Insigneo Newsletter - December 2023

Welcome to our monthly Insigneo newsletter!  

Our monthly e-newsletter keeps you up to date with events, funding, success stories and information. We hope you will find it useful! 

We are delighted to announce that our Annual Showcase event will return to the University of Sheffield's The Wave building on Friday 14 June 2024.  Please hold this date in your diaries!

Read about last year's event here. 

Insigneo Early Career Researcher (ECR) Grant/Fellowship Writing Workshop

The Insigneo ECR Committee is organising a working group centered around writing. The aim is to give ECRs the opportunity to discuss with their peers any fellowship/grant applications they might be preparing and access peer review support from senior academics in Insigneo. Meetings will be held every two months. The next one is scheduled for January 10th, 2024. The event will be in person in F13, Pam Liversidge Building. 

The event is open to all Insigneo members (register here if you are not a member), but we ask that you attend only if you are seriously committed to writing and applying for funding. If you are still gathering ideas and evaluating the funding landscape please hold your participation until you have identified a funding route.

You can register here.

South Yorkshire leads the UK’s digital healthcare revolution

An ambitious new digital healthcare hub in South Yorkshire is set to lead the UK’s digital health revolution and address inequalities in patient care. 

Led by the University of Sheffield's Insigneo Institute, in partnership with Sheffield Hallam University, the £4 million South Yorkshire Digital Health Hub will improve peoples’ health and quality of life by creating innovative digital health tools that fuse data from daily life activities with NHS data.

Launched on 24 October 2023, the centre brings together partners from across the region including: hospitals, GPs, mental health services, businesses, the South Yorkshire Integrated Care System and patient and public groups to develop technologies to address the stark health inequalities across South Yorkshire and lead the UK in the evolving digital health sector.

Watch the Director of the South Yorkshire Digital Health Hub, Professor Tim Chico from the University of Sheffield’s School of Medicine and Population Health, talk about the hub's plans and the need for digital innovations that improve healthcare here. 

The hub would like to hear your views on digital health and is actively recruiting new partners, so if you'd like to get involved in improving healthcare outcomes for everyone across the South Yorkshire region, get in touch to discuss opportunities for partnership and collaboration at sydhh@sheffield.ac.uk

Sheffield researcher selected for an European Research Council grant worth €2 million to optimise treatments for osteoporosis

Insigneo Research Theme Director for Computational Modelling in Medicine, Professor Enrico Dall’Ara from the University of Sheffield's School of Medicine and Population Health was selected among 308 researchers across Europe for this year’s ERC Consolidator Grants.

His research project, ‘Virtual Mouse and Human Twins for optimising treatments for Osteoporosis’ aims to develop and validate the first inter-species virtual twin to predict bone adaptation over time in patients given information from animal studies, using our mechanistic knowledge of the complex physical phenomena that occur during bone remodelling. This in silico approach will be used to prescreen combined pharmacological and biomechanical treatments for osteoporosis, reducing the number of animal experiments, the number of clinical trials, and the time to market of new interventions against Osteoporosis.

Child Health Technology Conference 2023

The Child Health Technology Conference took place on 8 - 9 November, with a programme of six themes:

• Technology Changing Paediatric Care and Clinical Practice
• Mind-Body Integration
• Low Cost, High Impact
• Inclusion and Involvement of Patients and Families
• Data SOS
• Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

Insigneo Executive Director Professor Jim Wild and Insigneo Research Theme Director for smart devices and sensors, Professor Tim Chico, representing the Insigneo Institute and South Yorkshire Digital Health Hub, teamed up with Dr James Taylor, Clinical Research Scientist from Google, to give an afternoon seminar and Q&A session on the theme of 'Technology Changing Paediatric Care and Clinical Practice'.

 University of Washington visit

Insigneo Deputy Director, Professor Damien Lacroix visited the University of Washington in Seattle in November to explore opportunities for collaboration in the fields of Engineering and Healthcare Technologies.

Insigneo Summer Research Programme Posters 2023

The Insigneo Summer Research Programme 2023 took place from June to September.

We hosted placements for eight University of Sheffield undergraduates to undertake a research project within the Institute each led by one of our Early Career Researchers. Projects were on a wide variety of topics related to our five research themes and students enjoyed being able to participate both on campus and remotely. 

We are very proud to present their hard work on our website.

Congratulations to Insigneo Research Theme Director for Smart devices and sensors, David King and Insigneo Advisory Group member Professor Sanja Dogramadzi on their Robotics and Automation Awards win for their Meditel project.

