Professor 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.
Congratulations to Professor Elaine Holmes who has been awarded the 2015 Interdisciplinary Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry for outstanding contributions to metabolic phenotyping and systems biology, leading to novel biomarkers and mechanistic insights into toxicity and disease.
The award comes with a prize of £5000, a medal which will be presented at the RSC Prizes Presentation evening in November in Manchester, as well as a lectureship to deliver lecturers at numerous UK universities.
The Department is preparing its application for an Athena SWAN Silver Award after successfully receiving the Bronze in September 2014.
We’ve put together a survey which aims to understand how male and female staff experience the working environment and to identify areas where improvements may be needed, to ensure equality of opportunity.
The survey is designed for ALL staff in the Department to take, including academic staff (clinical and non-clinical), all admin, support staff and technical support staff, fellows, postdoctoral staff and PhD/MD(Res) students and we would very much appreciate your participation.
The Survey consists of multiple choice questions and should take you approximately 10 minutes to complete. Your participation in this survey will play a huge role in our Silver application, which in turn assists us in making improvements within the Department, benefiting everyone who works in Surgery and Cancer.
We would be very grateful if you would take the time to complete the survey by FRIDAY, 29th MAY and we look forward to working with you, through Focus Groups (to be held in early June) and wider discussions to review the outcomes and consider appropriate ways forward.
Surgery and Cancer were doing their bit at the Imperial College Festival this weekend and getting involved with everything going on.
The Institute of Global Health Innovation were there with a stand called “Taking mental health into your own 
hands” which featured the Psychiatrist’s Couch of the Future and an over sized chair. Computational Systems medicine had a stand on “What’s in your pee” looking at how urine can help doctors find out how well your body is working.
The Combination Dance Co were there to raise awareness about Cancer research UK with their dancing cell components all across the campus over the weekend. Members of the Cancer team were hosting a stand called Tackling tough tumours looking at why some tumours become resistant to treatment and how scientists tackle this growing problem, with their very own #cellfie station to see a cancer up close.
Prof Gerry Thomas gave a lecture entitled “Doctors, what do you want to do with my genes” and was later spotted at the talkeoke table taking part in discussions on “What do you think about nuclear energy?”
Prof Roger Kneebone gave a talk with Prof Aaron Williamon on “Solving stage fright in virtual reality“.
Lata Govada, Sean Kassen, Ahmad Bin Razmi and Naomi Chayen had a stand entitled ‘Making Complexity Crystal Clear’, highlighting the importance of protein crystals and their role in the facilitation of drug design. With the aid of the mRNA codon chart on display, the visitors were able to synthesise amino acids, the building blocks of proteins from sweeties. People of all ages and walks of life enthusiastically participated in ‘kebabing’ the 3 different coloured sweets (the nucleotide triplets) on cocktail sticks, after which they were allowed to take them away to eat.
Armed with the information of how proteins are made they then moved on to the second part of the booth to set up protein crystallization experiments with real protein and watched the crystals grow under the microscope. The young and old alike were pleased to see the crystal formation from their experiments. A surprised adult visitor stated, ‘I have a fair understanding of mineral crystals and their importance but had no clue that Protein Crystals contained such a wealth of information!’ On the other hand a young 9 year old visitor who aspires to be a doctor exclaimed ‘Wow, now I understand why we use the phrase Crystal Clear! ‘
To see more from the Festival check out #impfest or the College news story.
The Surgery and Cancer mentor scheme is now underway and we are organising a lunchtime session for active mentors to come and talk with each other about mentoring and any challenges they are experiencing. The objective of this session is to support the growing community of mentors across the FoM and to encourage, strengthen and share good practice across the schemes.
The session will take place at Hammersmith on Wednesday the 8th of July from 12:30 – 14:00.
Lunch will be provided so if you would like to attend please contact Kathryn Johnson
Remember if you would like to learn more about the Surgery and Cancer mentor scheme, sign up to become or get a mentor then please see the mentoring pages or sign up to attend one of the up coming workshops detailed below:
Imperial Festival, Saturday 9 and 10 May 2015
Saturday 9 May at 3pm
Sunday 10 May, 12.30pm & 2pm
Imperial College, Exhibition Road • London SW7 2AZ
Combination Dance Company presents REcode, a dance work explaining cutting edge medical research into cancer treatment. Created with support from Imperial College London, the dancers transform molecular biology into entertaining dance, whilst also reflecting the experiences of those who have been treated. The scientific content is based upon, and was developed with support from Professor Michael Seckl and Ana Costa-Pereira at Imperial College London and their team of leading researchers.
