Blog posts

Macmillan Coffee Morning by National Centre for Mesothelioma Research

Catch up with your colleagues over a cuppa, enjoy some cake – and the money raised at the Coffee Morning will be donated to Macmillan to support people facing cancer.

Where

National Heart and Lung Institute
Guy Scadding Building
Royal Brompton Campus
Dovehouse Street
London
SW3 6LY

Host

Maija Maskuniitty

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Invitation to FABRICELL Centre Launch

Staff and researchers within the Faculty of Medicine are invited to the launch of FABRICELL, a new joint research centre between Imperial College London and King’s College London.

8 September, 2-5:30pm, Sir Alexander Fleming Building, South Kensington Campus

Guest Speakers:

Professor Jack Szostak, Nobel Prize Medicine 2009,  Harvard Medical School

Professor Lee Cronin, Regius Professor of Chemistry, University of Glasgow

Professor Patricia Bassereau, Institut Curie, Paris

To attend (ticket only event) please register for free on Eventrbrite.

For further information, please contact Prof Oscar Ces

 

Medicine Teaching Awards 2017


Since 2003, Imperial College School of Medicine, together with Imperial College School of Medicine Student’s Union, have held an annual awards programme recognising the valued contributions of clinical teachers and support staff in delivering its undergraduate medicine course.

Teaching was recognized with the following awards:

  • Teaching Excellence Award – Clinical Teachers
  • Teaching Excellence Award – Non-Clinical Teachers
  • Teaching Fellow Teaching Excellence Award
  • Distinguished Teacher Award
  • Supporting the Student Experience Award
  • Associate Dean’s Award

Find the full list of this year’s winners on the School of Medicine website.

Dr Gareth Tudor-Williams, Section of Paediatrics

Dr Gareth Tudor-Williams, Reader and Honorary Consultant in Paediatric Infectious Diseases, has received a Distinguished Teacher Award in the Imperial College Teaching Excellence Awards for 2017.  Dr Tudor-Williams is co-director for the Year 5 MBBS Paediatrics course and has a large educational role for both Imperial College School of Medicine undergraduates, the new medical school in Singapore (a joint venture between Imperial College and Nanyang Technical University) and an international role in postgraduate education particularly relating to HIV infection in children.  His research interests include blood-borne virus infections in children especially HIV, HBV and HCV.

Medical Student Gita Lobo wins Venous Forum Prize

RSM Prize
The research team. Left to right; Dr Mustapha Azzam (Imperial College), Dr Evi Kalodiki (Hon Consultant Imperial College), Miss Gitanjali Lobo (AUC), Mr Chris Lattimer (Hon Senior Lecturer Imperial College).

Miss Gita Lobo came third place in the oral presentations at the Royal Society of Medicine Venous Forum, Wimpole Street, 11-12 July 2017. The research was on evaluating the efficiency of the calf muscle pump using simultaneous duplex ultrasound over the popliteal vein and air-plethysmography (APG) around the calf.

During her prize-winning presentation, Gita confirmed previous work that the tip-toe ankle joint manoeuvre is suboptimal as a pump. She went on to demonstrate that body weight transfer or a walking step movement was much better at pumping. Significant correlations were observed in calf volume reduction (APG) versus blood volume ejection out of the calf (duplex). Bimodal velocity profiles were evaluated with ultrasound indicating the complexity of pumping and the involvement of different muscle groups. (more…)

8 ways to boost your chances of getting funded

Research

In today’s ever-shifting political climate, securing funding has never been so competitive for UK-based researchers. However, as Research Strategy Manager (Department of Medicine) Dr Chrystalla Orphanides explains, taking advantage of research support services could be just what’s needed to tip the odds in your favour.

