Blog posts

Departmental news round up

Professor Jeremy Nicholson:
• has been appointed a Visiting Professor at the University of New South Wales
• delivered a lecture: Systems medicine: facing personalised and public healthcare: challenges in a changing and dangerous world – Institute of Foundational Medicine, Austin Texas, 28 – 30 May

Professor Bob Brown and Dr. Luca Magnani are part of an ambitious European consortium working on breast cancer drug resistance and were awarded 2 EU funded PhD positions

Professor Vivette Glover is giving the Victor Horsley Lecture at the annual meeting of the BMA on “Prenatal mental health- how supporting the mother can have long term benefits for the child.”

Dr Hector Keun just took part in a panel debate on “How life affects your genes” (the exposome and epigenetics) at the Cheltenham Science Festival last Weds, together with Prof Frank Kelly (Kings) and chaired by Vivienne Parry (OBE, and MRC Board)

Dr Sadaf Ghaem-Maghami has been appointed as the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

A Scientific Afternoon, chaired by Prof Phil Bennett, was held on 1st June to mark the retirement of Professor Malcolm Parker.

Dr Luca Magnani, JRF working with Prof Charles Coombes, was invited for a talk at the prestigious Gordon Conference “Hormone-Dependent Cancers” http://www.grc.org/programs.aspx?id=13373

Dr. Monica Faronato won the best poster award at the BSCB Spring Meeting in Warwick with her work on DMXL2 (paper published 2 weeks ago)

Scientists involved in Breast Cancer research met with breast cancer patients at an “open-house” event organised by Kelly Gleason. The event was a great success and provided scientists and patients with an opportunity to engage directly and further insight into translational research and patient benefit.

Ian Flindall’s abstract Structured cues or modafinil for fatigue amelioration in clinicians ? A double blind randomised controlled trial of critical clinical information recall in fatigued clinicians has been accepted for an oral presentation in the 2015 Scientific Forum program and has been selected for an Excellence in Research Award for the category of Education.

Dr Steve Brett had a successful publication of a project which involved a collaboration between the Faculties of Medicine, Engineering and industry.

Dame Mary Archer visited CSM and the new Data Visualisation Suite – 11th June 2015.

Professor Ara Darzi was invited to contribute a blog to the Royal College of Surgeons’ recently launched blog site.  His blog on ‘Surgery and the Future of the NHS’ went live on their website on the 1st June.

IGHI news round up

  • IGHI logoLord Darzi and the IGHI hosted a visit by senior Burmese health policy advisors to provide them with an opportunity to capture new ideas and priorities in healthcare policy, as well as international expertise as they expand and develop Burma’s future healthcare agenda.
  • Led by Lord Darzi, the IGHI hosted a visit by the Kuwaiti Assistant Undersecretary of State for Health to follow up on Kuwait’s renewed commitment to progress their interest in a Simulation Centre collaboration with Imperial.
  • The IGHI hosted a visit by Ambassador Tania Dussey-Cavassini, Vice-Director General of the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health and Swiss Ambassador for Global Health, who was accompanied by Ms Manuela Ocana, Scientific Advisor, Biosafety and Human Genetics. Ambassador Dussey-Cavassini has a special interest in the IGHI’s work and requested a visit to discuss the Institute’s current priorities as well as its longer term strategic work plan.
  • The first Sowerby Interpretive Review ‘Nothing about me without me’ by Erik Mayer and Sagar Jilkar has been accepted and published in the ‘Journal of Medical Internet Research’ (JMIR).
  • Effectiveness of interventions to improve patient handover in surgery: A systematic review [Epub ahead of print] on 18 May 2015 in Surgery pii: S0039-6060(15)00211-1. doi: 10.1016/j.surg.2015.02.017. by Pucher PH, Johnston MJ, Aggarwal R, Arora S, Darzi A
  • Raising the Alarm: A Cross-Sectional Study Exploring the Factors Affecting Patients’ Willingness to Escalate Care on Surgical Wards [Epub ahead of print] on 27 May 2015 in World J Surg. 2015 by Johnston MJ, Davis RE, Arora S, King D, Reissis Y, Darzi A.
  • Professor David Meltzer – Director of the Center for Health and the Social Sciences, and Chair of the Committee on Clinical and Translational Science at The University of Chicago presented the second session in LHSN’s Safer Care Accelerator webinar series on 21st May. He discussed the rationale for and design of the Comprehensive Care Physician model – a program designed to improve care coordination by having physicians provide both inpatient and outpatient care to patients at high risk of hospitalization. He also reported on the progress of the study of the model, supported by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. Eight LHSN organisations were in attendance.
  • Colin Bicknell gave invited lecture at the Royal Society of Medicine Presidents’ Day titled ‘Error evaluation in Surgery’ 4 June 2015.Gianluca Fontana represented the Centre for Health Policy in a meeting with a governmental delegation from the state of Rajasthan in India on 19th May at the UK India Business Council.
  • LHSN’s 15 member organisations began work on the Patient Safety Information Scorecard – a project designed to provide a comparative view of what information is used for patient safety and how effectively this information is used across healthcare systems. Two member systems completed the initial scorecard questionnaire, with others aiming to do so by the end of June.

