Category: Campus

The view of an old St Mary’s man

Professor Peter Sever reflects on his time studying and working at St Mary’s Campus and looks forward to the new vision for the Faculty of Medicine.


I spent three wonderful years as a student at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School and have spent most of my professional life on the Mary’s Campus. Initially in the old Medical Unit with Sir Stanley Peart on the third floor of the Medical School, moving to the top floor of the QEQM building when it opened in 1987, then to offices in North Wharf Road. Finally, when they bulldozed down the North Wharf buildings, I was resettled in splendid new accommodation at the Hammersmith Hospital, in the Imperial College Translational and Experimental Medicine Building.

As one of the oldest Mary’s men still working, it came as a culture shock after so many years at Mary’s to decamp to the heart of the Hammersmith – an institution with which, for so many years in the past, we competed fiercely!

The move has been a great success and I realised that it’s people, not buildings that are important in the modern world. Bringing together clinicians and researchers, working together in their different disciplines, in new purpose-built accommodation, that provides them with the best opportunity to carry out their scientific programmes and look after their patients, is a goal to which we should aspire.

One of the problems I have experienced over many years has been the fragmentation of clinicians and scientists working across several campuses in a far from efficient way, when consolidation of our enormous talents on single sites would have benefited all. If we are going deliver the best research and the best patient care we must look hard at the geography of our institutions and plan for the optimal way in which we can achieve our goals. (more…)

HR Transformation – New ‘Hubs’ go live on Monday 4 March for Faculty of Medicine

The HR Transformation Project will be transitioning the Faculty of Medicine’s HR departments into the new College HR Structure on Monday 4 March. This is the beginning of improving the HR services the Faculty receives, and will involve a change in how faculty staff can access HR services.

You can find details about the changes to the structure of the HR service and key contact points (including for the newly-formed Recruitment HubStaff Hub and the Faculty’s Strategic Support team) on the Faculty of Medicine’s HR support information webpages.

As the transition progresses, both the HR teams and Medicine departments will be adapting to a new way of operating. While I’m confident that service levels should improve quickly following the implementation of this change, we will need your feedback to understand how well it is working. We’ll monitor the HR service provided closely, and will address emerging issues as quickly as possible. To help us continuously improve the service we offer, you can provide feedback on your experience to Claudia Menichetti (for the Staff Hub), Jason Chambers (for the Recruitment Hub) or myself.

Diverse@Imperial week: open call

Diverse@Imperial week is a week-long celebration of Imperial’s diverse community and the talent within it, taking place from 29 Jan – 2 Feb 2018.

During the week, there will be an exhibition in the South Kensington main entrance, showcasing stories from Imperial staff and students, and these stories will be shared online throughout the week as well.

The College Social Media team are doing an open call for staff and students to volunteer to be interviewed so we can write and share these stories. Interested staff/students should email socialmedia@imperial.ac.uk to find out more.

 

 

 

Creating new opportunities for collaboration – pharma speed dating

On 30th January 2015, the breakout space at the Wolfson Education Centre at Imperial’s Hammersmith campus was buzzing with more than 100 dates between 40 Imperial academics from different faculties, and representatives from 7 major Pharma companies.

The first Pharma speed dating @ ICL event was part of the launch program for the Imperial Confidence in Concept funding scheme, and was organized by the Corporate Partnerships team. Jonathan Weber, Vice-Dean of Research and Imperial College AHSC Director said

“The Pharma speed dating event fits with our strategy to strengthen Imperial relationship with the Pharmaceutical industry and to provide young PIs an opportunity to have their first industrial interactions”.

Academics had only 20 minutes to pitch their ideas to company representatives and discuss common interest for collaborations.

Both academics and company representatives enjoyed a day of interesting and open scientific discussions.

Silvia Santos, a starting group leader at the Imperial MRC-Clinical Science Centre said:

It was very informative to understand what a therapeutic target is to Pharma companies and the path to get into having a potential interesting target. But perhaps even more exciting was realising how complementary our approaches in the lab are with some of the companies and start discussions for potential collaborations.”

Following on from the event, the Corporate Partnerships team is busy following up with several companies who have opened opportunities for collaboration with the College.

