Insigneo Newsletter - February 2025

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! 

Insigneo Showcase 2025 - Registrations are open!

We're pleased to announce that registrations are now open for the Insigneo Showcase 2025 which will be held on 4 July at the University of Sheffield's The Wave building.

This full day event is an opportunity for our members, funding agencies, regulatory agencies, industrial colleagues, and other academic groups to meet and see first-hand the innovative research produced by our Institute.

The day will feature:

• A plenary talk from Professor Laoise McNamara, Head of the School of Engineering at the University of Galway;
• Sessions from our five research themes:  Biomaterials / Biomechanics / Cell engineering; Computational modelling in medicine; Imaging life; Smart devices and sensors; and Healthcare data / AI;
• Poster exhibition
• Networking opportunities with industry, funders, academics and clinicians.

The deadline for abstract submissions for the poster display is 8 April 2025.

The day is planned as an in-person event but we are offering an option to listen to the talks online if you are unable to travel to Sheffield, UK.

University of Sheffield leads new research in Precision Neurotechnologies with ARIA Funding.

The University of Sheffield is at the forefront of a national effort to revolutionise neurotechnology, having secured funding as part of a £69 million Precision Neurotechnologies initiative launched by the Advanced Research & Invention Agency (ARIA).

The ambitious program is set to transform how scientists interface with the human brain, developing next-generation tools to tackle neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders that affect one in six people in the UK, including Alzheimer's, epilepsy, and depression.

Led by Insigneo research theme director for healthcare data/AI, Dr Mahnaz Arvaneh from the School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, the project will focus on ensuring equity and inclusivity in the development and adoption of neurotechnologies.

American Society of Pediatric Neuroradiology Gold Medal awarded to Professor Paul Griffiths

Insigneo member Professor Paul Griffiths, from the University of Sheffield’s School of Medicine and Population Health, has received the American Society of Pediatric Neuroradiology's Gold Medal Award in recognition of his life’s work and contributions to the field.

THE Connect podcast: Transforming health outcomes with digital technologies

In this episode of the THE Connect podcast, host Ashton Wenborn speaks with the University of Sheffield's Professor Tim Chico, Director of the South Yorkshire Digital Health Hub and Insigneo research theme director for healthcare data/AI..

Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute Annual Congress, Rio

Insigneo member Frankie Varian presented at the Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute's Annual Congress 'PVRI 2025 Rio: Embracing Heterogeneity' which took place 29 January - 1 February 2025.  Dr Varian presented on 'Patient reported outcomes’, and learning more about implementing valid patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) for assessing health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in pulmonary arterial hypertension in a joint talk with The Pulmonary Hypertension Association.

Webinar: Shaping the Future of Healthcare: How to unlock the funding opportunities and academic expertise that can help drive your business forward

The Northern Health Science Alliance, in partnership with Innovate UK, will be
hosting a free webinar ‘Shaping the Future of Healthcare’ on Wednesday 19th March, which will explore the exciting opportunities for health businesses and
organisations to collaborate with academic institutions including NHSA member
universities, tap into new funding sources, and access world-class research and
development capabilities.

The webinar is for health entrepreneurs, established health businesses and
organisations, R&D managers, innovation leads, and investor in health tech and medical sectors.

Attendees can gain a deeper understanding of the funding opportunities and
collaboration models available through academic institutions, including NHSA
universities and learn how these partnerships can drive innovation and business
growth in the healthcare sector.

Insigneo Early Career Researcher community

ECR fellowship/grant writing Workshop

We will be running another ECR fellowship/grant writing workshop on 19 March at 4 pm.

The aim is to allow ECRs to discuss with their peers any fellowship/grant applications they might be preparing. During each session we will have one to two ECRs presenting their work, followed by a round table discussion. This group is reserved for Insigneo ECR members who are seriously considering or are in the process of writing their first grant or applying for a fellowship. Please contact Damien Lacroix (d.lacroix@sheffield.ac.uk) to express your interest in participating.

