Association of Science Editors, European Medical Writers Association, Medical Journalists Association, and Guild of Health Writers.
Dr Natalie Morris, BM BCh, MSc, PhD
Dr Natalie Morris earned a first class degree in Physiological Sciences at Oxford University, and completed her medical studies as a Clinical Scholar at the same university. She worked as a surgeon for 5 years in the National Health Service, and was awarded Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons (England). She has subsequently completed a PhD in clinical epigenetics, with over 50 publications and book chapters. She has edited over 4,000 medical and scientific manuscripts.
Dr Paz Etcheverry, MS, PhD
Dr Paz Etcheverry obtained her MS in Food Science and Nutrition from North Carolina State University and her PhD in Food Science and Technology from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. When she was a postdoctoral associate at Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, TX), she focused her research efforts on mineral nutrition, especially on iron bioavailability as iron deficiency is the most prevalent micronutrient deficiency in the world. Paz has published in high-impact journals including the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the Journal of Nutrition, and the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, amongst others. She now focuses on teaching undergraduate- and graduate-level nutrition courses and enjoys being a freelance science editor and nutrition/medical writer. Her areas of expertise include food science, nutrition, public health, and biotechnology.
Dr Shalaka Talpade, MBBS
Dr Shalaka Talpade completed her MBBS from the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences. Her particular clinical interest was rural health. She has participated in medical camps and government health initiatives for gynaecologic and obstetric health, infectious disease management, malaria and dengue prevention, flood relief and various immunization programs, especially polio prevention. She has been editing full-time since 2007 and has edited well over 500 academic papers for peer-reviewed journals. In 2008, she was certified an Editor in the Life Sciences by the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences, USA. As an in-house editor, she quickly rose through the ranks and was soon reviewing the work of her junior colleagues, developing training materials for in-house and freelance editors, and making recruitment decisions. She is currently interested in medical writing.
Dr Ashley Rivenbark, PhD
Dr. Ashley Rivenbark earned a B.S. in Biological Sciences with double minors in Genetics and Botany from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, and then earned a PhD in Toxicology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine studying breast cancer epigenetics. After obtaining her PhD, she further completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center funded by the American Cancer Society that focused on epigenetic mechanisms of gene regulation.
She has achieved the Excellence in Science Award from the American Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP) and has published >25 papers, reviews, and book chapters.
She is currently a Project Manager for Climate Finance Solutions, a Contract Grant Editor/Manager for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Freelance Scientific Editor with deep experience in editing research papers, grant applications, and texts for scientists whose first language is not English.
Dr Philippa Cranwell, MSc, PhD
Philippa gained an MChem in chemistry from the University of Southampton, then a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Cambridge. After completing her PhD, she moved to ETH Zurich for postdoctoral studies working with Professor Erick Carreira. She returned to the UK to an academic position at the University of Reading. In 2022 she moved to become head of research at a local SME, working with external customers and preparing marketing material and case-studies. In October 2023 she officially took the plunge to become a freelance writer, supporting OSE with preparation of technical articles. Philippa has published extensively within organic chemistry and chemistry education, written three textbooks, presented work at numerous national and international conferences. Her areas of expertise include organic chemistry, analytical chemistry and biochemistry.
Joyce Fernandez, BEng
Joyce Fernandez is an accomplished academic editor, having edited thousands of academic documents authored by researchers from around the world. She has a Bachelor of Engineering (Chemical Engineering) degree, and she worked for more than 9 years as an academic editor at one of the world’s leading providers of editing and other academic services. There, in addition to independently editing manuscripts, she was also responsible for reviewing the work of freelance and junior editors. Since leaving this firm in 2019, she has been working as a freelance editor with a few different editing companies and specializes in editing documents in physical sciences, particularly materials science. Over the past 14 years, Joyce has built expertise in editing manuscripts written by authors whose native language is not English, especially academics from China, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.
