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Dr Rashad Fatayer is a Research Fellow in the Integrated Photonic Devices Group at the ¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ’s Optoelectronics Research Centre. His research combines optical sensing and machine learning to develop rapid, label-free technologies for diagnostics and treatment monitoring.

He completed his PhD at ¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ, in collaboration with the Institute of Cancer Research, developing methods to analyse cancer-related changes in DNA, including circulating tumour DNA. His advances in DNA fragment-length and methylation analysis lay the foundation for faster and simpler liquid biopsy tests for cancer detection and monitoring. This research led to peer-reviewed publications and an international patent application (WO2026/068715), on which he is a co-inventor. He has presented his work at several international conferences, including Photonics in India, CLEO in Los Angeles and SPIE Photonics Asia in Beijing.

His current work focuses on point-of-care therapeutic drug monitoring in consultation with intensive care and microbiology specialists at University Hospital ¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ. His earlier ovarian cancer biomarker research has also helped shape an Africa-UK collaboration proposal focused on affordable women’s health diagnostics and research capacity building in Ghana and Tanzania. As part of this work, he is also developing novel methods for endometriosis diagnostics.