Whilst conveying complex science simply through movement, REcode reflects upon the importance of ongoing improvements in different types of cancer treatment and prognosis to those affected and the hope they each hold.
REcode is choreographed by Artistic Director, Anne-Marie Smalldon with a cast of outstanding dancers trained at British conservatoires including London Contemporary Dance School and the Northern School of Contemporary Dance plus two artists from Team ProRank the UK’S leading martial arts performance team bringing a unique combination of martial arts, dance and weaponry.
Combination Dance Company is committed to contributing to public health agendas through dance, offering performances and dance activities that aim to inspire and encourage participation. In 2008 Combination Dance were recognised by the Mayor of London with a health award for their outstanding partnership with the Richmond-upon-Thames local authority and their commitment to improving public health.
REcode is being presented at other public events in the summer including a free event at The National Physical Laboratory in Teddington on July 17. This project has been supported by Arts Council England through Grants for The Arts.
Further performances and information can be found at
Website www.combinationdance.co.uk
Facebook www.facebook.com/combinationdance
Twitter @CombinationDC #REcodedance #impfest
All welcome!
Inaugural Athena SWAN Networking Event
4 pm, Wednesday 29th April 2015
Seminar Room, IRDB
Hammersmith Hospital
How to embrace rest and balance when you have too much to do: Key traps and how to avoid them
Dr. Magdalena Bak-Maier
Organisational Development Consultant & Talent Coach, Imperial College London
Followed by wine and nibbles
Prof Jeremy Nicholson was the team leader from Imperial College on a study to investigate the possible roles of diet and gut bacteria.
An international team including scientists from the University of Pittsburgh and Imperial College London carried out a study with a group of 20 African American volunteers and another group of 20 participants from rural South Africa. The two groups swapped diets under tightly controlled conditions for two weeks.
Read more on this via the coverage below and the BBC World Service interview which features Prof Nicholson (32 minutes in).
Guardian: Bowel cancer risk may be reduced by rural African diet, study finds
Imperial: Diet swap has dramatic effects on colon cancer risk for Americans and Africans
BBC: Diet swap experiment reveals junk food’s harm to gut
Any staff members who would like to have their portrait photograph taken are invited to sign up for a free photoshoot taking place on the 5th of May at the South Kensington Campus for their professional web page or other purposes.
Further information on upcoming shoots at other campuses can be found here.
Mental Health Awareness Week was created by the Mental Health Foundation and is celebrated every year from the 11th – 17th May. The aim is to get the public to talk more openly about the issues that surround mental health and to raise awareness of the issues people face. It is also a time to get people thinking about their own mental wellbeing.
This year the theme is Mindfulness, which is all about focusing on the here and now; to forget about the past or worrying about the future, and only concentrate on what is happening in the moment.
To celebrate MHAW this year, the Equality & Diversity Unit alongside the Learning & Development Centre, Occupational Health, and Ethos have put together a range of activities, training, and events.
During this week we also encourage you to wear green to support our campaign and take part in our twitter competition where we ask you to tweet us at Imperial_LDC a photo of your lunch break – the most creative lunch break will win a prize. To find out more about our #reclaim your lunch Twitter competition for Mental Health Awareness Week visit our webpage.
We will keep you updated with tweets, emails, newsletters and posters with ways you can get involved in Mental Health Awareness week.
Please see the poster for a quick guide to what we have running that week and see the webpage for more information and bookings.
Please see below three recent articles relating to gender in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) careers:
Imperial staff came together to mark milestone anniversaries at the College’s annual Long Server celebrations.
Staff who had reached 20, 25 and 30 years of service in 2014 gathered at a drinks reception on Tuesday 14 April and those marking 35 and 40 years with Imperial attended a formal dinner on the 20th April.
Surgery and Cancer’s very own Departmental Manager Julia Anderson was there to join in the festivities and celebrate her 40 years at Imperial and features in the College news story of the event.
Congratulations to Sarah Onida (Clinical Research Fellow working within Vascular Surgery) who won first prize for her poster entitled ‘Analysis of Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) in Varicose Veins Surgery’, at the 6th Venous Symposium which took place in New York this month.
Please see two events happening with the Imperial Science Cafe:
On Friday the 17th of April, the Human Anatomy Unit hosted an outreach event for A level biology teachers, in conjunction with the Anatomical Society and the Society of Biology. Twenty five teachers from England and Wales attended the day long course designed to give a practical overview of human anatomy to underpin their biology teaching.
Feedback from the participants was excellent and a similar event is now likely to take place annually.
More information on the Human Anatomy Unit can be found here.