The Corporate Partnerships team is expecting to run this event again next year. If your company is interested in participating in the next speed dating @ ICL event, please get in touch with us at enterprise-fom@imperial.ac.uk.

Services available at the St. Mary’s FACS Core Facility

St. Mary’s FACS core facility Who we are and what we can do for you:

The St. Mary’s FACS Core Facility is housed on the 3rd floor in the Medical School building. The facility is open to everyone and provides access to high-end FACS analysers, teaching and training, performs a dedicated Cat2 cell sorting service, and houses a MSD and a Luminex200 cytokine and protein analysis platform.

The cell sorting service usually operates during weekdays but we try to accommodate a certain flexibility in terms of start and end time. Your science matters to us and we’ll live up to this claim. Access to all of our analyser platforms can be organised on a 24/7 basis with college security.

As part of our service, the facility provides all necessary reagents (except antibodies and functional dyes) and consumables required to run your samples on perfectly maintained instruments.

Services:

Training is performed in the facility on our own analysers to enable users to operate the systems independently with high confidence. Training is free and we only charge the hourly cost rate of the analyser.

We help you with Panel design using our experience in colour choices in order to get you on track faster and economically more efficient.

Seminars on FACS analysis and sorting can be requested for small groups or departments.

CAT2 Cell sorting is performed in our facility as a full service using our AriaIIIu sorter housed in a CAT2 hood; usually Monday-Friday, but we try to be accommodating if out-of-hours/weekends are necessary.

We offer help on experimental design and data interpretation in order to help you reach your research goals more effectively.

Available cytometers: £25/h recharge

LSRII: 405/488/633nm excitation suite coupled with 6/6/3 detector emission bench

Fortessa A: 355/405/488/561/640nm excitation suite coupled with 2/6/6/4/3 detector emission bench

Fortessa B: 405/488/561/640nm excitation suite coupled with 6/6/4/3 detector emission bench

FlowJo: We provide access to FlowJo on a Mac and a PC for everybody using our cytometers for free as part of general facility usage

Cell sorter: £67/h recharge

AriaIIIu in a Cat2 safety hood: 375 or 405/ 488/561/640nm excitation suite coupled with 2or6/2/4/3 detector emission bench. Sorting onto slides, dishes, multi-well plates (max 384well), Eppendorfs, FACS and Falcon tubes. Nozzles sizes 70, 85, and 100um to enable all kind of cell sorts.

Cytokine and Protein analysis platforms: £30/plate recharge

Meso Scale Discovery MSD platform

Biorad Luminex200 analyse

Find out more at: www1.imperial.ac.uk/nhli/respiratory/respinfect/flow


Dr. Malte Paulsen
Head of the Flow Cytometry Core Facility, St. Mary’s Campus
Faculty of Medicine

Faculty of Medicine Campus Director for the South Kensington Campus

The Faculty of Medicine is pleased to advise Faculty members of the appointment of Professor Zoltan Takats as FoM Campus Director for the South Kensington Campus. Prof Takats took up the role from January 2015. Prof Takats is Professor of Analytical Chemistry within the Department of Surgery and Cancer.  More information about Prof Takats is available on his personal web page at: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/z.takats

As FoM Campus Director for the South Kensington Campus, Prof Takats succeeds Dr Vania Braga, who completed her term of office in the role at the end of 2014. The Faculty would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr Braga for her work in this role over the last 3 years.

A full list of the campus directors for the Faculty is available on the Faculty webpages at: http://www1.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/staff/keypeople

 

New Primary Care Education Research web pages

Primary Care Education ResearchThe Department of Primary Care and Public Health has launched a webpage dedicated to Primary Care Education Research. It includes useful resources to support all sorts of education research projects, from articles about methods and theory to practical guides to the process of education research.  It has three main sections:

  1. Recent primary care education publications and presentations
  2. Guidance on the education research process
  3. A bank of resources; articles, PowerPoints, and links to support people in their education research projects

Visit the website

Contact: Dr Graham Easton, Lead for Primary Care Education Research

 

Ben Broglia
Primary Care Education Administrator
Department of Public Health and Primary Care

Free portrait photography now available for FoM staff

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Faculty of Medicine staff are now able to arrange free portrait photography sessions directly with Andy Pritchard, to take place in his studio at the St Mary’s campus.