Dr Jay Freeman, PhD
Dr Jay Freeman obtained his BSc in Chemistry from York University and his MSc in Advanced Organic Chemistry from the University of East Anglia (UEA). His PhD research on the synthesis of derivatized amino acids and their use in the self-assembly of supramolecular transition-metal structures was conducted at UEA and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. For the next decade, he worked for a Cambridge-based independent drug-discovery company as a medicinal chemist, designing and synthesising kinase and epigenetic inhibitors, and then at University College London on the development of biopolymer-based drug-delivery systems. During this time, he was named as an inventor on a number of patents and co-authored several journal articles.
He has been a full-time Freelance Science Editor and Writer for almost ten years, during which time he has edited around 1500 papers – several hundred of which have been for OSE – on almost every aspect of the chemical sciences. However, he enjoys new challenges and always seizes opportunities to edit in subject areas beyond his main expertise when they arise, a tendency that has seen his portfolio expand into molecular biology, medicine, physics, biomaterials, cell biology, and even the arts and humanities.
While he has extensive experience in formatting, scientific writing, and figure preparation, his speciality is advising scientists for whom English is a second language and facilitating the publication of their research in high-impact journals.
Dr Shailesh Jain, PhD
Dr Shailesh Jain received his doctoral degree in Molecular Microbiology from the Ulster University, Northern Ireland. After pursuing postdoctoral research for a year at the University of Manchester, UK, Shailesh started his career in the publishing industry. He has published five academic research manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals and has presented at several prestigious conferences. He currently works as a part-time freelance scientific editor, with a focus on editing manuscripts written by authors whose first language is not English. His areas of specialization include Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, Genomics, and Proteomics
Dr Arshad Makhdum, MSc, PhD
Dr Arshad Makhdum obtained an undergraduate degree in Applied Chemistry from the University of Greenwich. He went on to earn an MSc and PhD in clinical pharmacology from University College London (UCL). Postdoctoral studies in allergic disease took him to the position of Senior Research Fellow at UCL. Then, he was recruited to the Scripps Institute in San Diego (CA, USA), where he focused on exercise-induced asthma. He also taught physicians and surgeons the basic science underpinning allergic disease at this elite research centre. Dr Makhdum returned to the UK and started a career in academic publishing, reaching the position of Publisher at Elsevier (Oxford, UK) and Senior Editorial Project Executive at Phase II Communications (Surrey, UK).
Dr Makhdum has been a STEM editor and medical writer for two decades. He specializes in editing content from authors whose first language is not English. Dr Makhdum also has considerable expertise in what is required for a manuscript to be accepted in a particular journal. His areas of specialization are internal medicine, surgery, anaesthesia, allergic disease (particularly asthma), clinical pharmacology, physiology, molecular biology, and chemistry. He has been working with OSE since November 2012.
He is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, Member of the British Pharmacological Society, Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading, as well as a Member of the European Association of Science Editors, European Medical Writers Association, Medical Journalists Association, and Guild of Health Writers.
Andrew Apudo, MSc
Andrew Apudo is a full-time Life Science Editor with publishing experience. Andrew obtained his first degree, BSc in Plant Ecology and Environmental Science, from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, and afterwards, an MSc in Botany, from the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he investigated the physiological mechanisms of adaptation of aquatic submergent plants to increased eutrophication in lakes in south-west China. Andrew has published four papers in international journals and has over 10 years of experience editing papers in the Life Sciences, in subjects ranging from Botany, Marine Biology, Freshwater Biology, Environmental Toxicology, Ecology, Environmental Science, to Plant Biochemistry. Andrew has been editing with Oxford Science Editing for 6 years.
Andrew also regularly prepares written resources for dissemination of current or emerging science for different focus groups, including public service practitioners and members of the private sector, for example, on climate change, and climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Freya O’Connell, MSc
Freya obtained her BSc in Plant Biology from the University of St Andrews then went on to complete a Masters in Plant Taxonomy and Biodiversity at the University of Edinburgh, in conjunction with the world-renowned Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, where her research project focused on the development of illustrated field identification keys.
Freya has 20 years’ experience in copy-editing and proof-reading, 15 of which were based in Japan, where she worked both in-house and freelance for two of the country’s leading English language editing companies. Her areas of expertise include botany, plant taxonomy and biodiversity, as well as environmental and biological science.
