Author: James Moore

Symplectic Elements – common questions answered

You should review the Symplectic Elements website guides http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/symplectic/userguide

We have answered some of the most frequently asked questions received within the Faculty of Medicine:

Symplectic is not retrieving my publications – Review your search settings

If the automated search performed by Symplectic elements is not retrieving your publications, there are a few things you can do to address this.

The more criteria you include in your search settings, the more restrictive the search becomes. Therefore you should tweak your settings by:

  • Removing addresses – it is likely that you will only be publishing under “Imperial College London”. Therefore, having “Imperial” will be enough – anything else is not needed and should be removed.
    • If you have published at another institute, and would like these included in your Publications listing, then you can include these as well. It is recommended that you use very specific address information exactly as they appear on your publications. For example “Oxford” would be sufficient to pick up items published at “University of Oxford”

address

  • Ensure your name variants appear EXACTLY the same as the name under which you publish

names

  • Reduce the number of keywords to broaden the search (having too many keywords will further restrict the search)

Adding a publication via the ID number

This will force Symplectic Elements to retrieve a specific publication.

  • Within the search settings, scroll to the bottom of the page
  • Enter the ID number (for example, Publications on PubMed show this as “PMID”)
  • Press the + button
  • Press Save

id

When the next scheduled search takes place, it will retrieve that publication.

My publications are not appearing in the correct order on my PWP

  • Within Symplectic Elements, go to “Account Settings” in the top right of the screen
  • In the section “Update Sort for External Systems” choose an order for the desired category. For example, if your publications are not appearing in the right order, choose an order for “Publication” such as “Date (descending)” and then click “Update”

account

  • THEN go to your PWP, login and click on the “Administration” tab.
  • In the section “Symplectic Elements” press the circular arrow icon. This will force Symplectic to update the information on your page based on the sort order you have chosen in Symplectic.

symplecticrefresh

I get an error message when I try to accept or decline publications

In our experience this can be fixed by clearing the Cache in your browser, closing it down completely and then trying again.

To find out how to clear the cahce in your browser, please visit http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser%27s-Cache

Babies and Bumps New Parents’ Network

New parents and parents-to-be are invited to meet other Imperial colleagues in a similar situation for informal networking and mutual support over tea/coffee.

HR will be present to answer any questions in relation to maternity and paternity leave.

For further information of network meeting dates and details of who to contact, please view the relevant campus link below:

Cycle theft – notification from Support Services

A notification from Support Services:

There has been an increase in cycle theft in the South Kensington area and the concentration of cycles on campus make the college a prime target.

Over 95% of cycles stolen on Campus in 2013 have been because cycles owners are buying locks that can be removed in seconds , particularly cable locks, chains and padlocks.  The Security Department have been buying “ABUS Granite X plus” locks in bulk and discounting them to staff and students at a price of £30.

These locks normally retail  between £70 and £80 and in the three years that we have been selling these locks  we have had no reports of locks being cut through. If you wish to purchase one please go to Room 155 in the Sherfield Building.

You can also have your cycle security marked in Room 155  free of charge.

The Security Team is also working with the local Police Team to look at what other measures can be implemented to reduce cycle theft on Campus.

If you see anyone acting suspiciously around cycles on Campus please call Security immediately on 4444 or 02075891000 from a mobile

School of Medicine reorganisation and new Head of Undergraduate School of Medicine

The School of Medicine has recently been reorganised – adopting a new structure to establish clearer leadership and strengthen links with academic departments and the NHS.

Martin LuptonMr Martin Lupton (previously one of the Deputy Directors of Education) has been appointed as Head of Undergraduate School of Medicine. Martin took some time to speak to us about his new role, what the reorganisation means for medical students and how he believes the university education experience will evolve in the coming years.

Q: Congratulations on your appointment as the Head of Undergraduate School of Medicine. Can you describe this new role, as well as your main aims and objectives?

Thank you. I think the best way to describe this new role is as a facilitator and communicator. As the Chair of the School Board, my primary responsibilities are to facilitate the new leadership team in their work to improve the quality of our educational offering and to ensure that at every level the School listens to and is responsive to its students and staff (both those in our academic departments and in NHS settings).