Congratulations to Insigneo members Dr Jennie Walsh and Dr Mark Dunning from the School of Medicine and Population Health and Luke Cleland from the Department of Psychology who are among the 39 University of Sheffield colleagues who have successfully been recognised as Fellows of the Higher Education Academy.

CSI FOCUS D-HF (Device therapies in heart failure) Conference prizes

Congratulations to Dr Frankie Varian and Dr Hamza  Zafar who won both of the two presentation prizes at the CSI FOCUS D-HF Conference for their talks on the development and use of remote monitoring devices for the treatment of pulmonary hypertension and heart failure.

Funding boost for Yorkshire MedTech industry

A major funding boost will help transform the thriving Medical Technology (MedTech) business community in Yorkshire.

The UKRI Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) investment will translate state-of-the-art research from universities into the next generation of innovative healthcare products and services, and help bring them to market.  

It will also create jobs and opportunities for future investment and economic growth in the region. 

The £5 million funding will be overseen by the University of Sheffield and University of Leeds, working with civic partners including South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, West Yorkshire Combined Authority and regional NHS Trusts. It will help to grow the Yorkshire MedTech Industry and benefit an estimated two million patients by 2040.  

£1.4 million boost for medical footwear company

Sheffield-based footwear developer, Fyous, has secured a grant to bring its medical footwear to market and fund an intensive 18-month clinical trial in conjunction with the Universities of Sheffield, Salford and Leeds, NIHR, and two NHS Trusts.

Insigneo member Dr Dinesh Selvarajah, senior lecturer in Diabetes at the University of Sheffield, will be overseeing the clinical trial.

NC3Rs project grant scheme open for applications

Do you have an idea for a new 3Rs method, tool or technology? Have an existing 3Rs method and want to demonstrate it is fit-for-purpose for wider use by the research community? Submit an application for the NC3Rs project grant scheme. Applicants should be able to demonstrate they can direct the proposed research – less experienced researchers are welcome to apply in collaboration with a more senior colleague.

Deadline for outline applications: Thursday 11 January 2024, 16.00.

Please note the Funding team will be unavailable from 15 December 2023 until 2 January 2024. Should you have any queries please contact them at 3rsgrants@nc3rs.org.uk before Friday 15 December, 12.00.

Open call for 2024 CRACK IT Challenges

Do you have an idea to improve R&D and reduce reliance on animal models or refine their use? NC3Rs are looking for experts from industry, academia and the charitable sectors with research questions that could be solved with a 3Rs driven approach. The CRACK IT team are happy to explore your early ideas with you, contact them at crackitenquiries@nc3rs.org.uk.

Deadline for applications: Friday 16 February 2024.

VPH Institute support for writing proposals

Are you writing a proposal for an in silico medicine project? Get us involved!

The VPH Institute is an open community of researchers, clinicians, healthcare professionals, and experts in computer modelling and simulation for healthcare applications. Our primary focus is on advancing the use of computational techniques in medicine to create more accurate and personalized treatment approaches. By bringing together some of the largest research groups in in silico medicine from around the world, the VPHi plays a crucial role in promoting the adoption of these innovative technologies.

We also leverage our expertise by participating to a number of EC funded projects, taking advantage of our strategic assets and long standing reputation in the community.

Survey - Computational modeling and simulation in healthcare: regulatory approval and clinical application

Are you actively involved in the realm of computational modeling and simulation?

The Avicenna Alliance is seeking your valuable insights in this survey (open until December 31, 2023):

Wish to participate?

Click here

Our aim: gather your experience on the following topics:

• use and development of in silico clinical applications;
• submission of in silico evidence to regulatory authorities or conformity assessment bodies.

Important note: this pertains to both pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
Join us in shaping the future of in silico medicine. Your input is crucial!

How digital twins may enable personalised health treatment

The Guardian recently published an article highlighting the key role digital twins are playing to make medicine genuinely personalised.

Festival of the Mind 2024: call for public engagement projects

Do you want to engage the public with your research?  Work with creatives from the region to bring your research to life?  Apply for up to £5,000 to be part of Festival of the Mind, the University of Sheffield's flagship public engagement festival.    

Festival of the Mind is a biennial celebration of our University's world-class research, showcasing collaborative projects produced by academics from the University and artistic talent from Sheffield's creative industries. Over 11 days our most exciting and cutting-edge research is shared with the public through innovative, imaginative and impactful events, performances, installations and exhibitions in venues across the city, including the wonderful Spiegeltent.

