Ilana Levene, DPhil in Population Health

15 minutes with Ilana Levene

The `15 minutes with…’ blog series aims to provide a glimpse into the career paths and personal lives of the researchers and employees at Oxford Population Health and showcase the wide range of roles and science conducted. In this blog series, we ask researchers, non-research staff and students, nominated by the students themselves, to reflect on their career to date – their proudest accomplishments and their lowest points – and how they came to be where they are today.

Today, we continue this series with an interview with Ilana Levene, DPhil student and neonatal doctor in the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (NPEU).

Describe your current role in one sentence

I’m a first-year DPhil student and neonatal doctor in the NPEU running a small randomised clinical trial related to the expression of breastmilk for very preterm babies. 

What's your favourite thing about it?  

I love forging long-term relationships with families who have had very premature babies – as a clinical doctor doing shift work you tend to only see snapshots of babies’ care and your focus is primarily on the baby’s medical issues.

In my research role, I can see the longitudinal progression of the family’s journey and I am able to focus on the parents’ experience and emotions.

There is also satisfaction in knowing we are trying to answer questions that are really important to families and have not been robustly researched in the past. 

...and your least favourite?

In contrast to my previous purely clinical role, academic work can take over your whole life. After a clinical shift, I can hand over all responsibilities to the next team whereas I find it more difficult to set boundaries on the research work – particularly since the pandemic accelerated the potential for accessing all resources from home. 

What science are you most excited about/ interested in in your own work?  

The physiology of lactation when babies are unable to breastfeed directly and therefore a mechanical approach is needed. Expressing breastmilk is an enormous burden for parents and we don’t truly understand the best approach to establish a sustainable milk supply and therefore maximise the opportunity to breastfeed when babies are able to weeks or months down the line. 

And beyond your own work?

I am fascinated by the insights into neonatal care that we can gain through the analysis of large datasets, for example, the National Neonatal Research Database. The NHS gives us a wonderful potential for using and linking routine clinical data in a comprehensive way to understand more about health without further burdens for patients. 

What’s the thing you are most proud of in your professional life?

Delivering high-quality neonatal intensive care with a family-integrated and trauma-informed lens – making families’ experiences of traumatic and challenging situations that little bit easier. 

...and your biggest failure or disappointment?

I think most clinical doctors carry a lot of traumatic experiences that they have been involved with at work. 

What was your route to where you are today?  

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do when I was at school so I simply carried on doing what I most enjoyed, through an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences at Oxford. This convinced me that lab research was not for me and I realised that medicine would allow me to combine a love of biology with social interaction and immediately meaningful work. I therefore did a Graduate Entry Medical degree (also at Oxford) and chose paediatrics as a speciality.

I have taken a very scenic route through paediatrics with two children and a lot of less than full-time training, and now starting my DPhil. 

Although I will be very ancient when I finally finish my medical training it has been such a privilege to raise my children alongside such a satisfying career path and be able to focus really deeply on my research skills.

How is life as a DPhil student with kids? 

Oxford Population Health has a very diverse DPhil student body and I’ve been surprised how many students have kids – far more than at my college for example. My kids are quite old now (six and eight years) so it doesn’t feel difficult to balance work and home life in the way it might have done before they were at school – which allows me to do the DPhil full-time. In many ways having kids makes me a lot more disciplined – for example, my body has been trained for many years to view 8am as a lie-in (!), and I have a hard cut-off to end my working day for family dinnertime. I would encourage people to pursue a desire to have a family when it works for them without worrying about the impact on career and academia.

Tell us one thing about you outside work

I am very committed to living an environmentally sustainable life. I love my electric cargo bicycle, which can carry both my kids around plus a lot of kid and adult-related belongings too! 

If you could give an advice to your 18-year-old self, what would that be? 

Try and make time for relaxation.   

Thank you so much!

Ilana is a DPhil student at Oxford Population Heath and continues to work clinically in the neonatal unit at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. You can find her on X (formerly Twitter) as @ilana_abc