Dr Lowndes is a Consultant in Medical Oncology at the Great Western Hospital, Swindon. She graduated in medicine from the University of Oxford in 1998. After general medical training, she went on to train in Medical Oncology firstly at Southampton General Hospital, and then at the Churchill Cancer Centre, Oxford, completing her specialist training in 2010. Between 2003 and 2007, she undertook research at the Institute on Molecular Medicine, Oxford and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA as a Cancer Research UK Clinical Fellow under the supervision of Professor Adrian Harris. This research into the role of copper in angiogenesis, which included a phase I study of a novel copper chelator in metastatic malignancy, led to the award of a D Phil from Oxford University in 2009. In 2010 Dr Lowndes took up a position as an NHS consultant in Medical Oncology specialising in the treatment of colorectal cancer, lung cancer and cancer of unknown primary (CUP) at the Great Western Hospital Foundation Trust. Dr Lowndes was instrumental in setting up the acute oncology service at the Great Western Hospital and has been the oncology department lead since 2010. She has been chair of the Thames Valley Cancer Network CUP working group since January 2011 and is lead of the hospital CUP MDT. She also is principle investigator for a number of phase II and phase III clinical trials in colorectal, CUP and lung cancer.