Q: The School of Medicine has recently been reorganised with a new structure. How will these changes provide benefits to the educational offering and student experience?

Imperial College School of Medicine is a great and very large organisation, requiring collaboration across North West London. To ensure that the School can build on its success at a time of enormous change both in the University sector and the NHS, we have developed a new structure. The new structure will allow us to concentrate on the twin challenges of strategy and delivery.

Q: Which aspects of the role are you most looking forward to, and what do you envisage your greatest challenges to be?

The aspect of the role I most look forward to is also the greatest challenge.  The changes in the NHS are going to require significant parallel changes in our curriculum.  This is undoubtedly going to be difficult to achieve, but provides us with amazing opportunities to refresh and improve the content of our course.

Q: With the rise of online learning and social media, how do you think the higher education experience will change at Imperial over the coming years?

Imperial College Medical School is in a state of permanent evolution. We have already introduced iPads to the senior clinical years and have been developing high quality learning materials to populate an information spine that runs in parallel with our curriculum map. I think that in time more of the factual content of our course will be delivered through on line learning, which will be fantastic as it will allow us to use our human resource to concentrate on the ancient and unchanging need for apprenticeship and interaction in clinical medicine. The new and the old will work with increasing synergy.

Q: What do you see as the greatest benefits and opportunities for medical students studying at Imperial?

Where to begin? The two outstanding opportunities for our students are science and medical excellence. Imperial is a world class scientific institution and our students have a unique opportunity to be exposed to medical science in its evolution, from bench to bedside. Furthermore the Academic Health Partnership gathers together a stable of some of the most famous hospitals in the world, which care for probably the most diverse population in the world, in arguably the greatest city in the world and our students study in this environment! Why would you want to go anywhere else?

New Faculty of Medicine website

After a few exceptionally busy months, we relaunched our Faculty webpages on Friday 17 January 2014.

The new website has been in development for a while to showcase the work of the Faculty within our main research themes. In order to do this, research landing pages have been developed and the old and out of date material removed.

Our research on film

A large and exciting part of the project was to produce a high quality video for each ‘research landing page’ to more easily communicate what the Faculty is doing in each main area of research. Whilst the filming was completed in late-October (thank you to all that were involved!), the editing process took a bit longer than had been anticipated – trying to cut down the footage filmed in half in order to fit into the time allocated for each video was tricky.

We produced 13 videos in total: 11 for the research themes, another to give an overview of our research and one to better communicate how, through the AHSC and NIHR Imperial BRC, the Faculty translates its research.

Other objectives for the website were to:

  • Improve the homepage:
    • making it easier to navigate to key content
    • better promote news, social media activity and other content
    • increase awareness of the Academic Health Science centre and our other strategic initiatives
  • Improve the way we are communicating research across the Faculty:
    • Creating a much improved “Our research” landing page
    • Better communication of the AHSC, NIHR Imperial BRC and other strategic partnerships and initiatives
  • Review, reduce and re-prioritise content:
    • Changing our main navigation
    • Culling old, out of date and unused content
  • Audience focussed architecture:
    • Re-purposing “teaching” into “Prospective students” giving a better overview of our courses / education and in particular our Master’s degrees
    • Better information / signposting for Staff
    • Better content for the “about us” section
  • Preparation for the College website re-design / CMS project:
    • Details below

College website re-design project

With the new College website design and content management system (CMS) on the horizon, we have taken the opportunity to review content, and where necessary, cull out of date, old and redundant pages. This will make transferring to the new design and CMS a much easier, and less time consuming, process.

By using Google Analytics data (and information on when pages were last edited), we reviewed page views etc to decide what content was clearly not being visited and where content was extremely old, removing it from the website.

There is still work to be done to further improve the website and we are looking forward to getting to grips with a new content management system and college website design in the coming months.

We’ll be in touch with website editors and owners in the coming months to discuss and plan how the wider faculty website transfer process is to happen.

