Reporter

Super-sensitive tests

30 July 2012

Scientists have developed an ultra-sensitive test that should enable them to detect signs of a disease in its earliest stages, in research published in the journal Nature Materials on 25 May.

The scientists, from Imperial and the Universidade de Vigo, Spain, have created a test to detect particular molecules, or biomarkers, that indicate the presence of disease, even when these are in very low concentrations. Tests are already available for some diseases that look for biomarkers using biological sensors, or biosensors. However, existing biosensors become less sensitive and predictable at detecting biomarkers in very low concentrations, such as when a disease is in its early stages.

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Tags: Bioengineering, Materials
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Head of the Department of Bioengineering

26 July 2012

Professor Anthony Bull, Professor of Musculoskeletal Mechanics, has accepted appointment as Head of the Department of Bioengineering with effect from 1 August 2012.

He will succeed Professor Ross Ethier, who has been appointed to a Chair in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, USA. Professor Bull’s research focuses on the area of the mechanics of muscles, bones and joints and he leads the Royal British Legion Centre for Blast Injury Studies at Imperial.

Tags: Bioengineering
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Royal Society honours

24 July 2012

Five Imperial scientists were honoured by the Royal Society on 10 July. Emeritus Professor Tom Kibble FRS (Physics) and Emeritus Professor and Distinguished Research Fellow Professor Andrew Holmes FRS (Chemistry) have received the Royal Medal, one of the Society’s premier awards. The Royal Medals were founded by King George IV in 1825 and are awarded to just three top scientists each year.

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Tags: Awards and Honours, Bioengineering, Chemistry, Materials, Physics, Staff
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‘Biological’ industrial revolution kick-started

25 June 2012

Developing the tools that will enable ‘biological’ devices to be produced on an industrial scale will be the focus of a £5 million consortium, it was announced this month. Working at an industrial scale will help unlock the commercial potential of these minute devices, which can be used for a range of applications including the production of chemicals, materials, biosensors and biofuels. The five-year project is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Professor Richard Kitney (Bioengineering), pictured above right, who is co-leading the consortium, said: “This project will create a new kind of industrial revolution in the UK, taking synthetic biology from the lab bench to the factory floor, where industries of the future can create microscopic devices in a safe and controlled way to create new sources of energy or new kinds of medical devices.”

Professor Paul Freemont (Life Sciences), the consortium’s other co-leader (pictured above left), added: “Mass producing these biological devices and systems could create a range of new industries for the UK. Start-ups on the drawing board already include a company that will produce microscopic biosensors in hospitals for detecting MRSA and urinary infections. In the long term, we hope to create biofactories that use engineered biological systems to turn landfill into carbon-negative energy sources. We believe this project could unleash the potential of synthetic biology and turn it into a real success story for UK plc.”

The vision for the project is to create a factory assembly line process, where an engineer can select from a vast virtual catalogue of bioparts to design devices and assemble these devices using robots.

Read the full press release here

— Colin Smith, Communications and Development

Tags: Bioengineering, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Life Sciences
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Japanese speech contest

30 May 2012

Third year students Connie Kou, Wai Shin Ngam and Karen Chong, from the Department of Bioengineering, recently won the Cultural Inheritance Prize in the finals of the Japanese Speech Contest for University Students.

The students, who are studying Japanese in the Department of Humanities, gave a spoken presentation about the Chinese New Year. In addition, a third year Chemistry student, Joel Boom, was selected as a finalist in the Studying Japanese as an Elective or Optional Course category. The annual event, which featured 10 individual speeches and four group presentations, is co-organised by the British Association for Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language and the Japan Foundation.

Tags: Awards and Honours, Bioengineering, Humanities
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Festival fever!

24 May 2012

It’s midday on Saturday 12 May on the South Kensington Campus – the sun is shining, bunting and balloons frame the buildings, 1920’s jazz music is floating through the air and the site is alive with staff, students, alumni and their families and friends – all here for the inaugural Imperial Festival.

On 11–12 May the College opened its doors to the public and invited them to take part in hands-on demonstrations, music, dancing, stand-up comedy, street performances and art.