We are now accepting applications for projects to feature in the next Festival in September 2024. Funding of up to £5,000 is available.

For application guidance and to apply, please visit go to Festival of the Mind 2024: Call for public engagement projects | Public Engagement | The University of Sheffield

The deadline for applications is 5pm on Monday 29 January 2024.

Do you have news to share with us?

If you would like us to include information and/or events to this newsletter please email: news@insigneo.org (the newsletter will be issued during the 2nd week of the month, excluding January and August). 

Insigneo members - please let us know when your students are graduating so that we can celebrate their success!

Please ensure that you submit items for inclusion with a minimum of one week's notice.

Guest Lectures, Conferences & Seminars

We will share a link to our Online Training Opportunities document here each month.

Insigneo events

20  February
Insigneo seminar: Can animal learning inspire better machine learning?

27 February 
Insigneo digital twin workshop

Early March
Insigneo imaging life workshop

19 March
Insigneo healthcare data - HPC roadmap workshop

Early April
Insigneo medical device research roadmap workshop

A selection of Insigneo seminar recordings are available to view on our YouTube channel.

Other events

18 - 19 January
EDITH: First Ecosystem meeting on building the Virtual Human Twin, Paris

22 January
N8 CIR: Text-mining code demos: basic NLP

1 - 3 March 
Frontiers in Scientific Research Summit (FSRS) conference - abstract deadline 15 December

10 May
NIHR Sheffield Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) Showcase - save the date!

10 -12 July
BRS Annual Meeting 2024, Sheffield - abstract submission is open!

9 - 10 September
BORS Conference 2024, Sheffield - save the date!

For a full list of upcoming events visit: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/insigneo/overview/events

Vacancies

PhD Opportunity: Developing virtual reality for paediatric neurorehabilitation
(closing date 12 January 2024)

PhD Opportunity: Automatic analysis of nocturnal cough sound for detection and management of COPD (Code: COM-06-Ma)
(Closing date: 24 January 2024)

2 x Digital Twin posts: Senior Lecturer in digital twins & Lecturer in digital twins (numerical modelling)
(Closing date: 7 January 2024)

Publications

Fabrication and characterisation of random and aligned electrospun scaffolds to investigate hypothalamic stem/progenitor cell behaviour (Engineered Regeneration) S. Beal, I. Stewart, P. Hatton, M. Placzek, I. Ortega

Modifying pickering polymerized high internal phase emulsion morphology by adjusting particle hydrophilicity (Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects) E. Durgut, M. Zhou, B. A. Dikici, R. Foudazi, F. Claeyssens

Voxel-Wise Comparison of Co-Registered Quantitative CT and Hyperpolarised Gas Diffusion-Weighted MRI Measurements in IPF (Diagnostics) H.-F. Chan, N. D. Weatherley, A. M. Biancardi, C. S. Johns, B. A. Tahir, R. A. Karwoski, B. J. Bartholmai, S. M. Bianchi, J. M. Wild

Versatile, elastomeric and degradable polyHIPEs of poly(glycerol sebacate)-methacrylate and their application in vascular graft tissue-engineering (Materials Today Advances) S. Pashneh-Tala, J. Field, B. Fornesa, M. Molins Colomer, C. E. Jackson, M. Balcells, J. Martorell, F. Claeyssens

Regulating the formation and extent of crazing through the application of argon plasma surface functionalisation (Polymer Testing) N. T. H. Farr

Lung functional imaging (Breathe) S. Bayat, J. Wild, T. Winkler

Laboratory and free-living gait performance in adults with COPD and healthy controls (ERJ Open Research) J. Buekers, D. Megaritis, S. Koch, L. Alcock, N. Ammour, C. Becker, S. Bertuletti, T. Bonci, P. Brown, E. Buckley, S. C. Buttery, B. Caulfied, A. Cereatti, N. Chynkiamis, H. Demeyer, C. Echevarria, A. Frei, C. Hansen, J. M. Hausdorff, N. S. Hopkinson, E. Hume, A. Kuederle, W. Maetzler, C. Mazzà, E. M. Micó-Amigo, A. Mueller, L. Palmerini, F. Salis, K. Scott, T. Troosters, B. Vereijken, H. Watz, L. Rochester S. Del Din, I. Vogiatzis, J. Garcia-Aymerich