If you have any comments or questions, please use the comments section below.

James and Al
Digital Communications Team, Faculty of Medicine

Student facility upgrades

Over the summer, a number of upgrades have taken place to improve the student and staff facilities across our campuses.

Charing Cross

The Reynolds Café and Reynolds bar have been completely refurbished – a much needed modernisation to support our students and staff at this site.

Reynolds Bar

Reynolds Cafe

Reynolds Gym

The Gym facilities at this campus have also been upgraded providing better fitness facilities for our staff and students.  This also includes the Energia Strength and Conditioning Room which includes state-of-the-art facilities for students who want to maximise their athletic performance.

Hammersmith

Over at the Hammersmith campus, a complete refurbishment of the 3rd floor has taken place along with teaching labs, student common room and computer lab.

Seminar rooms in the sub-basement have also been upgraded and modernised to provide a better lecturing space.

Other upgrades:

We are continually improving the student and staff experience across the Faculty. A number of other areas have seen upgrades:

The Faculty of Medicine’s winners at the first Student Academic Choice Awards

SACASInnovation and tutoring in the Faculty of Medicine were recognised in the first annual Student Academic Choice Awards (SACAs).

Faculty winners

Congratulations go to:

These awards are a first for academics and support staff, nominated and chosen entirely by students. The awards are designed to celebrate and reward good teaching and emphasise teaching as a skill of equal worth and value as research.

The long term aim of these annual awards is to build a community and ownership of the courses being delivered. It is also a chance for students to say ‘thank you’ to teaching staff.

Our congratulations are extended to all of the nominees. The full list can be seen at https://www.imperialcollegeunion.org/academicchoice

St Mary’s Library re-opens after refurbishment

Following six months of closure the St Mary’s Campus Library reopened on Monday 15 April as the Fleming Library. An official opening ceremony, hosted by Vice Dean and Director of Education in the Faculty of Medicine, Professor Jenny Higham, took place on Tuesday 14 May.

Faculty of Medicine Communications Survey update

We received over 700 responses to the Faculty Communications survey – thank you to all of those that responded! Your contribution is very much appreciated.

Winners

Richard Colquhoun (Neonatal Data Analysis Unit Manager, Department of Medicine) and Jocelyn Elmes (Research Assistant, School of Public Health) were each a recipient of a £50 amazon voucher.

What next?

Survey resultsThe data from the survey is being analysed – we will be working to identify some key activities to improve communication across the Faculty and in particular improve communication across the campuses which appeared to be a concern for a lot of those that responded. It also appears that information flows across all areas in the Faculty aren’t ideal at present so again, we will be looking at what could be done to improve this.

If you have any comments, ideas or suggestions, please post a comment below, contact James Moore or Neil Young. We’d be really interested in hearing anything you have to share.

We’ll be providing a summary of the results in the coming weeks.

Insta-help

Here are a few links to information which appeared to be a common bug-bear amongst a number of people that completed the survey:

Sixth The Union Europe Region Conference on TB and Lung Diseases – event report

Lord Boateng encourages The Union Europe Region to unite in partnerships in its response to the challenges of TB and public health

Load Boateng speaking at The Union Europe Conference
Load Boateng speaking at The Union Europe Conference

The European Region was energised by Lord Boateng, former Chief Secretary to the UK Treasury and High Commissioner to South Africa, who spoke of the best practices in working with governments to harness political will and resources to respond to the challenges of TB and Public Health at The Union Europe Conference held at Imperial College in London on 4-6 July 2012. Lord Boateng said about The Union in his speech “your mission is a great one. You bring huge knowledge, experience and wisdom to the fight”. He encouraged The Union to “go back to its origins” and continue to “develop a response based on the principle of partnership” and engage locally to reach “the movers and shakers on the ground” to achieve successful health interventions.

Lord Boateng was joined by an exceptional panel of plenary speakers in Professors Ajit Lalvani from Imperial College, Christopher Dye from World Health Organisation and Dr David Heymann from the Health Protection Agency and more than 40 speakers from across Europe and beyond.  Nearly 450 delegates from sixty-one countries participated in a productive 3 day conference in London, which was host to almost one hundred attendees from Eastern Europe.

