Dr Patrick Hamilton

About me:

Patrick is a lecturer (Education and Scholarship) in the Medical School. He teaches on the Medical Science, Neuroscience and Medicine (BMBS) undergraduate degree programs, and is Year 1 lead for Neurosciences. Patrick received his PhD from the University of Bristol where his work focused on the diversity and evolution of trypanosomes - protist blood parasites which cause diseases of livestock and humans. His subsequent postdoctoral research mainly focused on understanding the impacts of estrogen pollution on pollutions of fish. This work used both experimental and population-genetics approaches.

Patrick teaches in several subject areas including cell biology, genetics, microbiology, reproductive biology, experimental design and statistics, and physiology. He enjoys developing new methods and resources to engage students in synchronous sessions. He also has interests in environmental issues (e.g. climate change) and the spread of medical misinformation.

Patrick has also been involved in the Medical Schools Council summer schools program, giving a lecture “Science and the Past and Future of Medicine”, and has given talks for the University of Exeter’s Tropical Medicine Society on parasitic worms on unravelling the the origin of pandemics.

Interests:

Patrick’s current research focus is on educational scholarship. He has two ongoing projects focusing on sustainability in education. One aims to understand students' experiences of sustainability at university, and to better understand their knowledge about climate change science.  The second is using student-led videos to highlight awareness of UN-SDGs in modules.  Other educational projects have focused on Genetics education, teaching critical appraisal, and human evolution and medicine.

As a postdoctoral researcher, his research investigated the impact of estrogen pollution on fish populations. Much of this work used a combination of breeding studies, long-term exposure experiments, and population genetics analyses (using microsatellites & SNPs) to understand the population level impacts of estrogens on wild populations of roach. He also collaborated on a range of projects where genetic methods were used to study the behavior and ecology of bats and fish.

Patrick completed his PhD at the University of Bristol on the evolution of trypanosomes, protist parasites that cause several diseases in livestock and humans. He developed and applied genetic techniques to explore trypanosome diversity and address evolutionary questions. This involved culturing and sequencing ‘novel’ trypanosomes from Australian marsupials and terrestrial leeches, and making evolutionary trees to investigate the origin of the genus. Some of this work (and subsequent collaborations) led to the current hypothesis that the human pathogen, Trypanosoma cruzi evolved from a parasite of bats.

Qualifications:

• BA (Natural Sciences), University of Cambridge
• PhD, University of Bristol
• PGCE, University of Exeter
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy