Dr Heba Ghazal

Faculty of Health, Science, Social Care and Education
Department of Pharmacy
School of Life Sciences, Pharmacy and Chemistry
Penrhyn Road

Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy

[email protected]

ORCID

About

I am a senior lecturer in pharmacy and a pharmacist prescriber registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council in the UK (GPhC), specialised in chronic heart failure. I teach in the MPharm course, and I am year lead of final year pharmacy students (Level 7). My educational background includes pharmacy degree, PGCert in Independent Prescribing in heart failure, a master's degree in drug delivery and a PhD in biopharmaceutics.

I am an active researcher engaged in multidisciplinary collaborations on both internal and external projects, with a publication record spanning pharmacy practice, clinical pharmacy, and environmental lab-based research. My current research interest is on water stewardship – specifically, eliminating pharmaceutical residues and contaminants from the environment and advancing sustainability in healthcare. The method I explore, using biochar, involves affordable materials and scalable techniques with a focus on eliminating antibiotics and hormonal residues from water to provide a sustainable water resource in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. I actively collaborate with national and international universities on projects related to pyrolysis, hydrothermal carbonisation HTC, drug stability, carcinogen detection in herbal drinks, and cryotherapy, including the supervision of PhD and MSc projects in pharmaceutical sciences in Kingston University and externally.

Throughout my career, I have worked across academia, industry, and both community and hospital pharmacy settings. This diverse experience has shaped my expertise in research, pharmacy practice, and academic teaching. In the industry, I have been a scientific officer for Flint Engineering since 2015, within this role I have been working on several projects in areas related to the vaccine storage, stability of food preserved in new open refrigerators and enhancing food processing for better food safety.

I am also a community pharmacist and I was a relief pharmacist manager with Lloyds Pharmacy and since 2022, I have the privilege of being under honorary contract at St George's Hospital, London that enables joint supervision of research students and enhancement to my prescriber experience. In addition, I am bank hospital pharmacist for Ramsay Heath Care.

In addition I contribute to the peer review process in academic journals as an editor of the following journals by Elsevier:

Editor-in-Chief for "Science Talks" journal
Editorial board member in "Case Studies in Chemical and Environmental Engineering"
Managing Guest Editor for special issue Pharmaceuticals Contamination in the Environment in "Environmental Toxicology and Pharmacology"
Managing Guest Editor for special issue Decarbonization & Sustainability as a Roadmap to a Cleaner Environment in "Thermal Science and Engineering Progress"

Qualifications

PhD in Biopharmaceutics, Liverpool John Moores University
Masters degree in Drug Delivery, The University of Manchester
Diploma in Pharmaceutical Quality Control and Analytical Methods
Bachelors degree in Pharmacy
PGCert Independent and Supplementary Prescribing for Pharmacists, University of Reading
Aurora Advance HE

Domains

I am committed to delivering high quality teaching and aspire to motivate students to achieve excellent results. I teach a range of topics including clinical pharmacy and pharmacy practice. Given the significant role of pharmaceutical calculations in the pharmacy profession in ensuring patient's safety, I lead on teaching calculations within the MPharm course. I have a keen interest in teaching pharmacy calculations using blended teaching methods, digital tools and videos that facilitate student comprehension.

I am also interested in incorporating pharmacogenomics teaching into the MPharm curriculum. I conducted projects gathering the views of pharmacy students, community and hospital pharmacists regarding the teaching of pharmacogenomics and the potential implementation of pharmacogenomics service.

I also bring my research activities to my teaching to ensure the students have access to real life experience. This was demonstrated through joint supervision for MPharm projects "prescribing for heart failure" at St Georges Hospital (abstracts have been published in international heart failure specialised conferences) and industrial support to my PhD students from industrial contacts.

Articles Published in Conversation

Awards Academic Impact Awards Kingston University People Award

Best project supervisor (2024) Kingston University

Nominations Academic Impact Awards Kingston University People Award

Enterprising value award team (2024)
Outstanding contribution to learning and teaching award (2024)
Outstanding contribution to the student experience (2024)
Professional/support staff of the year (2024)
Most friendly staff award (2023)

Nomination Alliance Award (2024)

Inspiring individuals (2024) published in p.89 Little book of big impact.

Advance HE Higher Education blogs

Qualifications

Senior Fellow in the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA)

Courses taught

An active researcher collaborating on multi-disciplinary internal and external research projects, with a record of publications in pharmacy practice, clinical pharmacy, and environmental lab-based projects

Ghazal, Heba S. - Author details - Scopus.

Grants

Innovate UK: Active refrigeration shelf with thermal storage. Grant Number: 102330. Grant Value: £412,572. Duration: 18 months from 2015 to 2016 Role: PI (under Flint Engineering Limited).

Research and projects

The occurrence and removal of pharmaceuticals from aquatic environment.
The use of biochar obtained from the pyrolysis of municipal solid waste to remove pollutants from water, in particular pharmaceutical contamination such antibiotics and contraceptives.
"Recycling the non-recyclable", a new project concerned with recycling and re-use of pharmaceutical packaging's and blister packs.
Through collaboration with Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Environmental Engineering, Poland, projects including waste tyres pyrolysis and hydrothermal carbonisation of sewage sludge.
Analysing real-life data and conducting clinical audits in heart failure prescribing in St George's hospital, London.
Pharmacy practice topics such as pharmacogenomics testing service, pharmacists' views, and training needs.
Evaluating the safety of food, the effect of storage conditions on the oxidative stability of lipids in food products. This is a part of a project in-collaboration that aims to evaluate new supermarket shelves that provide a consistent cooling in supermarket fridges.
Comparing the levels of carcinogenic substances polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) in herbal drink – Yerba Mate – dried using traditional method versus samples dried using the novel drying system.
Through collaboration with Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Poland, a project concerned with air quality, toxicity and genotoxicity assessment of particulate matters suspended in urban areas.
Through collaboration with SANZI, evaluation of non-alcoholic antibacterial hand sanitisers to demonstrate that an alcohol-free hand sanitiser can be as effective as an alcohol-based antiseptic.
The development and validation of stability indicating methods for the analysis of medicinal substances such as rivaroxaban, sitagliptin and terbinafine in bulk drug substance and pharmaceutical preparations.
Developing teaching materials that help student students 'visualise' the calculation problems using short illustrative videos showing the practical steps involved in working the question.

Publications

Reflections on project supervision

Ghazal, Heba, 2026, The SEDA Blog, Published

Dr Heba Ghazal

About

Qualifications

Domains

Teaching and learning

Research

Business, knowledge transfer and international

Professional practice, knowledge exchange and impact

Leadership and management

Publications

Articles

Book Sections/Chapters

Conference Items

Theses

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