Mentoring update

MentoringThe Surgery and Cancer mentoring scheme is now well underway but we still need to get more mentors signed up across all specialties and at all levels. If you would be interested in becoming a mentor the following training workshops are available:

  • Thursday 9th July – 1-4 – South Kensington
  • Tuesday 11th August – 10-1 – Hammersmith

For more information and to book on please see the Surgery and Cancer mentoring webpages. You will also find details there on getting yourself a mentor.

 

Clinical research fellow wins again

Venous
Congratulations to Sarah Onida (Clinical Research Fellow in Vascular Surgery) who after winning the first prize at the 6th Venous Symposium in April has now won the Pump Priming Grant at the Royal Society of Medicine Venous Forum Annual Spring Meeting.

The prize gives a grant of £5000 to allow a researcher to get preliminary data to support research in venous disease/phlebology. It is an annual award granted by the Royal Society of Medicine to a single trainee each year and is open to vascular trainee specialists under 40 years of age. The results of the research must then be presented at the next RSM annual spring meeting.

PhD students win travel award funding

Three STRATiGRAD PhD students have been awarded with travel funding, allowing them to attend and take part in various conferences to share their work.

Luisa Doria has been awarded a travel grant from the Imperial College Trust General Fund. She will be using this grant to attend the 11th Annual International Conference of the Metabolomics Society, after being accepted for a long oral presentation, entitled: “A systems biology approach for the classification of ovarian cancer specimens by desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry” in the session provisionally titled “Systems biology of cancer metabolism”. The title of the paper will be: A systems biology approach for the classification of ovarian cancer specimens by desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry.

Jocelyn  Tillner has been awarded three travel grants from the ASMS, British Society for Mass Spectrometry and Imperial College Trust General Fund. Jocelyn will be attending the Annual conference of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry in St Louis, Missouri, to present a poster on “Cross-platform applicability of DESI-MSI – effect of ion source setups and atmospheric pressure interfaces on performance and information recovery”.

Nazanin Zounemat Kermani has also been awarded grants to attend talks for both the Metabolomics and ASMS 2015 conferences.

Prof Zoltan Takats talks to BBC about iKnife

Zoltan

Professor Zoltan Takats was on the BBC news last night speaking about the application of the iKnife in surgery. The news story follows a patient having brain surgery and looks at how the device could help neurosurgeons to identify cancerous brain tumours in real time. It is hoped that this application could allow tumours to be removed more precisely and reduce the risk of them coming back.

Click on the image above to watch the story.

Prof Atkin elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences

Congratulations to Professor Wendy Atkin who is one of five Imperial researchers recognised for their work in medical science by election to the Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

icimages (1)Wendy Atkin is Professor of Gastrointestinal Epidemiology in the Department. Her research focuses on identifying and testing methods for the early diagnosis of bowel cancer, pathways for the development of the disease, and surveillance of people at increased risk, with the ultimate aim of reducing bowel cancer incidence of and mortality. Her research provided the evidence for a new national bowel screening programme, which is currently being rolled out across England.

“I am delighted and honoured to be awarded this prestigious Fellowship. It is a tribute to the dedication and hard work of current and past colleagues, to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude. I look forward to joining other Fellows in furthering the goals of the Academy in nurturing and developing the next generation of medical scientists. It will also provide a fertile environment to develop future collaborations.”

STRATiGRAD PhD students win funding for symposium two years running

StratiFran Jackson and Nancy Georgakopoulou, two STRATiGRAD PhD students in CSM have been awarded funds by the Imperial College Graduate School through their Cohort Building Activity Funding Scheme to travel to Cork to attend a symposium.

The symposium is entitled ‘Mining Microbes for Mankind’; University College Cork/Imperial College London Joint Postgraduate Symposium and will be focussing on gut microbiome research using molecular biology and multi-omics technologies.

The event will be held at the end of September in Cork this year, and will be the second annual workshop and networking event between STRATiGRAD cohort Imperial College London (ICL) and microbiome researchers from University College Cork (UCC). 20 postgraduate students from each University will partake in the 3 day symposium which will involve lectures, student oral presentations, training workshops and round table discussions on the role of the microbiota in gastrointestinal health.

Both centres are interested in the interaction of the gut microbiome and host health, this networking event is to integrate knowledge and training between our centres. By interacting at a postgraduate level, it will promote awareness in students from both parties and open up the opportunity for future, and hopefully, lasting collaborations.

Phenomics & Phenomic Network Symposium a huge success

Symposium PhenomeThe Division of Computational and Systems Medicine (home to the MRC-NIHR National Phenome Centre) hosted a one-day symposium under the title of “Phenomics and Phenomic Networks” on the 30th April 2015 at the South Kensington Campus.