Subjects for symposia included TB in big cities, TB and Migration, Drug resistant TB, TB in the elderly and in Children, TB immunology and vaccines, Latent TB infection, HIV and mycobacterial diseases, Tobacco control, nursing, advocacy and civil society, New drug development in TB, hot topics in lower respiratory tract infection, COPD in Europe and tackling TB in poorly resourced but high burden settings. Poster sessions which were held on two of the three days added to the sharing of experiences and provided an avenue for informative discussion and debate, as well as post-graduate sessions held on the first day.

Group discussing issues during poster session
Group discussing issues during poster session

Professor Peter Davies, the newly serving President of The Union Europe Region was extremely pleased with the outcomes of the conference. Professor Davies commented “all symposia and post-graduate sessions were excellent and stimulated many questions and healthy debate from the highly participatory audience. We hope participants will be able to build upon new ideas, partnerships and networks formed from their attendance”.  The conference was supported by a number of sponsors and exhibitors without whom the conference would not have taken place, especially the host joint-organisers Health Protection Agency and The Union Europe Office.

A feature of the conference was the simultaneous translation offered in Russian in the main conference hall, which allowed further engagement and interaction by a large delegation from countries including Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

The Organising Committee hope that all who attended felt it was a highly successful conference and looks forward to continuing to advance partnerships across the European region and beyond.

Prepared by the Organising Committee of The Union Europe Conference

Microscopy videos appear in film “Into Paradiso”

Into ParadisoDr Graeme Birdsey, a Research Fellow in the Vascular Science Group at National Heart & Lung Institute, recently had work used in a Italian film ‘Into Paradiso’. Graeme explains how this collaboration came about and the work he and his team undertake within the Faculty of Medicine.

“I work within the laboratory of Dr Anna Randi (Reader in Cardiovascular Medicine) in the NHLI Vascular Science section. One of the focuses of our work is on the role of the transcription factor Erg in regulating gene expression in the endothelial cells that form the lining of blood vessels. We have previously shown that Erg plays a key role in directing the formation of new blood vessels, in a process called angiogenesis. We found that Erg was important in allowing endothelial cells to communicate with one another by promoting cell-cell contacts and that disruption of these contacts resulted in cell death. More recently, our work has focused on a role for Erg in regulating one of the key steps during angiogenesis – namely cell migration. In order for new blood vessels to form, specialised endothelial “tip” cells sprout from a pre-existing vessel and lead the outgrowth of the vessel sprout by migrating towards specific chemical cues. I used a number of techniques in the laboratory, including time-lapse video microscopy of endothelial cells grown in culture, to demonstrate that Erg was required for endothelial cell migration. This work was recently published in the journal Blood (Birdsey et al. (2012) Blood 119(3):894-903).

The idea of including the transcription factor Erg and videos of migrating cells in the film “Into Paradiso” came from conversations between Dr Randi and her sister Paola, a film director in Rome. Dr Randi was explaining our work on cells to her sister, in particular the fact that we study how cells communicate (via cell-cell contact pathways) in order to co-ordinate their basic responses, such as survival, proliferation, and migration. She used the analogy between cells and people in society, who also communicate in order to survive and modulate their behaviour. Her sister Paola was struck by this analogy and decided to use it in her film “Into Paradiso”, a comedy on multiculturalism. In the film, a scientist in Naples gets caught in a web of mafia and corrupted politicians, and uses the analogy between cell communication and society to persuade the “bad guys” that they will die (or “apoptose” like cells do) if they pursue their criminal activities. So Paola Randi used the videos of migrating cells, generated by myself in the laboratory, as a background to various scenes in the film and in the running titles.

time-lapse microscopy videos

The reason why the transcription factor Erg got mentioned in the film is because, by pure coincidence, in Italy (where the film is set) “ERG” is a very well known brand of petrol for cars. This is therefore used as an ice-breaker between the main character, the scientist, and his love interest, a Sri Lankan therapist.”