If you’d like to make a booking, please email Andy to arrange a time for you to visit him.

This will provide you with high resolution digital portrait photographs, perfect for your PWP, website and personal use.

 

Faculty Education Office update

The Senior Management Team has now moved to Charing Cross.  We are located on the first floor of the Reynold’s Building, so please do come and visit us if you are over there.  We will obviously still spending a fair amount of time at South Kensington.  The majority of the FEO are remaining in their current offices in SAF.

I am also pleased to inform you of two new appointments:

Dr Jo Harris has been appointed Deputy Head of the Undergraduate School. She is a General Practitioner and an Educator. She is currently studying for a doctorate (EdD ) in education at the Institute of Education and her research  interest is in assessment of professionalism of medical students. Jo is currently Director of Curriculum and Assessment, and will continue in that role.

Dr Carolyn Gabriel has taken up the role of Head of Careers Development.  I am sure most of you already know Carolyn, who has been very involved in education for a number of years, and was previously one of our Vertical Theme Heads.  She can be reached on Carolyn.Gabriel@imperial.nhs.uk.  I hope you will support her in developing careers as a theme throughout our undergraduate course.

Miss Susan English
Director of Education Management and Programme Director
Faculty Education Office (Medicine)

Babies and Bumps

New pPicture1arents and parents-to-be are invited to meet other Imperial colleagues in a similar situation for informal networking and mutual support.

HR will be present to answer any questions in relation to maternity and paternity leave. Refreshments will also be provided!

  • Thursday 19th February 3-4.30pm
  • Thursday 19th March 10-11.30am
  • Thursday 16th April 3-4.30pm
  • Thursday 28 May 10-11.30am
  • Thursday 18th June 3-4.30pm

Room 285, Section  of Paediatrics, 2nd Floor, Medical School Building, St Mary’s Campus

For further information please contact Sarah Wilkins

Disability Awareness Month and equality, diversity and disability information resources

The Faculty of Medicine has drawn together the College’s range of information resources on equality, diversity and disability issues into one easy-to-access webpage at http://www1.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/staff/

As part of Disability Awareness Month  which is taking place throughout November and December, the Equality & Diversity team has organised a number of events. Full information is available from the webpage at http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/equality/events

Trudy Breuss
Campus Operations Officer
Faculty of Medicine

NHLI Bring Your Child to Work Day

Following on from last year’s hugely popular pilot event, this year saw the return of the NHLI Bring Your Child to Work Day which is part of the department’s Athena SWAN initiative. Nearly 70 children along with their parents across all five NHLI campuses attended the fun-filled day of science-related activities and a Halloween tea party on the 30th of October. Like last year, tens of volunteers across the department got together to deliver an event that not only included exciting activities for the kids but also gave parents a chance to network with other parents in the department.

141030_imp_nhli_parents_034-editChildren at the Hammersmith campus were put straight to work, doing quizzes and data analysis, whereas at the Brompton campus kids became CSI investigators trying to find out who had kidnapped Monty the Macrophage. The CSI themed activities included comparing fingerprint evidence, separating ink from different pens on chromatography paper, and extracting DNA from a kiwifruit. Other highlights included dissecting a sheep’s heart in the Reach Out Lab, the excellent face painter at the Halloween party (a big hit among the kids!), and Provost James Stirling’s visit.

NHLI would like to thank all attendees and volunteers, and we are already much looking forward to next year’s event!

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Dr Aino-Maija Maskuniitty
Career Development Coordinator
National Heart & Lung Institute
Faculty of Medicine

South Kensington Campus – Centralised booking system for meeting rooms

There is now an online booking system available for Faulty of Medicine meeting rooms in the Sir Alexander Building and Flowers buildings, South Kensington Campus.   The new system has the advantages to gather in a single place meeting rooms with information on location, equipment and capacity.  Importantly,  booking is now done faster and easier by providing room availability updated daily.

