Each seminar has a featured speaker(s) and theme and there will be an opportunity to connect and ask about their work.
Staff and students from Queen Mary and Barts Health NHS Trust are invited to join us, to:
Professor Ashley Akbari (Swansea University): SAIL Databank - Using a national Trusted Research Environment to support research and improve services and outcomes
Professor Ashley Akbari will present an overview of work delivered within SAIL Databank; the national Trusted Research Environment (TRE) for Wales. Established in 2007, SAIL (Secure Anonymised Information Linkage) provides access within a secure platform to anonymised, linkable, population-scale data sources, including health and social care, administrative, demographic, socio-economic and a variety of other national, local and specialist services data. Ashley will discuss examples delivered as part of a multi-disciplinary team to support research and improve services and people’s outcomes, including the One Wales collaboration response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the creation of a harmonised ethnicity methodology for inequalities research.
Professor Jianfeng Feng (University of Warwick): Predicting and diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease with multi-scale data
Using AI to study proteins could soon reach a revolutionary phase that will fundamentally change our understanding of brain disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease. Professor Jianfeng Feng is using novel AI algorithms and omics data to identify which genes, proteins, and other cell components are associated with the onset of Alzheimer’s. These discoveries will enable researchers to subtype diseases and develop more targeted treatments. Professor Feng will also discuss methods to integrate micro-, meso- and macroscopic imaging data, and the development and medical applications of the ‘Digital Twin Brain’ - a model of the whole human brain at neuronal level.
Dr Amar Dhand (Harvard Medical School / Brigham and Women’s Hospital): Social Network Interventions in Medicine
Social connections play an important role in predicting health outcomes. In this talk, Dr Amar Dhand will review the principles of a network intervention in medical contexts and suggest that there are two main forms: 1) Interventions aimed to rewire the patient’s network (for example, Alcoholics Anonymous) and 2) Adapting interventions to a patient’s network (for example, family therapy). Dr Dhand will present clinical trial results from TEAMS-BP, a social network intervention to improve blood pressure control after stroke, and use this to discuss the lessons learned and next steps in building and testing social network interventions in patients.
With the consent of the speakers, recordings of our seminars are available to watch here after the event.
14 November 2024
21 October 2024
PhD and Early Career Researcher showcase, 23 September 2024
20 June 2024
16 May 2024
25 March 2024
15 January 2024
14 December 2023
2 November 2023
Co-chairs: Rohini Mathur, Jianhua Wu (WIPH) and Claude Chelala (BCI) Committee members: Fabiola Eto, Jing Hui Law, Judith Offman, Stuart Rison, Mary Thomas, Nicola Firman (WIPH)