The Moonwalk London 2012

Sarah Perkins, far leftSarah Perkins, Head of Research Strategy for the Faculty of Medicine, is taking part in this years Moonwalk on 12 May 2012.

She is fundraising for the Walk the Walk breast cancer charity.

For further information and to sponsor Sarah please visit http://www.walkthewalkfundraising.org/the_swans

  • If you are taking part in any fundraising activities, please let us know by email j.moore@imperial.ac.uk and we’ll include you in the Faculty newsletter

About the Moonwalk:

The MoonWalk is organised by Walk the Walk. This is a unique event as not only do all the participants power walk a marathon (26.2 miles) or half marathon (13.1 miles) depending on which distance they have chosen, but they all wear decorated bras to raise awareness for breast cancer. There are 15,000 walkers (http://www.walkthewalk.org)

Obituary: Anthony E Rippon

Anthony E Rippon, former Academic Laboratory Manager, Dept. of Endocrinology and Metabolic Medicine, died on 22 February 2012. Dr Atul Purohit pays tribute:

“Tony Rippon was born in 1940 and obtained his HNC in Chemistry in 1961 at Sheffield College of Technology. In 1965 he began working at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School with Professor Vivien James as the technical head of the Steroid Research Unit, established by Professor James at that time.

He progressed upwards through the organisation, through times of expansion within the Dept. of Endocrinology and Metabolic Medicine, headed by Prof. Des Johnston. With various mergers and, in particular, the expansion of my own group, his responsibilities increased and he accepted his wider role with enthusiasm and efficiency. Tony retired in 2005. Tony was awarded the Associateship of Imperial College in 2006, in recognition of his achievements and enormous contribution to St Mary’s Hospital Medical School and to Imperial College.

He was someone of the highest integrity, with unquestioned loyalty to the College for more than 40 years”.

COSMOS study

COSMOS is the world’s largest mobile technologies and health research study, and is based in the EBS department here at Imperial College. The study is now open to volunteers and anyone who has not already registered can take part;

Why is this research important? Mobile phones have only been in widespread use for a relatively short time but they have become central to our daily lives. In the short term, there is no clear evidence of adverse health effects from the use of mobile phones.

(more…)

Reorganisation of the Joint Research Office

In March 2011 the Faculty of Medicine undertook a review of the operational activities of the Joint Research Office (JRO).  The Project Board established 10 work-streams populated with College and Trust staff with relevant expertise and JRO staff members.

The review consulted widely within the Faculty and NHS to establish the expectations there were of JRO service and ideas for the optimum structure for service-delivery.

A final report was issued towards the end of 2011 and as a result of the recommendations from the Project Board a new structure was implemented in January 2012.

The key recommendations were:

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Virtual learning in medicine

Dave Taylor, Programme Lead, Virtual Worlds and Medical Media, and Robin Winter, 3D Interactive Designer, recently won the “design our avatar” competition.

You both work in the Medical Media and Design Laboratory (MMDL) at St Mary’s, within the Department of Surgery and Cancer. What work goes on within your lab?

The lab provides consultancy and development services, and helps to support the Department’s research in use of virtual worlds for healthcare. Our applications range from hospital and service design planning, to major incident simulations for assessing communication and leadership skills. We work with other researchers in our Department, to make use of the latest research in behavioural science and the provision of information for patients in the NHS. Our most recent work focuses on the ability to walk through and test the design of a clinic and its services before it is even built. And we are beginning to work with specific patient communities, and researching more effective ways to help people lead healthier lives. There is an overview of some of our work in the Imperial Media library: http://www2.imperial.ac.uk/imedia/content/view/2084/new-media-and-healthcare-avatars-virtual-worlds-and-apps and in a BBC programme about our major incident simulations: http://www.rockhopper.tv/programmes/619/

Picture: a photo of the Virtual Imperial Surgical Innovation Centre, based on the Paterson Centre in South Wharf Road on a misty day.

How is Second Life contributing towards student learning?

