Month: September 2017

New Division for the Department of Surgery and Cancer

Following consultation with Professor Elaine Holmes, Professor Mark Thursz and other senior colleagues in the Faculty of Medicine, Surgery and Cancer will be forming a new “Division of Integrative Systems Medicine and Digestive Disease” by merging the Divisions of Computational and Systems Medicine and Digestive Diseases.

To parallel similar structures that are being implemented in the Division of Cancer, Professor Elaine Holmes will be the Head of Division and Science Director and Professor Mark Thursz will be the Clinical Director of the new Division.

As with the other Divisions in the Department, the new organisation will have both a science and a clinical core of activities. The drivers for this are both strategic and to do with administrative efficiency. The new Division will offer a more stable research environment, increased critical mass and enhanced opportunity for cross-talk between research groups. It also increases the possibilities of longer-term alignments and collaborations more widely across the Faculty.   From an operational point of view there will be few changes in the short term and current activities will be maintained.

The merge will take place commencing in October 2017.

Prize for Pioneering New Technique in Neuro-monitoring During Surgery

Congratulations to Dr Pav Sarai (PhD student in Paul Strutton’s Lab) who won first prize for his talk on developing magnetic brain stimulation for neuro-monitoring during vascular surgery, at the recent Vascular Anaesthesia Society of Great Britain and Ireland. This pilot work (part of an MRes in Experimental Neuroscience by student Charlotte Luff) on healthy subjects, paves the way for exploration of this technique during complex aortic aneurysm surgery, where there is a risk of paralysis.