FoM community news
I am pleased to announce that the Faculties of Medicine and Engineering have funded 11 projects under the new ‘kick-start’ initiative.
These awards, and the collaborations they are nurturing, have been borne out of a programme launched back in November with our FoM/FoE networking event.
Dave Taylor, Programme Lead, Virtual Worlds and Medical Media, and Robin Winter, 3D Interactive Designer, recently won the “design our avatar” competition.
The lab provides consultancy and development services, and helps to support the Department’s research in use of virtual worlds for healthcare. Our applications range from hospital and service design planning, to major incident simulations for assessing communication and leadership skills. We work with other researchers in our Department, to make use of the latest research in behavioural science and the provision of information for patients in the NHS. Our most recent work focuses on the ability to walk through and test the design of a clinic and its services before it is even built. And we are beginning to work with specific patient communities, and researching more effective ways to help people lead healthier lives. There is an overview of some of our work in the Imperial Media library: http://www2.imperial.ac.uk/imedia/content/view/2084/new-media-and-healthcare-avatars-virtual-worlds-and-apps and in a BBC programme about our major incident simulations: http://www.rockhopper.tv/programmes/619/
Picture: a photo of the Virtual Imperial Surgical Innovation Centre, based on the Paterson Centre in South Wharf Road on a misty day.
Sarah Perkins, Head of Research Strategy for the Faculty of Medicine, is taking part in this years Moonwalk on 12 May 2012.
She is fundraising for the Walk the Walk breast cancer charity.
For further information and to sponsor Sarah please visit http://www.walkthewalkfundraising.org/the_swans
The MoonWalk is organised by Walk the Walk. This is a unique event as not only do all the participants power walk a marathon (26.2 miles) or half marathon (13.1 miles) depending on which distance they have chosen, but they all wear decorated bras to raise awareness for breast cancer. There are 15,000 walkers (http://www.walkthewalk.org)
Anthony E Rippon, former Academic Laboratory Manager, Dept. of Endocrinology and Metabolic Medicine, died on 22 February 2012. Dr Atul Purohit pays tribute:
“Tony Rippon was born in 1940 and obtained his HNC in Chemistry in 1961 at Sheffield College of Technology. In 1965 he began working at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School with Professor Vivien James as the technical head of the Steroid Research Unit, established by Professor James at that time.
He progressed upwards through the organisation, through times of expansion within the Dept. of Endocrinology and Metabolic Medicine, headed by Prof. Des Johnston. With various mergers and, in particular, the expansion of my own group, his responsibilities increased and he accepted his wider role with enthusiasm and efficiency. Tony retired in 2005. Tony was awarded the Associateship of Imperial College in 2006, in recognition of his achievements and enormous contribution to St Mary’s Hospital Medical School and to Imperial College.
He was someone of the highest integrity, with unquestioned loyalty to the College for more than 40 years”.
COSMOS is the world’s largest mobile technologies and health research study, and is based in the EBS department here at Imperial College. The study is now open to volunteers and anyone who has not already registered can take part;
Why is this research important? Mobile phones have only been in widespread use for a relatively short time but they have become central to our daily lives. In the short term, there is no clear evidence of adverse health effects from the use of mobile phones.
In March 2011 the Faculty of Medicine undertook a review of the operational activities of the Joint Research Office (JRO). The Project Board established 10 work-streams populated with College and Trust staff with relevant expertise and JRO staff members.
The review consulted widely within the Faculty and NHS to establish the expectations there were of JRO service and ideas for the optimum structure for service-delivery.
A final report was issued towards the end of 2011 and as a result of the recommendations from the Project Board a new structure was implemented in January 2012.
The key recommendations were:
The Twitter avatar competition, launched back in December 2011, has now closed. The Faculty would like to thank all those who entered.
The entries were judged by Professor Sir Anthony Newman Taylor, Principal of the Faculty of Medicine, and Professor Jenny Higham, Deputy Principal of the Faculty of Medicine.
We are pleased to announce the winning entry (opposite) is from Dave Taylor and Robin Winter, from Medical Media and Design Laboratory (MMDL) in the Department of Surgery and Cancer, who will share the prize.
The avatar is a stylised version of the iconic image of Sir Alexander Fleming’s plate culture of the fungus Penicillium notatum; the design honours this discovery which was made whilst working at St. Mary’s (now one of the constituent medical campuses of the Faculty of Medicine).
The avatar can now be seen adorning our Twitter and Flickr pages.
We received a number of excellent entries from staff and students from around the Faculty which can be seen in the gallery below:
On Wednesday evening (18th of January) the Faculty of Medicine held its annual Fellowship Ceremony. Staff and students from across the Faculty gathered in the Lecture Theatre of the Sir Alexander Fleming Building to see Professor Robert Souhami CBE, Professor Averil Mansfield CBE and Dr Malcolm Skingle CBE receive Fellowships of the Faculty of Medicine – a recognition of their immense contributions to medicine and science.
Professor Souhami gave an excellent lecture entitled “The continuing legacy of the Radium Girls”. He talked about the legacy of girls in the 1920s who painted clock and watch dials with paint containing radium, licking the paintbrushes to get a sharp enough point and unfortunately swallowing the radium as they did so. At the time radium was seen as harmless, even medically beneficial. After a few years the women began to get ill with necrosis of the jaw, anaemia and later osteocarcinoma and cancer of the sinuses. It was some time before it was realised that the radium was responsible.
Their exposure also caused bone marrow failure and bone cancer at distant sites because the young women swallowed the radium paint which was partially absorbed by the gut and deposited like calcium in bones. The lecture provided a fascinating insight into the process of the medical discovery of this mechanism.The women’s exposure to radium and the illnesses they developed eventually changed US labour laws. The lecture was a fitting subject at such an occasion to underline the value of medical scientific discovery to improving people’s lives.