Please check in the link:

http://www1.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/staff/meetingrooms/

I would like to thank Faculty of Medicine for support and give special thanks to people that made possible this project: Michele Foot, who coordinated the team, and the help from Taylor Bennie, Jeremy Jones, James Moore, Al McCartney, Andrew Pritchard, Peter Moore and Kylie Glasgow.

We hope you find the new system useful and we would appreciate any comments and suggestions to improve it.

Dr Vania Braga
Reader in Cell-cell Adhesion Signalling
National Heart & Lung Institute
Faculty of Medicine

Anatomy in Year 1 and 2 MBBS/BSc

living anatomy1It has been a busy summer for the Anatomy Department as the 13th floor Anatomy skills lab has been re-fashioned to allow its partition into clinical cubicles to simulate a clinical environment. We are grateful to everyone who contributed to make this happen such a short space of time. Amazingly we managed to finish the job by the start of term. The length of both DR and Living Anatomy practicals have also been increased this year to allow more time for assimilation of material. We look forward to the students feedback on these improvements.
We are also making an iPad version of the course handbooks available with colour illustrations to download, for those students who have their own iPads.The changes to the skills lab will also benefit the GE 1 students.

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Professor Mary Morrell
Sleep & Respiratory Physiology
Faculty of Medicine

New Seminar Rooms at St Mary’s

3Z1A7274aThanks to a recent project (jointly funded by College and from funds generated through the (LKCMedicine) joint initiative in Singapore) the St Mary’s campus can now offer two brand new seminar rooms which are available for booking.

The project consisted of converting an existing office area within the ground floor St Mary’s medical school into 1 large seminar room, with full College AV provision, and seating for 88, and 1 smaller seminar room with seating for 42, and again full college AV spec.

As an additional enhancement, the smaller seminar room can be sub divided to give a small meeting room/Video conferencing facility, and a 26 person seminar room (has movable wall to divide room).

Both rooms can be combined, to house 130 people, and you can stream same content between the rooms, controlled by larger room AV lectern.

The new rooms can be booked in the usual manner, and are called the “Norfolk Place Teaching Suite“, rooms G64 (large), G65A (small meeting and/or Polycom Video Conferencing) and G65B (26 person seminar room). Both G65A+B need to be booked when space for up to 42 people is required.

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Stephen Pullen
Faculty of Medicine Client Co-ordination Manager
FoM Capital Projects

Appointment of new Head of Year 6 of MBBS/BSc programme – Dr Niamh Martin

I am delighted to inform you that Dr Niamh Martin has been appointed Head of Year 6 for the MBBS/BSc programme.  Many of you will know Niamh who is a Consultant Endocrinologist in the IC Trust, and Director of Clinical Studies at the Hammersmith, in addition to being heavily involved in curriculum and assessment across our courses.

Niamh will take up her appointment on 1st September, and I hope you will join with me in congratulating her and giving her your full support.

Miss Susan English
Director of Education Management and Programme Director
Faculty Education Office (Medicine)

New pilot minibus service between South Kensington and Hammersmith/Imperial West

Imperial’s Estates Facilities Team will be trialling a free hourly minibus service next term for staff and students travelling between the South Kensington Campus and the Hammersmith Hospital Campus and Woodlane Studios on the Imperial West Campus. The buses will operate twice an hour between 8.00 and 18:00, Monday to Friday, throughout the Autumn term. The pilot service is being rolled out in response to feedback from Travel Survey publicised in Staff Briefing #88 which captured the views of 1264 members of the Imperial community. Passenger usage from operating this service will be evaluated in combination with the survey results to consider the possibility of permanent provision of a bus service in the future between the sites.

Deborah Evanson
Press and Communications Officer
Imperial College London

The “go-to” App for Imperial College Masters students

Imperial mobile

A Department of Surgery and Cancer administrator Susan Clark teamed up recently with Amir Rana, Junior Software Engineer, Web Development, in the pilot phase of an Imperial Mobile Initiative. They held a training session for administrators to learn how to build an App for their Masters’ programmes using the College licensed software Ombiel. The training provided an opportunity to learn and share the challenges and resolutions of applying different course structures to the App.