Opportunity for an ECR to join our committee as the lead for social events!

In this role, you will play a key part in fostering community connections by organizing engaging social and networking events.

If you’re passionate about building a vibrant community and have creative ideas for bringing people together, we’d love to have you on board.  Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us by emailing Sarah Black (sarah.black@sheffield.ac.uk).

Our Early Career Researcher ECR group is open to all Insigneo Members who are PhD students, postdocs, fellows, lecturers and those who self-define as an ECR.

Find out more and join

If you are not already a member of the Insigneo Institute and would like to join you can read more about the benefits and apply here: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/insigneo/membership. 

The Insigneo ECR Committee
(Malwina Matella, Neil Stewart, Juntong Lai, Hazem Toutounji, Sarah Black, Sarah Hollely, chaired by: Damien Lacroix)

We would like to introduce some of our new members who have joined the Insigneo Institute recently. 

Find out more about Insigneo membership and our members here: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/insigneo/membership 

She completed her PhD at Sheffield in 2022, with a thesis entitled 'Making Sense of Suboptimal Health (亚健康): Negotiating and Embodying the Conceptual Space of“Neither Healthy Nor Diseased”'. After her PhD, Lijiaozi received a University of Sheffield publication scholarship to further develop her ideas for publication. She was also awarded the Petrie Watson Exhibitions Prize and the Phil Strong Memorial Prize during her doctoral studies.

My PhD research focuses on Intelligent systems for predicting pre-term birth risk, based on cervical OCT images.

I completed my Bachelor's degree in computers and information engineering at the University of Mosul, Iraq, with a top student of my class.

My Master's degree was in Communication and Signal Processing from Newcastle University, UK with distinction and top student of my class.

Her transition to health economics was motivated by the desire to help address critical challenges in South Africa’s public healthcare system. Notably, Sithabiso conducted a budget impact analysis that informed the approval of South Africa's first breast cancer control policy in 2017.

As a Wellcome Trust Early Career Award Holder, she currently leads a study evaluating the costs and cost-effectiveness of reducing breast cancer diagnostic and treatment delays in South Africa. She is also a 2023/24 Union of International Cancer Control Young Leader and is dedicated to advancing evidence-based policymaking and cultivating a sustainable research culture to enhance healthcare outcomes in Africa.

This includes production of hyperpolarised xenon doses used in clinical and research studies at both RHH and NGH sites, as well as regular laboratory/system maintenance, repair and performance monitoring."

Do you have news to share with us?

If you would like us to include information and/or events to this newsletter please email: info@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

6 March
Insigneo PPIE Workshop with Grace Edwards, NIHR BRC & CRF PPIE Officer

2 June
Insigneo Seminar: Pierre-Alexis Mouthuy, University of Oxford - save the date

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

Other events

24 February
Inaugural Lectures:  Professor Enrico Dall’Ara and Professor Christine Le Maitre

7 March
14th Annual Mellanby Centre Research Day 

12 March
The Centre for Machine Intelligence (CMI) Town Hall Event

24-25 March
Physics of Life conference 

28 April
Sandpit: moving respiratory health diagnosis into the 21st century (EPSRC)

11 - 12 June
4th Child Health Technology (CHT) Conference

16 - 17 June
BIOREME: Advancing Lung Diagnostic Technologies – A Scientific Meeting, Sheffield

4 - 5 September
BioMedEng25, Glasgow

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

Vacancies

PhD Opportunity: Virtual Human Twin for predicting bone adaptation due to pharmacological and biomechanical treatments (closing date: 28 February 2025)

Publications

Symmetric normalization algorithm for estimating physiological strain in bones (European Journal of Mechanics, A/Solids) P. Henyš , E. Dall’Ara, S. Martelli

Capturing microalgae within aerosols provides carbon capture bio-functionality (Journal of CO2 Utilization) E. Elghazy, M. M. J. Davies, N. T. H. Farr, C. Rodenburg, J. R. Willmott, J. Pandhal