The evening was extremely enjoyable and it was fantastic to have the opportunity to honour three such outstanding individuals.
Dr Lyndsey Houseman
Executive Officer (Governance and Review)
Photos taken by Neville Miles
Members from the Faculty of Medicine visited the recently completed L-Block at the Hammersmith campus.
The new building will be a flagship facility for Imperial’s Academic Health Science Centre, integrating patient centred research with translational science activity.
Researchers in the new facilities will carry out clinical trials of new treatments and help to advance understanding of a wide range of health problems, such as heart and circulatory disease – the UKs biggest killer.
The building is due to be occupied in Q1 2012.
Education is a core area of our mission. I would like to personally thank all who have contributed to any part of this agenda at either Faculty or College level. The first of these is development of our action programme for continually improving the Student Experience. You will have seen the messages from the Rector on this subject, and I would like to thank you for the contributions you have made to developing the Faculty’s approach – a draft action programme has now gone forward for discussion at College level, and there will be further communication on this ongoing programme in the New Year.
Nationally, discussion is gathering pace among the UK medical schools, and with the GMC, on building stronger curricula for training the nation’s doctors through sharing of knowledge and best practice. The Medical Schools Council Assessment Alliance [MSC-AA] was set up to look at establishing common elements of assessment practice at a national level – where sharing of knowledge and material amongst the schools is anticipated to drive up clinical quality [not that we have had a personal concern in this regard!]. One example of our input into this agenda is in the area of prescribing – research has highlighted the need for improvement in prescribing skills amongst Foundation trainees, and Imperial experience in developing learning and examination programmes in this area is helping to inform development of a national Prescribing Skills Assessment. Other MSC-AA developments to which Imperial is contributing include a shared question bank for elements of final exams and new processes for recruitment into Foundation Year training programmes, using Situational Judgement Tests.
In terms of prizes these included, the Rector’s Award for Excellence in Supporting the Student Experience given to Dr Emma Watson, Ms Jo Williams, Ms Julia Cork and Mr Chris Harris and Dr Kevin Murphy and Professor Helen Ward received the Rector’s Award in Excellence for Teaching. This year we introduced new Awards to recognise the vital contributions made by our Personal Tutors. Nominations were made by the students, and we were delighted to see these inaugural awards go to Dr Samia Girgis from the Department of Medicine, and Miss Elizabeth Owen, Consultant in O&G at the West Middlesex University Hospital. We were immensely proud of Dr Matko Marlais and Dr Nishma Manek who were awarded the Gold Medal and Betuel Prizes for the best performances in Finals across all the London Medical Schools.
This year sees Dr Nicola J Rogers take up the College post of Director of Student Recruitment and Admissions; many of you will know Nicky from her extensive teaching role, and for her leadership of postgraduate education. We have been delighted also to retain Mr Chris Harris within the Faculty; he moved from his post within the Department of Medicine to take up the role of Quality and Enhancement Manager within the Faculty Education Office.
Of course, our curricula are designed not just to create great doctors, but also outstanding scientists. This year has seen successful implementation of the final year of the Pharmacology and Translational Medicine Science BSc. We also successfully piloted the awarding of extra ECTS[1] to pharmacology students for approved extramural activities. A new programme for the BSc in Biomedical Science has also been developed, to be led solely by the Faculty of Medicine. The programme, which was revised and re-sequenced to harness strengths from across the Faculty, has been approved by Senate with effect from 2012.
In postgraduate development – we have made significant progress working with the NWThames Foundation School to continue to develop our academic programme which provides a quality grounding in core clinical competencies, complemented by strengthened focus on academic development. The programme brings the cohort together as a peer group during their programme and enables them to gain experience in academic activity through project work and research/education skills training. The ultimate objective is to provide trainees with a strong academic skill-set with which to apply for Academic Clinical Fellowships and other schemes, seeding the clinical academic community of the future.
On the postgraduate research side, I am delighted to welcome Dr Laki Buluwela (Department of Surgery and Cancer) into his new role as Faculty Lead for Doctoral Degrees. This new role will focus on ensuring a quality postgraduate research environment, maintaining an overview of all FoM doctoral provision. With the increased focus across Research Councils [RC] on doctoral training in key strategic areas, this will be a key post in ensuring Imperial presents its strong case for continuing to attract RC doctoral funding. Read more about Laki’s ambition for the role in his own blog entry.
Finally, many thanks to all who have given their time to help with the development of the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine in Singapore. This has been an intensive year and required every ounce of the leadership shown by Prof Martyn Partridge, ably assisted by Dr Naomi Low-Beer. Senate considered a suite of paperwork setting out the plans for establishment of a joint Imperial/NTU MBBS with effect from August 2013 at its meeting last week, and I am delighted to say this has been approved. Of course, there is plenty more to do before the first cohort arrives in 2013, but approval from Senate is a major step along the path, and a great way to close the year! We are now at the stage of recruiting to key posts within the new School, and are pleased to announce that Prof Mike Ferenczi has taken up the post of Assistant Dean and Head of Years 1 & 2, from August 2012. Also, Dr Katie Wynne is taking over from Dr Tanya Tierney as Head of Graduate Entry Year 1 following Tanya’s appointment as Assistant Dean, Head of Simulated Patients Programme and Communications Training and Head of Welfare. For those that wish to follow progress there is a newsletter: http://www1.imperial.ac.uk/resources/99C81850-548E-4900-A6D8-1012392B4DEE/theleekongchianschoolofmedicinenewsletterissue4.pdf
Many thanks to all and warm wishes for an enjoyable Christmas break.
Professor Jenny Higham
Deputy Principal, Faculty of Medicine
[1] European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System
