Reporter

Birthday honours for Imperial staff

26 July 2012

Five members of Imperial have been recognised in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours. The awards include academic and support staff, honouring their service to higher education, research and medicine.

Adjunct Professor Tom Hughes-Hallett, the new Executive Chair of the Institute of Global Health Innovation, received a knighthood for his services to palliative care.

Two members of the National Heart and Lung Institute were also honoured: Professor Margaret Hodson has been awarded an OBE for her services to respiratory medicine, while Professor Duncan Geddes received a CBE for his services to medical research, charity and education. Professor Geddes said:

“One of the most fortunate parts of an academic medical career is the space to be an all-rounder and to combine clinical care with research, teaching and charitable work. I have not excelled in any single one of these but have been ably helped by colleagues in all three. CBE therefore stands for ‘Colleagues at Brompton Earned it’.”

Mr David Nott, an Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer in the Department of Surgery and Cancer who is also a Wing Commander in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, receives an OBE in the military honours for his medical work in war regions. Mr Nott said:

“It is such an honour to receive an OBE for something that I am passionate about. Going to Buckingham Palace and being handed the Order is going to be an amazing experience and I am still in a daze.”

Former College Secretary Dr Rodney Eastwood has been made an MBE for his services to education. Dr Eastwood worked at Imperial for 25 years, until his retirement in April this year. He said:

“I am very grateful to those at the College who put me forward, and look forward to hearing of other administrative, as well as academic, members of staff receiving awards in the future.”

— John-Paul Jones, Communications and Development

Read the full story here.

Tags: Institute for Global Health, National Heart and Lung Institute, Staff, Surgery and Cancer
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2012 AstraZeneca Prize

22 June 2012

Professor Jane Mitchell, Head of Cardiothoracic Pharmacology (NHLI) has been awarded the 2012 AstraZeneca Prize for Women in Pharmacology for her work on inflammation in cardiovascular and respiratory systems.

The prize recognises women whose career achievements have contributed significantly to the understanding of a particular field through excellence in research. Professor Mitchell will be awarded the £1,000 prize at a ceremony in December.

Tags: Awards and Honours, National Heart and Lung Institute
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Biomedical powerhouse

19 June 2012

“Swiftly bringing new benefits to patients in west London, patients in the UK and patients across the world is the driver for the research that is underway here,” said President & Rector Sir Keith O’Nions, speaking about the vision for the Imperial Centre for Translational and Experimental Medicine (ICTEM) at the formal opening event on 28 May.

(more…)

Tags: British Heart Foundation, Imperial Centre for Translational and Experimental Medicine, National Heart and Lung Institute, President & Rector
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Medical researchers honoured with prestigious Fellowship

28 May 2012

Imperial researchers who are preventing brain injuries in newborn babies, fighting tuberculosis, improving the effectiveness of clinical trials and combating heart disease have been awarded prestigious Fellowships from the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Professor Denis Azzopardi, Professor of Neonatal Medicine (Clinical Sciences), Professor Deborah Ashby, Chair in Medical Statistics and Clinical Trials (Public Health), Professor Jaspal Kooner, Professor of Clinical Cardiology, and Professor Ajit Lalvani, Chair in Infectious Diseases (both NHLI), are among 46 leading scientists honoured with Fellowships.

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Tags: Institute of Clinical Sciences, National Heart and Lung Institute, Public Health
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Staff elections to the Court

28 May 2012

Following the recent elections, the members of staff who will join the Court of Imperial College London are: Professor Ian Adcock, Head of Molecular Cell Biology Group (NHLI), Dr Joshua Edel, Senior Lecturer in Micro and Nanotechnology (Chemistry), and Mr Paul Brown, Mechanical Instrumentation Workshop Manager (Physics).

Tags: Chemistry, Court and Council, National Heart and Lung Institute, Physics
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Gene can turn flu into a killer

4 May 2012

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Tags: National Heart and Lung Institute
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Media mentions

3 May 2012

Grey matter

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Tags: Computing, Life Sciences, Media Mentions, Medicine, National Heart and Lung Institute, Wellcome Trust
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Six Imperial scientists join Fellowship of Royal Society

3 May 2012

An evolutionary biologist, a pharmacologist and four physicists from Imperial joined the Fellowship of the Royal Society last month, as part of the 2012 election of 44 new Fellows.

They join the ranks of around 1,450 elite scientists recognised by the UK’s national scientific academy for their contributions to science and are now permitted to use the letters FRS after their name. They bring the number of Royal Society Fellows at Imperial, or those with an on-going association with the College, to 73.

The new Fellows are:

• Professor Michele Dougherty (Physics), a space physicist and Principal Investigator of the Cassini magnetometer instrument, which was launched onboard the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft in 1997.
• Professor Russell Lande (Life Sciences), a theoretical biologist who early in his career pioneered the use of genetics to study the evolution of continuous traits, such as height or weight, in natural populations.
• Professor Chris Hull (Physics), a theoretical physicist distinguished for his pioneering work on string theory, a concept that aims to unify all of the forces and particles of nature in a single quantum theory.
• Professor Tejinder (Jim) Virdee (Physics) who, for several years, led the team of thousands of international scientists that designed and built the Compact Muon Solenoid detector, one of the two main experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, and one of the most complex scientific instruments ever built, weighing 14,000 tonnes and with a length of 30 metres and a diameter of 15 metres.
• Emeritus Professor Timothy Williams (NHLI), recognised for his contribution to the understanding of the mechanisms underlying inflammation. He was appointed Asthma UK Professor of Applied Pharmacology in 1988 and established the Leukocyte Biology Section at Imperial in 1998.
• Visiting Professor Jeremy Burroughes (Physics), one of the co-inventors of conjugated polymer electroluminescence, which allows light to be efficiently generated by passing electrical current through thin films of the plastic poly (p-phenylenevinylene).

