Professor Susan Brooks is Director of Researcher Development at Oxford Brookes University where she develops, oversees and delivers the professional development and skills training programmes for research students and research-active staff at all levels across the University. She began her academic career by completing a doctorate, in pathology, at University College London Medical School in 1990. She continued with post-doctoral cancer research at the same institution until 1995 when she joined Oxford Brookes University, initially as a Senior Lecturer in Cell Biology, and later as Reader. Her interest in researcher development began in 2006 when she took what was originally planned to be a 3-year half-time secondment that eventually turned into an ongoing passion - fuelled by her own experience of the joys and challenges of attempting to build a career from the starting point of being a researcher. She continues to teach biomedical sciences to undergraduates and heads a small cancer research team alongside her researcher development role. She was promoted to Professor in 2016, partly based on her researcher development work. Susan has a deep interest in mentoring, having established a University-wide research staff mentoring scheme in 2015 and, over the course of her career so far, having benefitted from the wisdom, experience and friendship of many formal and informal mentors.
