This Summer Richard one of our PhD students, and five year long member of the Pain Relief Institute was awarded a prestigious Versus Arthritis Clinical Research Fellowship (@VersusArthritis). This competitive award is given to those starting out on their academic career to support their time out of clinical training to develop their research.

Richard is looking into the auto-immune basis of fibromyalgia here at Liverpool with Dr Andreas Goebel running the Autoimmune Phenotyping in FMS study (APIF). In his latest laboratory project, he hopes to identify what the auto-antibodies found in fibromyalgia patients are doing in the  body – following on from a landmark paper last year by his supervisor (https://www.jci.org/articles/view/144201).

Richard is currently an anesthetist, specialising in chronic pain. As a senior registrar working at the Walton Centre here in Liverpool, he is passionate to see the lives of those living in pain transformed by transnational research.

Recently suffering an Achilles tendon rupture himself spent three months with crutches, he explains how the period was an enlightening experience around mobility issues, especially during winter months.

“I knew we lived in an ablest society, but the harsh extent of it was focused when I was on the other side. For me this was a formative and humbling experience, further enhancing my compassion and respect for the patients I see dealing with these issues daily.”

Outside of medicine, Richard enjoys growing fruit and vegetables with his wife and friends in a shared allotment. He is an amateur artist in his spare time and has said he will do some fundraising for us too.

Pictured above whilst presenting his poster on COVID at the recent #IASP2022 in Toronto, which again was a great opportunity.

If you would like to know more about Richard’s research, then please follow his research ResearchGate page (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Berwick), or watch out for it on his Twitter Feed (@BerwickRj)