Here are her 8 essential tips for making sure your next grant application is a successful one:

1) Be organised

Be as organised as possible. If you’re going to submit an application that you’re serious about, you should be thinking at least 3-6 months in advance of the deadline about how you’re going to shape it. That means notifying all of the people that you need to notify, including your Research Support team: they can help with the parts of the application that tend to get left until the last minute. This includes things like data management plans, public engagement activities, and pathways to impact.

It’s a question of being well organised enough to access the support on offer both within your Department and across the College.

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IC Biomedical Symposium 2017

 

On Wednesday 20 June, members of all departments across Hammersmith Hospital campus gathered for the “IC Biomedical Symposium” – an annual showcase of postdoctoral research which comprises work from departments of Medicine, Surgery and Cancer, NHLI and LMS.

After last year’s successful “Postdoc Knowledge Forum”, this rebranded second edition, ensured all members of the departments felt welcome to come and support the work of their postdocs, promoting multidisciplinary collaborations. In fact, a very positive turnout resulted from this rebranding with a 145-people registering, a quarter of which signed up on the day. Other than postdocs, Faculty members, PhD students and Master’s students also joined for the day, as well as members of other campuses, fulfilling the aim of a symposium that reaches a wider audience, brings the whole campus together, and facilitates collaboration across the different departments and divisions.

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MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences (LMS) update

Irene Miguel-Aliaga and Alessandro Mineo

EMBO Election

Professor Irene Miguel-Aliaga, group head at the MRC LMS, has been elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO). “This is a highlight of my career and I’m really pleased,” she said. In further EMBO-related success, Alessandro Mineo a postdoc in Miguel-Aliaga’s lab, has been awarded an EMBO Long Term Fellowship – to find out more about changes in the gut during pregnancy.

Holly Newton
Holly Newton

A hat trick of success for cancer researcher

It has been one success after another for PhD student Holly Newton of the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences (MRC LMS) recently. First, Newton won a travel grant to attend a conference in Japan. Once there she won the poster competition. On returning home she presented her poster at the LMS retreat, and again scooped the institute’s “Rosa Beddington” poster prize. (more…)

WHO Collaborating Centre for Public Health Education and Training update

Advanced Leadership Course

The first week of July (3- 7) will be marked with another edition of Advanced Leadership course run by WHO Collaborating Centre for Public Health Education and Training. The course will take place at WHO CC, London,  with external visits as part of the programme. It will be attended by Chinese delegates.

Advanced Leadership course is one of the flagship courses run by WHO Collaborating Centre for Public Health Education and Training. It is aimed at Policy makers, health managers, heads of clinical and administrative departments, health professionals with an interest in management, and other interested stakeholders. It is an interactive training whereby participants are inspired but also challenged and allowed space for self-reflection and development.

WHO Collaborating Centre runs bespoke courses all year round. Please visit our pages: 

We offer training sessions that are tailor-made for participants and their professional needs as well as the current public health climate.

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Monthly update from the Institute of Global Health Innovation

Future events

25-28 June
24-30 June

Past events

The Centre for International Child Health hosted a seminar looking at research on adolescent mental health and depression in Action and Africa.

IGHI joined up with WISH and the Research Centre for Islamic Legislation and Ethics for an event about bioethics and the embryo

Blog posts

bloodWorld Blood Donor Day: What can you do? Give blood, give now, give often. Read post here

Giving blood in Africa to aid medical emergencies, natural disasters and accidents. Read post here

Supporting midwives in The Gambia to save the lives of mothers and children. Read post here

Peer-delivered mental health interventions – a pragmatic solution to scaling-up access to mental healthcare? Read post here

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World Haptics 2017

A conference delegate is talked through a demonstration of the device by Luc Maréchal
A conference delegate is talked through a demonstration of the device by Luc Maréchal

World Haptics is a major conference on technology that recreates the sense of touch, and is attended by research groups from the US, Japan, Korea and the UK, some of the leading countries behind this emergent branch of science.