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Twitter avatar competition winner

The Winning EntryThe Twitter avatar competition, launched back in December 2011, has now closed. The Faculty would like to thank all those who entered.

The entries were judged by Professor Sir Anthony Newman Taylor, Principal of the Faculty of Medicine, and Professor Jenny Higham, Deputy Principal of the Faculty of Medicine.

We are pleased to announce the winning entry (opposite) is from Dave Taylor and Robin Winter, from Medical Media and Design Laboratory (MMDL) in the Department of Surgery and Cancer, who will share the prize.

The avatar is a stylised version of the iconic image of Sir Alexander Fleming’s plate culture of the fungus Penicillium notatum; the design honours this discovery which was made whilst working at St. Mary’s (now one of the constituent medical campuses of the Faculty of Medicine).

The avatar can now be seen adorning our Twitter and Flickr pages.

We received a number of excellent entries from staff and students from around the Faculty which can be seen in the gallery below:

L-Block visit

Members from the Faculty of Medicine visited the recently completed L-Block at the Hammersmith campus.

The new building will be a flagship facility for Imperial’s Academic Health Science Centre, integrating patient centred research with translational science activity.

Researchers in the new facilities will carry out clinical trials of new treatments and help to advance understanding of a wide range of health problems, such as heart and circulatory disease – the UKs biggest killer.

The building is due to be occupied in Q1 2012.

Photos from the visit

FoM Education – a look back at 2011

Education is a core area of our mission.  I would like to personally thank all who have contributed to any part of this agenda at either Faculty or College level.  The first of these is development of our action programme for continually improving the Student Experience.  You will have seen the messages from the Rector on this subject, and I would like to thank you for the contributions you have made to developing the Faculty’s approach  – a draft action programme has now gone forward for discussion at College level, and there will be further communication on this ongoing programme in the New Year.

Nationally, discussion is gathering pace among the UK medical schools, and with the GMC, on building stronger curricula for training the nation’s doctors through sharing of knowledge and best practice.  The Medical Schools Council Assessment Alliance [MSC-AA] was set up to look at establishing common elements of assessment practice at a national level – where sharing of knowledge and material amongst the schools is anticipated to drive up clinical quality [not that we have had a personal concern in this regard!].  One example of our input into this agenda is in the area of prescribing – research has highlighted the need for improvement in prescribing skills amongst Foundation trainees, and Imperial experience in developing learning and examination programmes in this area is helping to inform development of a national Prescribing Skills Assessment.  Other MSC-AA developments to which Imperial is contributing include a shared question bank for elements of final exams and new processes for recruitment into Foundation Year training programmes, using Situational Judgement Tests.

In terms of prizes these included, the Rector’s Award for Excellence in Supporting the Student Experience given to Dr Emma Watson, Ms Jo Williams, Ms Julia Cork and Mr Chris Harris and Dr Kevin Murphy and Professor Helen Ward received the Rector’s Award in Excellence for Teaching. This year we introduced new Awards to recognise the vital contributions made by our Personal Tutors.  Nominations were made by the students, and we were delighted to see these inaugural awards go to Dr Samia Girgis from the Department of Medicine, and Miss Elizabeth Owen, Consultant in O&G at the West Middlesex University Hospital.  We were immensely proud of Dr Matko Marlais and Dr Nishma Manek who were awarded the Gold Medal and Betuel Prizes for the best performances in Finals across all the London Medical Schools.

This year sees Dr Nicola J Rogers take up the College post of Director of Student Recruitment and Admissions; many of you will know Nicky from her extensive teaching role, and for her leadership of postgraduate education.  We have been delighted also to retain Mr Chris Harris within the Faculty; he moved from his post within the Department of Medicine to take up the role of Quality and Enhancement Manager within the Faculty Education Office.

Of course, our curricula are designed not just to create great doctors, but also outstanding scientists.  This year has seen successful implementation of the final year of the Pharmacology and Translational Medicine Science BSc. We also successfully piloted the awarding of extra ECTS[1] to pharmacology students for approved extramural activities. A new programme for the BSc in Biomedical Science has also been developed, to be led solely by the Faculty of Medicine. The programme, which was revised and re-sequenced to harness strengths from across the Faculty, has been approved by Senate with effect from 2012.