Freya is also a CELTA-qualified English language teacher, with more than 15 years’ experience teaching English as a Foreign Language to non-native speakers of all ages.
Dr Radhika Desikan, PhD
Radhika has a PhD in plant science from University of the West of England, Bristol, and was an academic for several years. She taught plant science at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Her research interest was in understanding how plants tolerate abiotic and biotic stresses, and to investigate this at a cellular level. Her area of specialisation was plant cell signalling, in particular, free radicals. Radhika has published numerous papers during my research career, in this field. For a few years now, she has been editing academic papers in plant science for those whose native language is not English. Radhika enjoys the challenge of making plant science more readable and understandable, not just for plant scientists but non-academics too.
Anusha Hariharan Iyer, MSc, ELS
Anusha Hariharan Iyer completed her MSc from the University of Mumbai, India, where she worked on the genetic transformation of carrots. Since 2010, she has been working as an editor for authors whose first language is not English. In 2012, she received her certification from the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences (BELS). Her areas of expertise include agricultural science, botany, ecology, plant and animal biochemistry and genetics, marine biology, microbiology, taxonomy, and zoology.
Dr Dean Rea, BSc, PhD
Dr Dean Rea obtained a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of East Anglia. This included an intercalated year conducting synthetic organic chemistry research within the Medicinal Chemistry Department at GlaxoSmithKline. This was followed by a PhD in Structural Biology within the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick, focusing on structure-function relationships in peptidase enzymes, primarily involving protein crystallography, enzymology, and molecular biology. He subsequently explored plant circadian clock proteins, microbial aromatic degradation enzymes, carotenoid dioxygenases, microbial transcriptional repressors, bacterial cell wall biochemistry, and antibiotic resistance.
Since 2015, alongside scientific editing and proofreading, Dean has worked in ecological restoration of the uplands in the Peak District and other areas of the UK. This includes tree-planting for woodland creation; hedge-planting for farmland biodiversity enhancement; re-wetting and blanket bog restoration for biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and flood mitigation through building stone and timber dams, spreading heather brash, and planting sphagnum moss; and ecological monitoring, specialising in botanical and bird surveying.
Dean has co-authored more than 30 scientific papers, many as first author, and now applies his broad knowledge of the life sciences to scientific editing and proofreading, alongside conducting practical conservation, ecological restoration, and biodiversity monitoring work.
Dr Laura Flannelly, PhD, MS, BSN
Dr Laura Flannelly received her BSN from Hunter College-Bellevue School of Nursing, and her MS in Community Mental Health Nursing and PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Laura was a faculty member of the University of Hawaii’s Department of Nursing for 15 years and has worked in clinical settings in Hawaii and New York City. She has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles on nursing education, cognitive psychology, patient self-management, and methodological critiques of research on religion and health. She is the co-author of a book on counselling individuals with post-traumatic stress and a co-editor of a book on research methodology in healthcare. Before joining Oxford Science Editing, Laura worked for five years as a freelance editor with another company editing manuscripts on psychology and psychosocial healthcare authored by non-native English speakers. Since joining Oxford Science Editing in 2018, she has edited over 250 research manuscripts, reviews, and meta-analyses, for submission to nursing, medical, and psychology journals. The topics of the manuscripts included oncology, aging, stroke, cerebrovascular disease, coronary heart disease, transplantation, diabetes, osteoporosis, and educational methods in medical and nursing training programmes. Recently, she has edited manuscripts on the effects of visual programming on secondary school students, arts therapy for persons with schizotypal disorder, therapists as patients in psychotherapy, and families of children on the autism spectrum.
Dr Christine Knight, PhD
Dr Kevin J. Flannelly, PhD, MS
Dr Natalie Morris, BM BCh, MSc, PhD
Dr Natalie Morris earned a first class degree in Physiological Sciences at Oxford University, and completed her medical studies as a Clinical Scholar at the same university. She worked as a surgeon for 5 years in the National Health Service, and was awarded Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons (England). She has subsequently completed a PhD in clinical epigenetics, with over 50 publications and book chapters. She has edited over 4,000 medical and scientific manuscripts.