The recipient of the Kate Sheppard Memorial Award for 2025 is 24 year old Katherine Ellis for her PhD research "Development of a Model of Endometriosis which Incorporates the Mechanical Micro-Environment".
Early Years
Katherine grew up in Christchurch, and always knew she wanted to focus her life on trying to make the world a better place. She was always torn between wanting to be a marine biologist and help the environment, or to be a doctor and improve human health. As a teenager, Katherine learnt about endometriosis. Endometriosis is a condition where tissue similar to the lining of the uterus is found outside of the uterus. The condition is associated with a multitude of painful symptoms and there are approximately 120,000 endometriosis patients in New Zealand. It is a very under-studied condition with a lot that is unknown about it. Katherine knew that she wanted to focus on female reproductive health, but made a decision that surprised everyone who heard about it — she decided to study engineering.
University Years
In 2018, after years of preparing to be a doctor and go to medical school, Katherine decided instead to go to the University of Canterbury to study a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering minoring in Biomedical Engineering, and a Diploma of Global Humanitarian Engineering. Katherine graduated in 2022 with First Class Honours. She decided on engineering as she felt it would be a way to enter the female reproductive health space with a different set of skills and a different mindset than those traditionally in the field.
Katherine wrote her first journal article at 20, and it was published when she was 21 during her final year of her undergraduate. This article was a literature review about endometriosis, and about the impact of ongoing underfunding for research about the condition. The article was a call to action for change, and has since been used throughout the United States of America to argue to legislatures for improved funding to tackle the condition.
As part of her undergraduate and PhD studies, Katherine has run multiple studies on the impact of endometriosis on patient lives, including specific projects for Māori, Pasifika, and LGBTQIA+ patients to share their stories. Katherine is passionate about making sure no one has their voice left out in the ongoing process to improve the provision of endometriosis care. Katherine made sure to couple this work with patients with considering the views of GPs and nurses on the approach they take to endometriosis care and the changes they would like to see in New Zealand. The intent in this work was to ensure that there was an accurate picture available about the current state of endometriosis care for her work, and the work of others, to look to improve.
In addition to her work with endometriosis patients and practitioners, Katherine has developed a range of laboratory skills working with endometriosis cells. Katherine has characterised the invasiveness of endometriosis cells relative to cancer cells, and developed novel cell lines. She had the privilege to spend a three month placement working in the labs of the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia to work hands-on with ovarian endometrioma tissue samples.
Award
This award will support Katherine on her 2025-2026 Science and Innovation Fulbright placement at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA. During this placement, Katherine will work to develop a hydrogel-based cellular endometriosis model that will incorporate the disease’s mechanical microenvironment. This project is essential as current models either rely on inducing the disease in rodents or baboons, or are two-dimensional and on surfaces 100,000 times stiffer than the body. These models struggle to translate results into clinical care as they lack features of the human 3D environment. The intent of this new model will be to be a more accurate representation which will enable more effective screening for novel treatments for endometriosis, which is presently incurable.