The story behind the initiative goes back to March 2013 when Susan wrote to IT. She asked for an App that would incorporate electronic student evaluations and the facility to push out essential course information to students. Saul Batzofin, Infrastructure Programme Manager, replied to Susan’s request with immediate help, first by training using Qualtrics, a recently acquired survey software. The evaluations had already been customised for the Department of Surgery and Cancer courses by Dr Kirsten Dalrymple, Senior Research Fellow and Co-Course lead MEd Surgical Education and they will shortly be accessible via the MEd App. This summer will see Susan working on improvements to the existing surveys and Apps, getting them ready for the 2014 / 2015 cohort. New students will have a 10 minute orientation in the use of the App in Module 1 of their respective Masters Programme, October 2014.

As for the future, the Department of Surgery and Cancer have a new MSc Masters programme pending; a move to a modularised structure that fits well with the surgical trainees career pathway. This year’s collaboration and initiative has paved the way for the use of the App for this new Programme, with the potential to go beyond administrative technology into Mobile learning.

Saul Batzofin emphasized the versatility of their solution; “Imperial Mobile works on mobile phones, tablets and desktops so rather than us telling people where and how to engage with College, we allow them to choose the device and location. So our ambition for Imperial Mobile is to give people relevant information and applications where and when they want it. We are still quite early in our journey but are working hard to add ever more useful functionality to our App.” Susan added that administrators can improve support for learning and teaching with their own collaborative contributions to this journey by engaging with the technology now provided by the College, when changes to timetables and key information need to be pushed out to students, the Go-to App could be invaluable.

Susan Clark
Postgraduate Education Administrator
Department of Surgery and Cancer

Pfizer to visit Imperial College on 24 June

pfizer_logo_detailMichael Skynner (Pfizer) will be in the Commonwealth Building, Hammersmith Campus on 24 June at 11am to 1pm and available for informal ad hoc discussions on any aspect relating to rare disease research and the Rare Disease Consortium (RDC). This is an opportunity for you to simply meet with Michael or to discuss, in a non-confidential and informal setting, ideas for drug discovery projects at any stage of progression that could form the basis for future interactions between Imperial College London and Pfizer. There will be a formal sign-up sheet containing 20 minute bookable slots (please express preferred time slot to Vjera Magdalenic-Moussavi) and in addition there will be an open drop in session between 1pm and 2pm.

About the Rare Disease Consortium agreement (RDC): The agreement is the first of its kind and enables scientists from the GMEC partners; University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, King’s College London, Queen Mary University London, University College London and University of Oxford to work with Pfizer scientists on joint drug discovery programmes. Bringing together the scientific and clinical excellence of the Universities and Academic Health Science Centres in the GMEC cluster with the drug discovery and development skills of Pfizer will accelerate the translation of basic science into drugs for patients.

Dr Vjera Magdalenic-Moussavi
Corporate and Enterprise Partnerships Manager
Faculty of Medicine

Imperial BRC health informatics programme to facilitate research across AHSCs

Professor Dame Sally Davies

The NIHR Imperial BRC is a partner in a new £8M health informatics programme to enable the collaborative sharing of routinely collected NHS data to facilitate more effective clinical research.

The programme, called the NIHR Health Informatics Collaborative (NIHR-HIC), is a challenge from the Chief Medical Officer Professor Dame Sally Davies to the five NHS Trusts in England with the largest Biomedical Research Centres, i.e. Imperial, Oxford, Cambridge, UCLH and GSST, to collaborate and demonstrate how sharing of NHS clinical information held electronically, can facilitate more effective clinical research, and lead to benefits for patients and the public, researchers and NHS staff.

This new initiative was publicly announced recently by Dame Sally. It follows the government’s ‘Plan for Growth’ which details a number of actions designed to promote the UK as a competitive global hub for life sciences.

For Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust this initiative will deliver IT capability to support the sharing and use of NHS data for research in five scientific themes: viral hepatology (led by Graham Cooke and Mark Thursz), ovarian cancer (led by Christina Fotopoulou and Hani Gabra), renal transplantation (led by Adam McLean and David Taube) intensive care medicine (Led by Simon Ashworth and Stephen Brett) and acute coronary syndromes (led by John Chambers and Jamil Mayet). Each pan-BRC theme is led by one of the BRCs and Imperial is leading on Acute Coronary Syndrome.