The event proved so popular that registration to attend had to close early and on the back of the symposiums phenomenal success and feedback from the attendees, it was decided that it would now become an annual event.

The purpose was to bring together like-minded individuals to facilitate deeper integration of phenomics into the wider ‘omics community, and develop a Phenomic Network in the UK, bringing together an audience in excess of 100 researchers from the UK and Europe with speakers such as Prof Dame Carol Robinson (University of Oxford), Prof Tony Whetton (University of Manchester), Dr Christoph Steinbeck (European Bioinformatics Institute), Prof Mark Viant (University of Birmingham), Dr Julian Griffin (University of Cambridge) and the Centre’s Director Prof Jeremy Nicholson (Imperial College London).

For updates on future events please follow the National Phenome Centre on Twitter or Facebook.

Meet our scholars

Two of our current masters students who won scholarships last year have been featured on the Imperial Dean’s Masters Scholarships Meet our scholars! page. 

meiranabellona
Mei Ran Abellona U is currently doing an MRes in Biomedical research (Microbiome in health and disease stream) and after completing this she is considering staying on with the Department to pursue a PhD degree.

emilybarnes
Emily Barnes is on the MRes in Cancer Biology and after finishing this is going to stay on with the Department and complete a 4 year year PhD in cancer research.

Annual Athena Lecture

Dame

Towards a Silent Aircraft

 

Professor Dame Ann Dowling
President of the Royal Academy of Engineering and
Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of Cambridge

Date: Wednesday 17 June
Time: 12.30 Lunch reception with lecture to follow at 13.30
Venue: G34 Sir Alexander Fleming building, South Kensington Campus

RSVP to Amna Siddiq
Please forward this invitation to any colleagues who may be interested in attending.

Abstract

In her lecture ‘Towards a Silent Aircraft’ Professor Dowling will describe her career fusing engineering research with industrial practice, and share insights into aircraft noise, which has been a recurring focus of her work. Although aircraft noise has reduced considerably since the introduction of high speed jet transport, it is still a major societal concern.

Professor Dowling will discuss what generates noise in modern civil aircraft and ways in which noise is being reduced in the development of next-generation aircraft. She will consider whether a radical re-think of aircraft configuration, integrating many technologies into the design, could in the long term result in substantial noise reductions combined with a reduced fuel burn.

Biography

Professor Dame Ann Dowling is President of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cambridge, where she was Head of the Department of Engineering from 2009 to 2014 and ran the University Gas Turbine Partnership with Rolls-Royce from 2001 to 2014. She has served on a number industry and government advisory committees and is currently a non-executive director of BP plc, a non-executive member of the Board of the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and a member of the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology.

Professor Dowling’s research focuses on efficient, low emission combustion for aero and industrial gas turbines and low noise vehicles, especially aircraft and cars.

 

Headache Research Lab Win Research Excellence Award

icimages
Congratulations to the headache research group, led by Dr Anna Andreou, who have been awarded the Headache Research Excellence Tournament Award for their research on non-paralytic botulinum agents in migraine during the International Headache Congress. The research has been presented by the PhD student Jose Torres Perez.

Dr Anna Andreou is the PI of the Headache Research Lab within the Section of Anaesthetics, Pain Medicine and Intensive Care. Current research interests of the lab include investigating the involvement of cortical and subcortical pathways in primary headaches, how potential therapeutics and neuromodulation approaches may interfere with such networks, identify biomarkers of migraine and improve and develop new disease models.

CSM update

Professor Jeremy Nicholson

  • Gave a lecture on Metabolic phenotyping in stratified medicine and public healthcare at the Swedish metabolomics centre and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala Sweden, 23 – 24 April 2015
  • Gave the keynote speech at the 2015 Beijing Fragrant Hill Conference on International Phenome Research, Beijing, China 4-6 May 2015
  • Hosted a symposium on PHENOMICS AND PHENOME NETWORKS, Imperial College London, 30 April 2015

Professor Elaine Holmes

  • Has been honoured with the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Interdisciplinary Award for 2015
  • Gave a plenary lecture at the 2015 SECIM Workshop in Gainesville, Florida, 11-14 May 2015

Professor Naomi Chayen

  • Gave a lecture entitled ‘Design and Application of Nanoporous Materials for Protein Crystallization at The London Centre of Nanotechnology on 20 April 2015

News from The Centre for Health Policy

IGHI logoPublications/media coverage:

  • ‘The uses of smartphones and tablet devices in surgery: A systematic review of the literature’ published in SURGERY: Mobasheri M, Johnston M, Syed U, King D, Darzi A.

What Is Obesity? Metabolic Signatures Offer New Comprehensive View

obesity-metabolites1Professor Jeremy Nicholson and his team’s latest science translational medicine paper looking into obesity hit the press last week. The paper entitled What Is Obesity? Metabolic Signatures Offer New Comprehensive View is now the paper of the week in the National Institute of Health directors blog, which was published today.