Professor Sheila M. Gardiner (1954-2022)
The School is very sad to announce that Professor Sheila Gardiner died on the 16th March 2022. Professor Gardiner was a long-serving and well-respected member of the University of Nottingham community. After graduating with Honours from the School of Agriculture at Sutton Bonington in 1975, Sheila completed her PhD in the new Medical School in 1978. Sheila then began a very successful academic career at Nottingham becoming the youngest female Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology in the UK.
In addition to her significant contribution to academic research and industrial collaboration, Sheila was heavily involved in teaching across several programmes in the University, including Medicine, Pharmacy, Nursing, and Life Sciences. Her teaching excellence was clearly evident in her design and delivery of the Cardiovascular System and of the Immunopharmacology courses; in parallel, she particularly enjoyed supervising undergraduate and postgraduate project students.
Sheila played a pivotal role in shaping postgraduate studies in the University, particularly when she was Chair of the Postgraduate Studies Committee, and she also made an important contribution to the development of cardiovascular research in the UK, through her membership of the Research Committee of the British Heart Foundation. Following retirement, Sheila continued to advise on projects in the Haemodynamics Laboratory which she had established she also mentored teams within the major research areas of Cell Signalling and COMPARE in the School. Her success in establishing mechanistic, in vivo physiological models which informed and shaped complementary in vitro approaches, and drove innovative drug discovery projects, met with global acclaim. Sheila will long be remembered, not only as an outstanding scientist with an industrious nature, and as a magnificent teacher, but also as a precious colleague who had rare interpersonal skills.
Posted on Thursday 7th April 2022