Dr Fernando Bello and Dr Luc Maréchal of the SiMMS group within the Centre for Engagement and Simulation Science (ICCESS) attended the conference to showcase the latest developments of the Digital Rectal Examination Haptics Trainer (DiRECT) project.  The team have been working on technology to simulate assessment of sphincter tone; very important to a clinician carrying out an examination on a patient, but something that is not currently part of any existing training device. Dr Bello and Dr Maréchal presented a poster with two different approaches to simulate sphincter tone, one using cables and the other employing a soft pneumatic actuator.  They also demonstrated each prototype so that conference delegates could see – and feel – the technology for themselves. (more…)

Professors Friedland and Drobniewski elected ESCMID Fellows

Professor Jonathan Firedland, Head of Infectious Diseases and Immunity, and Professor Francis Drobniewski, Professor of Global Health and Tuberculosis, were elected Fellows of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) in early May.

The title ‘ESCMID Fellow’ recognises individuals who have achieved professional excellence and outstanding contribution to the field of microbiology and infectious diseases. Professor Friedland’s research interests lie in innate immune response and novel host directed therapies for tuberculosis and migrant health. Professor Drobniewski’s research group focuses on all aspects of tuberculosis and its interaction with HIV.

Professors Friedland & Drobniweski
Jonathan Friedland and Francis Drobniewski

Since its founding in 1983, ESCMID has evolved to become Europe’s leading society in clinical microbiology and infectious diseases with members from all European countries and all continents. Professors Friedland and Drobniewski are amongst the first 120 Fellows to be selected from a membership of around 7,500. A complete list of Fellows is available on the ESCMID website.

Writing well for the web

People tend to read a web page differently than they do on paper. This means that the best approach when writing for the web is different from writing for print. A website works best if people can find what they need quickly, complete their task and leave without having to think about it too much.

Writing for the webThe guidance on writing for Imperial’s website is based on research into how people read online and how people use the website. You can access this guidance as an online web skills module or through one of the monthly training sessions run by the College.

Upcoming sessions

  • Thursday 22 June (10:00-13:00)
  • Tuesday 18 July 2017 (10:00-13:00)

To book a place on a session, email News and Digital Content Editor Andrew Youngson

Imperial College London Offsite Working Policy

Staff, students and visiting research workers who are carrying out activities which are sanctioned by the College, but which take place in locations over which the College does not exert direct control, are subject to the requirements of the College Offsite Working Policy. This includes hosted research and conferences as well as field work.

The safety of such workers must be considered in the same way that it would be if they were working on College premises, and they may need to register for insurance cover and health clearance/vaccinations. More information can be found on the Offsite Working web pages which include a comprehensive travel flowchart linking to relevant advice and documentation that might be needed.

2017 Call for Applications: DPhil/PhD Transition Fellowships

EIT Health partners Oxford University, Imperial College London, Coimbra University and University of Lisbon are collaborating on an exciting competitive funding scheme focused on closing the gap between completion of the doctoral thesis and obtaining seed funding for innovative ideas, products and services based on the research.

From now until 16 June, Imperial College London is seeking applications from suitable Imperial DPhil/PhD candidates, whose innovative work would benefit from such a pre-seed (spark) award.

Find out more at: http://eithealth.eu/2017-call-applications-dphilphd-transition-fellowships/

College license for GitHub.com

github.comWhat’s changing?

With immediate effect, ICT is pleased to announce that all College users of GitHub.com are now entitled to create unlimited free, public or private, code repositories, under a new site licence secured by ICT for the College.

GitHub.com is an externally-supported, cloud-based version control repository that is used by researchers, teaching staff, students and software developers for versioning and collaborating on code, both publicly and privately. It offers the functionality of Git (an open source version control system) with additional user features. GitHub.com is an externally-supported cloud service and anyone may set up a user account.

