Â鶹ËÞÉáµçÊÓ¾ç

Virginia Newcombe

Dr Virginia Newcombe

BSc MB BS(Hons) MPhil PhD MRCP(UK) FRCEM FFICM

  • Position Governing Body Fellow
  • School Clinical Medicine
  • Department Medicine
  • X Profile
  • Department link
  • Phone number 01223 217889

Virginia is an Intensive Care Medicine and Emergency Physician and a Clinician Scientist in the Department of Medicine.

Virginia Newcombe

Virginia trained in medicine in at the University of Queensland in Australia where she was awarded the University Medal. She came to the UK funded by Commonwealth and Gates Scholarships to complete a Masters in Epidemiology and PhD in Neuroimaging and Traumatic Brain Injury. Subsequent to completing her PhD in 2009 Virginia dual-trained in Emergency and Intensive Care Medicine, and performed postdoctoral research as an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow. The majority of her clinical training was in Cambridge and surrounds with periods of time spent at The Canberra Hospital and The Alfred, Melbourne, in Australia. She also spent time in 2012 travelling in Canada, USA and Australia as a Churchill Scholar.

Since 2014 Virginia has held a Clinician Scientist Fellowship from the Academy of Medical Sciences and The Health Foundation which has allowed her to continue to combine her clinical work with research. In 2018 Virginia was appointed as an Honorary Consultant in both Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, as well as a Royal College of Emergency Medicine Associate Professor.

Recognitions & achievements

  • Academy of Medical Sciences / The Health Foundation Clinician Scientist Fellow
  • Royal College of Emergency Medicine Associate Professor
  • Honorary Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine
  • Honorary Consultant in Emergency Medicine

Research Interests

Virginia’s current research focuses on the use of imaging (both magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT)) to improve prognostication after traumatic brain injury (TBI). She also uses MRI as a biomarker to understand why patients may have different outcomes after brain injury, and is particularly interested in the trajectories of recovery following patients from the acute phase to many years post injury. Current projects also include helping to develop automatic lesion detection methods using artificial intelligence (in collaboration with BioMedIA, Imperial College) and relating neurocognitive outcomes to areas of damage seen on imaging. Her projects encompass the entire spectrum of TBI from mild to severe.

Virginia is also working on the analysis of neuroimaging data from (Collaborative European NeuroTrauma Effectiveness Research in Traumatic Brain Injury) which is a large observational TBI study with data collected from sites in 20 countries. The overall aim of CENTER-TBI is to better characterise TBI as a disease and identify the most effective clinical interventions for managing TBI. Other areas of research include subarachnoid haemorrhage, and inflammation after TBI.