Speakers

Speaker profile

Keith Siew is a recently appointed Senior Research Fellow at University College London, where he co-leads the London Tubular Centre, an interdisciplinary team of clinicians, scientists and engineers investigating the pathophysiology and aetiology of rare electrolyte and blood pressure disorders. He previously completed a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow at UCL, British Heart Foundation supported PhD in Medicine at the University of Cambridge, and trained as an experimental physiologist-pharmacologist (BSc [Hons]) and advanced microscopist (MSc) at University College Dublin in his native Ireland. His work focuses on developing novel techniques to elucidate the links between dietary salt intake, kidney electrolyte homeostasis, blood pressure control, arterial stiffness and bone health. These techniques have employed imaging of optically cleared kidney biopsies for 3D histopathology in VR, isolation and characterisation of urine-derived kidney tubule cells for rare disease patients for organ-on-a-chip systems, and the use of environmental extremes such to study kidney physiology (e.g. humans and mice that have been exposed to real spaceflight and/or galactic cosmic radiation). In the last few years, Keith has been involved with NASA OSDR Analysis Working Groups, ESA Topical Teams and has been selected as a NASA SciX Lead Ambassador 2025-2027. He was one of the first of 6 lab groups to receive direct biomedical research grant support from the UK Space Agency, which led to the several publications in the “Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA) across Orbits” package of papers released in Nature Portfolio this June.