What this means

Imperial College users are entitled to the following, for no charge:

  • To create unlimited free public or private repositories within Github.com
  • To move existing ‘paid-for’ repositories to the College license
  • Use a range of add-on tools and integrations are freely available from GitHub
  • As a later phase, an on-premises version of GitHub, known as GitHub Enterprise, will also become available, for code that needs to meet stricter security conditions. This is targeted for Spring/Summer 2017.

Find out more

For more information about GitHub.com and how to access free private repositories, visit:

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/admin-services/ict/self-service/research-support/research-support-systems/github/

Support/Contact

If you have any concerns in advance of this change, contact the ICT Service Desk who will be happy to help.

Anyone experiencing problems with accessing or using IT services and machines should contact the ICT Service Desk (0207 594 9000, Ext 49000), Dept IT Reps, or your local Faculty Support teams.

Faculty Fellowships and Wellcome Trust visit

Faculty Fellowships

Faculty Fellowships are a new Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund opportunity, providing flexible funding for up to 18 months for early career researchers who have not yet submitted a Fellowship application but for who an award is in the pipeline because of the quality of the applicant, supervisor and project.

These fellowships are open to researchers across all Faculties. Postdoctoral researchers from disciplines outside of biomedicine can apply for funding to apply their expertise to the goals of understanding health and disease, provided the proposed area of research is within the remit of the Wellcome Trust.

The closing date for applications is 12.00 on 19 June 2017. Please note that within the Faculty of Medicine, the Departmental deadline is 1 June. Further details regarding these Fellowships can be found on the ISSF webpage. (more…)

Revolutions in Biomedicine summer school

The third Revolutions in Biomedicine summer school will take place in in the Faculty of Medcine during July 2017. Undergraduate students from over 20 different nationalities will stay at Imperial for four weeks and learn from our academic community about research strengths in the Faculty of Medicine and the wider college.

Those who attend will further their understanding of topics such as metabolism, global health, genomics, big data, brain sciences and robotics via talks, demonstrations and interactive group work. They will also undertake a ten-day lab-based Mini Research Project, and attend keynote lectures.

A team of current Imperial undergraduate students will work as ambassadors during the programme, and will showcase the additional advantages of studying in London via an optional cultural and social programme. This programme will combine visitor highlights such as the Tower of London and West End theatre with hidden points of interest such as a street art walking tour of East London.

For further information, please see the Revolutions in Biomedicine website.  If you wish to be involved in any of the academic activities, please contact the Academic Coordinator Jeffrey Vernon, j.vernon@imperial.ac.uk.

WHO Collaborating Centre for Public Health Education and Training update

Advanced Leadership Course in Dubrovnik, Croatia

CroatiaIn partnership with Zagreb Institute for the Culture of Health, WHO Collaborating Centre for Public Health Education and Training will be delivering the Advanced Leadership course in Dubrovnik, Croatia from 5-12 August 2017.

The course will be held in InterUniversity Centre, in the centre of Dubrovnik.

It is aimed at: Policy makers, health managers, heads of clinical and administrative departments, health professionals with an interest in management, and other interested stakeholders. It is an interactive training whereby participants are inspired but also challenged and allowed space for self reflection and development.
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Imperial Clinician Researcher Fellowship (Post-doc, Post-CCT) scheme

The new Imperial Clinician Researcher Fellowship (Post-doc, Post-CCT) scheme is now open for applications.  The purpose of the 2-year Fellowship is to draw on the research strengths of Imperial and attract the highest quality early stage clinical academics finishing clinical training to work towards Clinician Scientist, Wellcome Trust or other externally funded clinical research mid-level awards. (more…)

MRC ‘Confidence in Concept’ scheme

The College has been awarded £840,000 from the MRC ‘Confidence in Concept’ scheme to pump–prime the translation of novel therapeutics, devices and diagnostics, including “repurposing” of existing therapies toward clinical testing within the Imperial Academic Health Sciences Centre (AHSC). Included in this award is a ring-fenced fund of £125,000 for projects addressing the aims of the Global Challenges Research Fund. (more…)