DR CAROL Clugston is not ashamed to admit she is so proud of winning the Lord Provost of Glasgow’s healthcare award that she is still carrying it around in her handbag. “It’s such a beautiful thing,” she marvels. “I was amazed and delighted to win it.”

Dr Clugston is the chief operating officer at Glasgow University’s College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences. “My name is on it, but it is of course a team effort, implementing the vision that has been led by Professor Dame Anna Dominiczak.”

Dr Clugston received the award in recognition of the part she played in the planning, funding and development of the academic infrastructure at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH), where she has worked on projects totalling more than £70 million since 2012. The list includes the Teaching and Learning Centre, clinical research facilities, the £32m Imaging Centre of Excellence -- home to Scotland’s first ultra-high-resolution 7 Tesla MRI scanner -- and the development of the £20m Stratified Medicine Scotland Innovation Centre.

It has brought Dr Clugston and the team much acclaim – but still, one of the accolades she is most proud of is the glittering gold medal from her home city.

“I love Glasgow – I grew up in Dumbarton and went to university in the city and never left, so it has always been part of my life,” she says. “It’s funny – at different times throughout my career there has been pressure to move away and I’ve always had the thought in the back of my head – should I have gone? There’s almost an expectation you will travel and work in different places in this industry but I have never done so.

“Winning this award feels like a justification for staying, almost – it negates all those feelings.”

Dr Clugston left school at 16, unsure of what to study but with a vague idea it might involve textile design.

“It would have meant moving to Dumfries, and my parents were adamant that was not going to happen when I was just 16,” she recalls. “I looked at options closer to home and decided on law but in my final year, I got glandular fever and missed months of school.

“I didn’t get the grades for law so I had to look for something else. I’d always been fascinated by the way the body works, so I decided to study life sciences.”

Dr Clugston completed her degree at Glasgow University and went on to study a PhD in molecular genetics. “I was inspired by a lecturer in my final year who talked about ‘jumping genes’ and how DNA rearranges itself – it sounded much more sci-fi than medical microbiology,” she smiles.

“I wanted to find my niche, so after working in the field of plants for a while I moved into cancer research. When you consider my CV it looks like a well-planned career progression – from bacteria to plants to humans – but it wasn’t that at all. It was much more fluttery. I just followed what interested and excited me.”

After nine years in cancer research, Dr Clugston admits she didn’t feel “expert” enough in the field. “There is a lot of repetition in science and I had begun to realise that what fires me up is the thinking and understanding, rather than the doing.

“I felt I was surrounded by people who were better than me – it seemed I didn’t have the confidence to be as good as the people I considered the real experts, which made me think – is this what I should be doing?”

The catalyst for change came when she returned to full-time work after the birth of her son Gregory. “I was standing in the lab on Christmas Day, feeding cells, and I thought, ‘There must be more to life than this,’” she says.

“It has changed now, but back then there was little flexibility for women who wanted careers and children. I passionately encourage everyone – not just women – into science. It is a great career. But back then it was harder. So I took the decision to leave.”

Her first job beyond the world she had known since her student days was “right outside the comfort zone”.

“It was an admin position for a nanoelectronics research centre,” she says. “I loved it because it was a new challenge. I had to do spreadsheets, deal with finance, talk to the press.

“But eventually I wanted to get back to something I knew and I moved into management.”

Dr Clugston’s role at the College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences has allowed her to combine her commercial skills, science background and research knowledge. She is also at the centre of the liaison between academia, industry and the public sector.

“It’s a very exciting time for life sciences in Scotland,” she says. “There is a lot of talk about the triple helix – the relationship between academia, the public sector and industry, and the way they can work together. That’s what I want to happen here.

“The opening of the facilities, the completion of the infrastructure – these are all great milestones. But the real task – to make something of them – begins now.”

Away from work, Dr Clugston is passionate about art and photography, and cheerfully admits to leading a “double life”. Her Twitter page proclaims her heart lives in Nashville.

“That’s funny you discovered my secret identity,” she laughs. “I love Americana music and a few years ago I got the chance to take photographs at a big country music festival in Nashville.

“My big passion is art but I don’t really have time to paint, and I love taking photographs.”

Her inspiration was her father, James, who died in 1990. Her mother, May, lives in Helensburgh. “My dad had a dark room at home so I grew up surrounded by his love of photography,” she says. “He was a town planning photographer and I used to help him. His death at such a young age had a big impact on me.”

Dr Clugston’s mother gave up her job as a secretary when she got married. “It was the rule back then,” Dr Clugston says, wryly. “But it meant I had my mum at home when I was growing up, which was great.”

Dr Clugston covers the Country Music Association Festival every year now for the American music magazine No Depression.

“I know, it’s crazy – I get to be part of the photographers’ pack. I don’t get paid for it but I love doing it. They’re such a nice bunch. I don’t think they know much about what I do for a day job but that’s fine.

“My two lives are pretty separate. It’s not as simple as ‘head equals analytical science, heart equals creative art’ – I’m as passionate about one as I am about the other. I suppose this job is so 24/7 that I do have to switch off sometimes, and art allows me to do that.”

Dr Clugston recently collaborated with a Nigerian photographer on an art project, and she completed a three-day workshop with the Scottish photographer Colin Prior. “That was incredible – and actually, it proved my two worlds do collide sometimes,” she smiles.

“We were talking at dinner about neuroscience, and what makes some people say ‘wow’ about a photograph when others do not. We’d love to do some experiments here about that, in fact – showing people images and measuring what’s happening in the brain at the same time.” She laughs. “Though I’m not entirely sure they’d let me.”

It is clear Dr Clugston is proud of all that has been achieved at QEUH and aware of the tasks ahead. “Brexit is an obvious challenge – many of our scientists are non-UK Europeans, we have a lot of European research funding and we are leading many pan-European research collaborations,” she explains.

“Research on imaging with the 7 Tesla MRI scanner is dependent on European networks, and we need to attract researchers and companies with skills and expertise that we don’t currently have in the UK.”

She adds: “But I’m proud of where we are, and any part, however small, I have played in that.

“We are at the very forefront of research – and we’re using that science to change people’s lives.”