“The idea of the Festival is to provide an annual glimpse into some of the exciting work going on in Imperial laboratories today,” explains Tom Miller, Director of Communications and Development. “It gives people a chance to quiz the scientists on the front line about their discoveries and to learn or discover something they didn’t know Imperial was involved in.”

Conceived two years ago as part of a review into the membership and purpose of the College Court, the original idea for a festival event was born out of the desire to engage people, institutions and organisations outside of Imperial. Its potential to reach broader audiences including staff, alumni and supporters as well as the general public, was met with the decision to run it over two days and partly on a weekend to make it family friendly. The final format had four key elements, starting with a gala dinner on the Thursday night to celebrate staff achievements over the year, the launch of the new Court on Friday, an Alumni Reunion on Saturday, and the Festival itself on Friday evening for adults and on Saturday afternoon for families.

The event was organised in- house by a team led by Natasha Martineau – Head of Research Communications (Communications and Development) – who took on the mammoth task of creating the College’s biggest ever public event working with colleagues including Harriet Martin and Katie Weeks, and colleagues from across College, especially those in Commercial Services and Facilities.

We wanted to lift the lid on the amazing work that goes on at the College

“The main thinking behind the programme we put together was to lift the lid on the amazing work that goes on at the College, and to make it available to anyone who might be interested in what we do and how it affects their daily lives,” explains Natasha. “When you work here you sometimes forget what a privilege it is to have access to this work, and the passion of the people who do it.” Research undertaken by the team revealed that lots of staff and students across College were already involved in public engagement activities. Hoping to draw from this group, an invitation went out to all departments and institutes. Each one came back with a suggestion or two of something they wanted to contribute to the festival – leading to over 30 interactive displays in and around the marquee on the Queen’s Lawn.

Along with a call for proposals came a set of guidelines for the demonstrations. Each group had a relatively small space and was asked to focus on talking with visitors – from young children to members of the Council – and giving them something to handle. “We wanted to move away from the Power Point and posters you might find at academic conferences,” explains Natasha, “and create an environment where our many audiences could have a two way exchange with the scientists and where their questions and ideas might inform or stimulate the way we do research”. Professor John Seddon (Chemistry) got his first taste of public engagement at the Imperial Festival and explains how he enjoyed considering what demonstrations might work using his 14-year-old son as a testing ground to ensure they would be interesting to a public audience. “We had to put on demos that were within the constraints of being safe, nontoxic, non-explosive and not too smelly, but that would make people stop at the stand and think ‘that would be a fun thing to do’.”

John enthusiastically presented a range of experiments at the Festival – including a petri dish full of ferrofluids that, when you applied a magnetic field from below, formed beautiful spikes aligned along the magnetic field. He also did an experiment with corn flour and water to illustrate the properties of materials that could make flexible body armour for soldiers or skiers but would immediately solidify in an accident and offer good protection on impact.

Outside the context of the Festival, public engagement is becoming an increasingly important part of the expectations of public bodies that fund research. “In a way I welcome this approach,” says John, “We get public funding, so we have to justify what we are doing, and it’s also a good way to encourage a new generation of scientists to come forward.”

Dr Sandra Shefelbine (Bioengineering) is a big fan of public engagement and has worked with the BBC, the Dana Centre and the Wellcome Trust. Sandra was keen to get involved in the Festival and gave a lecture on how bones work (called Skeletons out of the closet).

“I think any time you try to describe your science to a lay audience, it benefits how you look at it, and events like this help to spark the intrigue of science at an early age.” she says. “I could describe everything in terms of equations or super-complicated modelling but in order to explain it in a way in which everyone can understand, you have to break it down into what is really important. That often leads me to start thinking ‘Why do we normally talk about it in such a complex way – is it really necessary?’”

The Festival attracted around 7,000 people over the weekend, which is a clear sign of the public’s interest in science, and the event is being fully evaluated by the team over the next few weeks. The hope is that this will become an annual event. “We had so many suggestions, I hope we can return to them in coming years. I also hope the Festival will continue to help public engagement become an integral part of the life of a researcher at Imperial,” says Natasha.