Alongside these activities, the NIHR-HIC Programme will engage patients, the public and other stakeholders to agree an integrated governance framework that is flexible, proportionate, and serves to protect data confidentiality and uphold patient privacy at all times, while facilitating research.

The NIHR-HIC programme is managed through the AHSC Research Informatics Subcommittee chaired by Professor Paul Elliott, bringing together the ICHNT IT Department, Divisional Directors, the Caldicott Guardian, the Imperial tissue bank and the NHIR HIC theme leaders to develop and oversee the implementation of a comprehensive  IT strategy for research across the AHSC.

NIHR-HIC is the beginning of the informatics infrastructure that will be required to deliver the MedCity research linkage across the five AHSCs in Southern England.  It is anticipated the new research informatics infrastructure will go live in September 2014.

 

For more information contact:

Roger Tatoud, PhD.
Senior Programme Manager
Imperial College London
St Mary’s Campus – The Bays, 2nd Entrance
South Wharf Road
London W2 1NY UK
r.tatoud@imperial.ac.uk 020 3312 2560

Staff Photoshoot – Tuesday 6 May 2014

2265908696_eafe978f5d_zThe College is providing a free photo opportunity to any member of staff who would like to have a professional portrait taken. This is a fantastic chance to quickly gain a properly lit portrait picture, which can be used on your professional web page and elsewhere.

Many of the slots are now full, however  there are some still available at St Mary’s during the afternoon. Complete this online form to book your place.

Changes Within the Campus Safety Manager Support Team

  • Sukwinder Singh faces all buildings on the Hammersmith campus other than the Commonwealth and Burlington Danes Buildings.
  • Heather Combe will (following a short handover period from Sukwinder Singh) face the Charing Cross Campus and both the Commonwealth and Burlington Danes Buildings at Hammersmith Campus.
  • Diane Thomason has joined us and has taken over as Campus Safety Manager for both the  St Mary’s and NWPH Campuses.
  • Helga Koch remains Campus Safety Manager covering South Kensington, the Royal Brompton, Chelsea & Westminster and Harefield Hospital Campuses.

In addition, Sally Campbell has been appointed as the new Faculty Centre Safety and Compliance Manager and is tasked with monitoring the staff compliance with Faculty and College H&S Policies. Sally will also be  advising the CBS staff on their Health and Safety  arrangements.

We are now entering the next phase of the Lone Working Policy implementation and have introduced a compliance monitoring programme. This is  based on lists that are obtained from Security of those who have accessed College operated premises out of hours. These will then be compared with the lone working authorisations forms registered on the Faculty database. Details of those staff members who have accessed premises but without authorisation will be sent to the Department for action i.e. the Department will be asked to ensure that all those working out of hours are authorised to do so, in line with Faculty Lone Working Policy. Checks will be made within a 3 week period to ensure that this has been complied with.

Wendy Gould
Deputy Faculty Operating Officer and Programme Director for Faculty Operations
Faculty of Medicine

Cafe Communique

Passionate about global health? Are you interested in writing?

Café Communique  is a recently founded global health magazine with the aim of bringing together science, epidemiology, humanities, policy and economics to a dynamic online platform. We are endorsed by Professor Helen Ward of Imperial College London’s School of Public Health and Professor Azeem Majeed of the WHO Collaborating Centre.

We want to get more people talking about global health; be it doctor, student or member of the public, in the hopes of delivering a greater understanding and appreciation. Our aim is to strip down the ‘white coat’ and reintroduce the definition of global health as a more entertaining, engaging issue within our medium. More importantly we strongly believe in establishing a magazine with good quality journalism that focuses on key global health issues with contributions from authorities in the subject as well as personal stories to highlight the human-interest aspect of medicine and provoke discussion.

We are currently looking to recruit a team of in-house writers to write about a variety of topics within the realm of global health. If you are interested in joining our team, please send a short cover letter no longer than 200 words to cafecommunique@gmail.com on your interests in global health, any previous writing experience (but not essential) and what you could bring to the team by 1st February. Thank you, we look forward to hearing from you!

The Café Communique Team

Visit us at http://cafecommunique.org/