L’Oreal is offering a fellowship aimed at early career female postdocs with less than 10 years postdoctoral experience (discounting career breaks) who do not hold a permanent academic post. Applications and more information can be found at https://www.womeninscience.co.uk/apply
Professor Jeremy Nicholson is giving the annual London Clinic Lecture 2016 entitled Developing new systems medicine technologies and approaches to meet healthcare challenges in a changing world at the Royal on Tuesday 16th February at 5.45pm Society of Medicine, London.
The honour of your company is requested at the fourth annual School of Public Health Athena SWAN Lecture on the 2nd of March 2016, followed by a drinks reception.
We are delighted to be welcoming Dr Fiona Godlee FRCP, Editor in Chief of the British Medical Journal to give an Athena SWAN Lecture entitled “An Editor’s View”
Date: Wednesday 2nd March 2016 – 16:30 – 17:30 pm
Location: G34 Lecture Theatre, Sir Alexander Fleming Building, South Kensington Campus
To register, please follow this link:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/school-of-public-health-athena-swan-lecture-tickets-21083952670
Students enrolled on one of Imperials evening classes entitled Introduction to Science (ItS) course visited the main analytical facility at South Kensington last week to hear how and why researchers in Computational Systems Medicine use high-resolution spectroscopic techniques in their research. The Introduction to Science course is one of the many evening classes run at Imperial by the Centre for Languages, Culture and Communication, and attracts a range of non-specialist adult learners with a keen interest in science.
Lecturer Dr Toby Athersuch gave the class a short tutorial on the principles of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, mass spectrometry and chromatography, and how these can be used to interrogate complex biofluids and understand their composition. Along with CSM PhD students Liza Selley and Torben Kimhofer, the enthusiastic visitors were given a flavour for how these analytical platforms are used in our basic scientific research, as well as some clinical and epidemiological applications.
The discussions touched on several key areas including approaches for structural elucidation of unknown compounds, current applications for real-time monitoring in surgery, and the challenge of analysing the megavariate dataset they generate. Course Leader, Dr David Stokes said that feedback on the evening had been very positive:
“The visit was great, the class was really inspired and a lot of the rest of the class was spent talking through what we’d seen …. we all really enjoyed it (myself included!). It was the best visit yet!”
For more information, visit: www.imperial.ac.uk/evening-classes
Congratulations to Prof Darzi, who has been awarded an honorary degree by the University of York.
Congratulations to Professor Jeremy Nicholson who has been named a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher on the official 2015 list.
Thomson Reuters recognises and supports excellence in the scholarly community, analysing citation data over an 11-year period using Thomson Reuters Web of ScienceTM and InCitesTM to identify some of the best and brightest scientific minds.
Prof Nicholson was selected as a Highly Cited Researcher due to the number of citations his work has received from fellow researchers, which have identified his contributions as being among the most valuable and significant in the field of Pharmacology & Toxicology.
The Department of Surgery and Cancer hosted their first Athena SWAN Lecture on the 2nd December 2015 with guest speaker Ms Clare Marx, first female President of the Royal College of Surgeons.
Ms Marx gave an inspirational lecture entitled All changed, changed utterly, providing a fascinating insight into the history of women in surgery and her career journey as a surgeon, as the first female trauma and orthopaedic surgeon trainee in London in 1981, then the first female surgeon in East Anglia in 1993. She also spoke of the work the Royal College of Surgeons is doing with addressing the lack of female surgeons nationally, including the development of a new curriculum which will impact on both undergraduate and postgraduate training.
The lecture attracted a diverse audience, including junior doctors, 6th form students as well as Imperial staff and members of the public, which resulted in a lively debate following on from topics raised in the lecture and provided a fantastic platform for the junior medics and students to ask questions relevant to their concerns.
Ms Marx highlighted the need for leadership from the top and the need for mentoring and support if we are to enhance gender equality of women in surgery and across the board. This reinforced the importance of all the work the Department is doing with Athena SWAN initiatives to support our staff.
The lecture has now enabled the Department to forge links with the Royal College of Surgeons, which will be hugely beneficial with developing our plans to encourage and support women to pursue surgery as a career.
Watch Ms Marx’s Lecture: All changed, changed utterly.
Dr Claire Fletcher, of the Androgen Signalling Laboratory, Division of Cancer, has been awarded a prestigious Young Investigator Award by the Prostate Cancer Foundation of the USA. The stated aim of the PCF in creating these awards, which are very rarely awarded outside of the US, is “to identify a cohort of future research leaders who will keep the field of prostate cancer research vibrant with new ideas.”
Claire will be using the award to pursue her innovative translational research programme at Imperial College, mentored both by Professor Charlotte Bevan in her host laboratory and also by Prof Johann de Bono at the Institute of Cancer Research, cementing and developing the collaboration between the 2 laboratories and indeed institutes. Her work focuses on identification of microRNA drivers of therapy resistance in prostate cancer, with the aim of both increasing therapy options and also of providing biomarkers to enable effective patient stratification.
On Friday 22 January the Learning and Development Centre is hosting a registration session for technicians who are interested in pursuing the RSciTech. This will be an informal networking and workshop session open to all technicians at the College, with members of professional bodies on hand to answer questions.
For further information and to book a place, please contact Jenny Davies, Learning and Development Administrator.
The Learning and Development Centre have a wide range of opportunities and courses on offer so click on the above graphic to find out more on:
Professor Guang-Zhong Yang has been appointed Editor of Science Robotics, the latest offering from Science publisher, AAAS. The journal, which launches this year, will publish cutting-edge research into robotics.
Professor Yang is Director of the Hamlyn Centre, where he develops innovative medical technology using cutting-edge robotics, imaging and sensing. His team’s discoveries have enabled surgeons to utilise ultra-flexible and affordable robotic instruments, including snake robots and micro-surgical robots that help to treat patients with unprecedented accuracy during operations.
James Alexander, a clinical research Fellow supervised by James Kinross and Zoltan Takats has been awarded the SAGES Foundation Gerald Marks Rectal Cancer Award. He will present his results at the 10th Annual SAGES Education and Research Foundation Awards Lunch in March 2016, which celebrates and honors distinguished leaders in minimally invasive surgery. Proceeds benefit the SAGES Foundation and its mission to advance endoscopic laparoscopic and emerging minimal access surgical methods and patient care.
Winning Abstract Title: A novel methodology for in vivo endoscopic phenotyping of colorectal cancer based on real time analysis of the mucosal lipidome: A prospective observational study of the iknife.
Congratulations go to Professor Darzi upon his recent admission to the United Kingdom’s Order of Merit by Her Majesty The Queen in the 2016 New Year’s Honour List.
Professor Darzi has been recognised for his outstanding contributions to healthcare and will join an august group – former members include Florence Nightingale and Nelson Mandela. Membership of the Order is limited at any given time to 24 members who have each been recognised by the reigning Head of State for exceptional meritorious services towards advancement of the arts, learning, literature and science.
It is a great reflection on his work and so our congratulations again, on this outstanding honour.
Read more on the Imperial new years honours story.
Interesting article in Nature by Astronomer Meg Urry, reflecting on a turbulent year for women in science:
Science and gender: Scientists must work harder on equality