In postgraduate development – we have made significant progress working with the NWThames Foundation School to continue to develop our academic programme which provides a quality grounding in core clinical competencies, complemented by strengthened focus on academic development.  The programme brings the cohort together as a peer group during their programme and enables them to gain experience in academic activity through project work and research/education skills training.  The ultimate objective is to provide trainees with a strong academic skill-set with which to apply for Academic Clinical Fellowships and other schemes, seeding the clinical academic community of the future.

On the postgraduate research side, I am delighted to welcome Dr Laki Buluwela (Department of Surgery and Cancer) into his new role as Faculty Lead for Doctoral Degrees.  This new role will focus on ensuring a quality postgraduate research environment, maintaining an overview of all FoM doctoral provision.  With the increased focus across Research Councils [RC] on doctoral training in key strategic areas, this will be a key post in ensuring Imperial presents its strong case for continuing to attract RC doctoral funding. Read more about Laki’s ambition for the role in his own blog entry.

Finally, many thanks to all who have given their time to help with the development of the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine in Singapore.  This has been an intensive year and required every ounce of the leadership shown by Prof Martyn Partridge, ably assisted by Dr Naomi Low-Beer.  Senate considered a suite of paperwork setting out the plans for establishment of a joint Imperial/NTU MBBS with effect from August 2013 at its meeting last week, and I am delighted to say this has been approved.  Of course, there is plenty more to do before the first cohort arrives in 2013, but approval from Senate is a major step along the path, and a great way to close the year!  We are now at the stage of recruiting to key posts within the new School, and are pleased to announce that Prof Mike Ferenczi has taken up the post of Assistant Dean and Head of Years 1 & 2, from August 2012.  Also, Dr Katie Wynne is taking over from Dr Tanya Tierney as Head of Graduate Entry Year 1 following Tanya’s appointment as Assistant Dean, Head of Simulated Patients Programme and Communications Training and Head of Welfare.  For those that wish to follow progress there is a newsletter: http://www1.imperial.ac.uk/resources/99C81850-548E-4900-A6D8-1012392B4DEE/theleekongchianschoolofmedicinenewsletterissue4.pdf

Many thanks to all and warm wishes for an enjoyable Christmas break.

Professor Jenny Higham
Deputy Principal, Faculty of Medicine


[1] European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System

Competition: Design the FoMImperial Twitter avatar and win £50 amazon voucher

Our current avatar - the Twitter default

The Faculty of Medicine can now be found on Twitter @FoMImperial – and we want to stand out!

So, we are launching a competition for you to design the ‘avatar‘ for the Faculty. The avatar should be iconic and standout bearing in mind that there are currently around 175million twitter users. The winner will receive a £50 amazon voucher!

The avatar of our Twitter page should be recognisable and representative of the world-leading teaching and research carried out by the Faculty of Medicine here at Imperial College London.

What you need to do:

  • Design a new twitter avatar for the Faculty of Medicine which should:
    • be a maximum of 250 pixels by 250 pixels
    • be a maximum size of 700k
    • be in JPG, GIF, PNG format
    • be iconic and representative
    • stand out
    • be with or without text
    • not include the letters ‘IC’ for Imperial College
    • not be stolen (i.e. taken from another Twitter users’ page)

Examples of other Twitter avatars:

Entry:

Important:

  • You must have copyright for any images used and any proof of ownership should be provided
  • Images obtained via the Digital Image library can be used freely (https://imageslib.cc.ic.ac.uk/BMS/index.cfm)
  • No images depicting graphic medical procedures should be used
  • This avatar will also to be used as the Faculty of Medicine Flickr avatar
  • We have the right to suggest changes, within reason,  and the original files should be provided if you are successful in winning
  • You can only enter once
  • This competition is open to all staff and students from the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London – Any entries outside of the faculty will not be considered.
  • The entries will be judged by representatives from across the Faculty
  • The winner will be contacted by e-mail, and the winning entry will be formally announced via Twitter and the Faculty of Medicine website
  • The Faculty reserves the right to choose an alternative image should no appropriate avatar be identified by the review panel from entries received.