— Simon Levey, Communications and Development

Read the full story here

Tags: Fellows, Life Sciences, National Heart and Lung Institute, Physics
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Pennell wins gold

4 April 2012

On 4 February Dudley Pennell, Professor of Cardiology (NHLI) and Director of the Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (CMR) Unit, was awarded the Society for CMR gold medal in Orlando USA.

The award recognises outstanding contribution to the field of cardiovascular magnetic resonance and to the society.

Tags: Awards and Honours, National Heart and Lung Institute
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Cystic fibrosis gene therapy programme gets green light

4 April 2012

Imperial researchers will begin the largest clinical trial of its type to test a new gene therapy treatment for people with cystic fibrosis (CF) thanks to a new grant from a government funding body.

One hundred and thirty adults and children with CF will take part in the trial starting this spring coordinated by the UK Cystic Fibrosis Gene Therapy Consortium (GTC). The GTC is a group of scientists and clinical teams from Imperial, the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh, Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust and NHS Lothian, who have worked together for the last decade to develop gene therapy for CF.

The trial will be funded by a £3.1 million grant from the National Institute for Health Research and the Medical Research Council.

CF is the most common lethal inherited disease in the UK, affecting around 9,500 people nationally and over 90,000 worldwide. Patients’ lungs become filled with thick sticky mucus and they are vulnerable to recurrent chest infections, which eventually destroy the lungs. The cause of CF, mutations in a gene located on chromosome 7, was identified in 1989, opening the door to replacing this faulty gene using gene therapy.

Patients will receive the treatment by inhaling molecules of DNA wrapped in fat globules that deliver the replacement gene into the cells in the lung lining. Half the participants will receive the real treatment and half a placebo in a doubleblind study.

Professor Eric Alton (NHLI), the GTC Coordinator, said: “This trial will assess if giving gene therapy repeatedly for a year will lead to the patients’ lungs getting better. Eventually we hope gene therapy will push CF patients towards a normal life expectancy and improve their quality of life significantly.”

Read the full press release here

Tags: Medical Research Council, National Heart and Lung Institute, Royal Brompton Campus
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‘Popeye’ proteins help the heart adapt to stress

19 March 2012

A family of proteins named after Popeye play an essential role in allowing the heart to respond to stress, according to a study published in late February in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Imperial scientists led the research, which could help develop new treatments for abnormal heart rhythms.

Popeye domain containing proteins (Popdc for short), here shown stained red in the outer membrane of heart muscle cells, were discovered 10 years ago and so named because they are found in abundance in muscles, but until now their function has been unclear. The new study reveals that they help the heart to increase its rhythm in response to the hormone adrenaline, which is released in times of mental or physical stress.

The researchers studied mice that were deficient in Popdc proteins. In healthy people and mice, the heart’s natural pacemaker responds to adrenaline by making the heart beat faster in order to deliver more oxygen around the body. But in the mice that lacked Popdc, the heart rate slowed when they were put in stressful situations.

Many elderly people’s heart rates slow down in a similar way in response to stress. These people may be diagnosed with a condition called sick sinus syndrome, which normally means they need to have an artificial pacemaker fitted. The researchers anticipate that the findings might lead to new treatments for this and other heart rhythm disorders that can be triggered by stress, such as arrhythmias, atrial fibrillation and sudden cardiac death.

Professor Thomas Brand (NHLI) said: “Studying these mice further will give us more clues about what goes wrong in the heart’s pacemaker, and might help us develop new drugs for heart rhythm disorders.”

Read the full press release here

— Sam Wong, Communications and Development

Tags: National Heart and Lung Institute
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Fields of gold

16 March 2012

In December, the Postdoc Development Centre (PDC) asked postdocs to send in photos representing their lives as postdocs.The Centre received over 100 entries – including abstract, landscape, scientific and artistic interpretations – and chose the picture above, taken by Research Associate Dr Cristina Canova (NHLI), pictured left, as the winner.

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Tags: National Heart and Lung Institute, Postdoc Development Centre
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Boost for research into acute asthma attacks

21 February 2012

Research into acute asthma attacks has been given a helping hand with a £4 millon award from the Medical Research Council (MRC) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

The grant, to the MRC-Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma at Imperial and King’s College London, will enable researchers to investigate how acute asthma attacks, which can be lifethreatening and are often resistant to the few available treatments, are linked to allergy and viral infection. Professor Sebastian Johnston (NHLI) and Dr Roberto Solari of GSK will lead three teams of scientists at Imperial, King’s and GSK.

Tags: Medical Research Council, National Heart and Lung Institute
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Allergy abstract

25 January 2012

Dr Mohamed Shamji (NHLI) won an award for his abstract at the World Allergy Congress held in Cancún, Mexico in December 2011.

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Tags: Awards and Honours, National Heart and Lung Institute
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New Wellcome Trust investigators announced

28 November 2011

Professor William Cookson, Professor of Genomic Medicine, and Professor Miriam Moffatt, Professor of Human Genetics, (both NHLI), have been awarded a Joint Senior Investigator Award by the Wellcome Trust.

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Tags: Awards and Honours, National Heart and Lung Institute
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