“I think it was the sense of wonder that captured people’s imagination,” muses John, “and as a demonstrator it was also a lot of fun!”

Read what some of our visitors thought of the Festival here

See a slideshow of images from the day here

— Emily Ross-Joannou, Communications and Development

Tags: Alumni, BBC, Bioengineering, Chemistry, Commercial Services, Communications and Development, Facilities Management, Festival 2012, Wellcome Trust
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Brainy proposal gets international support

4 May 2012

Dr Paul Chadderton (Bioengineering) received a Young Investigator Award from the International Human Frontier Science Program Organisation in March 2012.

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Tags: Awards and Honours, Bioengineering
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Making machines from yeast

12 April 2012

Imperial scientists are one step closer to making more complex microscopic biological machines, following improvements in the way that they can ‘rewire’ DNA in yeast, according to research published in the journal PLoS ONE on 16 March.

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Tags: Bioengineering, Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation
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Time out: Cooking society

4 April 2012

Hot apple fritters, sweet pumpkin pie, olive bread fresh from the oven… You’d be hard pressed not to feel peckish after reading about some of the edible treats members of the ICU Cooking Society have made. The society teaches them how to cook healthy and delicious food, and to have fun while doing so.

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Tags: Bioengineering, Chemistry, Student clubs and societies, Time Out
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Ideas worth spreading

9 March 2012

Across the College – in lecture theatres, in hallways and in common rooms – ideas flow like oxygen. Imperial staff and students believe in the power of ideas to benefit society; a vision shared by the founders of the not-for-profit organisation TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design), which is the driving force behind the first TEDxImperialCollege event to be held on 24 March.

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Tags: Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Computing, Humanities, Medicine, Physics, racing green
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Synthetic revolution

8 March 2012

Reporter speaks to Professors Paul Freemont (Life Sciences) and Richard Kitney (Bioengineering), who lead the EPSRC Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation (CSynBI) at Imperial, to learn what synthetic biology is and how Imperial is leading the way in using engineering and biological principles to systematically design new biological devices and systems.

(more…)

Tags: Bioengineering, iGEM, Life Sciences
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Olympic torch relay

31 January 2012

On 1 December, Professor Alison McGregor (Bioengineering) attended an event held in London for higher education staff and students taking part in the Olympic flame torch relay in July. Each participant will ‘run’ the famous flame for 300 metres. Alison reports on her experiences at the event.

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Tags: Bioengineering, London 2012, Mathematics, Medicine
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Media mentions

25 January 2012

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Tags: Bioengineering, Business School, Life Sciences, Media Mentions, Physics
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The Mechanics of the Circulation

24 January 2012

A Second Edition of The Mechanics of the Circulation, written by Emeritus Professors Colin Caro, Bob Schroter, Kim Parker, (all Bioengineering), Emeritus Professor Anthony Seed (NHLI) and Emeritus Professor Tim Pedley, University of Cambridge, has been published, 33 years after it was first printed. Professor Ross Ethier, Head of the Department of Bioengineering, reflects on its importance to the field.

“The first edition of the book (known as CPSS to those “in the know”) was my faithful companion when I became interested in hemodynamics over 20 years ago. It was, and continues to be, the standard reference text for those that seek to understand both physical principles of blood flow and the biology and physiology of the cardiovascular system. It was distinguished by clear writing, a refusal to oversimplify the complexity of the subject (when relevant), and a holistic view of the field.

A measure of the impact of the book is to see how many colleagues at leading universities have a copy on their bookshelf. I have seen it in offices from Japan to Switzerland to America – a large footprint indeed!

The second edition is most welcome. It will introduce an entire new generation to the field, just as the first edition did many years ago.”

Tags: Bioengineering, Faculty of Engineering
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Research centre to combat effects of roadside bombs

20 January 2012

Gaining a better understanding of the injuries caused by roadside bombs, and improving both treatment and the means of protection, are key aims of a new £8 million research centre at Imperial launched on 7 December.

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Tags: Bioengineering
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