GOOD LUCK!

 

Tips:

  • Save this blank template as a starting point (Right click and choose “Save As…”)
  • You could use Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator to design the avatar
  • Alternatively, you could use free image editing software: Gimp

New FoM Lead for Doctoral Degrees – Dr Laki Buluwela

Laki BuluwelaDr Lakjaya (Laki) Buluwela is a Reader in Cancer Biology in the Department of Surgery and Cancer. He has been appointed to the new role of FoM Lead for Doctoral Degrees.

You’ve recently been appointed FoM Lead for Doctoral Degrees – what will this new role involve?

It is a fascinating and challenging role and I am thrilled to have been given this appointment. One of the main aims associated with the position is to ensure that we provide a quality postgraduate student experience with a particular focus on the postgraduate research environment.

I will also have an overview of all FoM Doctoral provision and act as Faculty representative on various College committees, including Graduate School committees such as the Graduate School Management Committee.

What are some of the key activities you are planning for the coming year?

I start straight away by organising and chairing the selection of prospective PhD students to be supported from the Faculty’s MRC Doctoral Training Award. This is a key event and I will be working hard to recruit more of the exceptional research talent this program has supported over the years.

I also recognise that our postgraduate research students suffer as a community, as they are dispersed over several campuses, and aim to address this by setting up a virtual, web-driven campus to support our students. This is already looking very promising and we aim to beta-test this new resource early in the new year.

What most excites you about the role?

I am really excited about the various challenges this role raises. In particular, I am looking forward to trying out and developing some new ideas to enhance the postgraduate student experience. Luckily, I have been given access to some excellent support, so things are moving rapidly….watch this space !

What is your background, and what do you enjoy most about working at Imperial?

I am a Reader in Cancer Medicine in the Department of Oncology at the Hammersmith Campus, where my research is focused on gene expression in breast and prostate cancer. Over the years I have supervised a considerable number of young research scientists and Clinical Research Fellows as PhD students  and many of these have gone on to pursue successful scientific careers in medicine, academia and industry.

Also, while working at Imperial, I have taken an active role in postgraduate research student matters by serving on several Postgraduate Education Committees and have most recently been Deputy Director of Postgraduate Studies for Surgery & Cancer.

Imperial is clearly a fantastic, World class institution which provides a dynamic and rewarding research and education environment to work in. I am particularly enthused by the exceptional talent of the PhD students we have and hope to help by providing resources that will aid our students to reach even greater heights.

Key facts:

Survey on Professional Web Pages (PWPs)

A review is underway of Professional Web Pages (PWPs), which are used on the College website to offer contact details and information about the activities of staff such as publications and awards. To guide a redesign of PWPs, staff are invited to participate in a survey to help identify the content and features which are particularly important for current and future users of these online profiles. The survey should take about five minutes to complete, and all those who complete the survey will be entered into a draw to win a £100 Amazon voucher.

Visit to the Francis Crick institute

My colleagues and I took a trip to the site of the Francis Crick institute (18 November). Currently it is a very large hole in the ground next to King’s cross station. But, with a bit of imagination – and a trip round the visitor’s centre – you can picture what will be the world-leading biomedical research institute when it opens in 2015. We learnt more about the ambitious project and the innovative community projects associated with the development.

The Institute will be a unique partnership with a unique vision. The College and its partners – the MRC, Cancer Research UK, Wellcome Trust, UCL and King’s College London, will combine knowledge, expertise and resources to further our understanding  of the causes of disease and accelerate discoveries into the clinic. The Institute is an exciting opportunity for the UK; not only providing scientific breakthroughs but also boosting the UK economy.

If you want to take a trip to the site, you can arrange this at http://www2.imperial.ac.uk/announcements/2011/10/28/visits-to-the-francis-crick-institute/

Dr Sarah Perkins
Research Strategy Manager