Pickering polymerized high internal phase emulsions: Fundamentals to advanced applications (Advances in Colloid and Interface Science) E. Durgut, F. Claeyssens

Sympathetic reinnervation in cardiac transplant recipients: Prevalence, time course, and association with long-term survival (The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation) O. J.F. Weiner, M. Das, R. H. Clayton, J. M. McComb, A. Murray, G.Parry, S. W. Lord

Mapping the amplitude and phase of dissolved 129Xe red blood cell signal oscillations with keyhole spectroscopic lung imaging (Magnetic Resonance in Medicine) J. H. Pilgrim-Morris, G. J. Collier, M. Takigawa, S. Strickland, R. Thompson, G. Norquay, N. J. Stewart, J. M. Wild

Compressed sensing reconstruction for high-SNR, rapid dissolved 129Xe gas exchange MRI (Magnetic Resonance in Medicine) J. H. Pilgrim-Morris, G. J. Collier, R. S. Munro, G. Norquay, N. J. Stewart, J. M. Wild

Individual Variability in the Structural Connectivity Architecture of the Human Brain (Journal of Neuroscience) W. Huang 黄伟杰 , H. Chen 陈豪杰 , Z. Liu 刘桢钊, X. Dong 董心怡, G. Feng 冯国政, G. Liu 刘广芳 , A. Yang 杨奡偲, Z. Zhang 张占军, A. Shmuel, L. Su 苏里, G. Ma 马国林, N. Shu 舒妮 

Automated Multicohort Mobility Assessment with an Instrumented L-test (iL-test) (IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering) J. Albites-Sanabria, P. Palumbo, I. D’Ascanio, T. Bonci, M. Caruso; F. Salis, A. Cereatti, S. Del Din, L. Alcock, A. Kuederle, A. Paraschiv-Ionescu, E. Gazit, F. Kluge, C. Kirk, M. E. Micó-Amigo, K. Scott, C. Hansen, J. Klenk, L. Schwickert, D. Megaritis, I. Vogiatzis, C. Becker, W. Maetzler, J. Hausdorff, B. Caulfield, B. Vereijken, L. Rochester, A. Muller, C. Mazzà, I. Carpinella, T. Bowman, R. De Ciechi, A. Torchio, D. Cattaneo, S. Bianchi, M. Ferrarin, P. Randi, L. Piraccini, A. Davalli, L. Chiari, L. Palmerini

Degeneration of the nucleus pulposus affects the internal volumetric strains and failure location of adjacent human metastatic vertebral bodies (Acta Biomaterialia) G. Cavazzoni, M. Pasini, C. L. Le Maitre, E. Dall'Ara, M. Palanca

Top 2024 Images in Cardiothoracic Imaging (Radiology: Cardiothoracic Imaging) D. Mastrodicasa, S. Gunasekaran, S. Alabed, K. Hanneman , G. S. Gulsin

Multicellular model of neuroblastoma proposes unconventional therapy based on multiple roles of p53 (PLoS Computational Biology) K. Y. Wertheim, R. Chisholm, P. Richmond, D. Walker

Sensitivity analysis of closed-loop one-chamber and four-chamber models with baroreflex (PLoS Computational Biology) K. Tlałka, H. Saxton, I. Halliday, X. Xu, A. Narracott, D. Taylor, M. Malawski

Assessing Lung Ventilation and Bronchodilator Response in Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease with 19F MRI (Radiology) B. J. Pippard, M. A. Neal, C. W. Holland, A. M. Maunder, I. Forrest, R. A. Lawson, H. F. Fisher, J. N. S. Matthews, J. M. Wild, A. J. Simpson, P. E. Thelwall

openBF: an open-source finite volume 1D blood flow solver (Physiological Measurement) I. Benemerito, A. Melis, A. Wehenkel, A. Marzo 

A standardized MRI phantom for dissolved phase 129Xe MRI (Journal of Magnetic Resonance Open) M. Filkins, A. Harrison, G. J. Collier, G. Norquay, J. M. Wild, S. P. Rigby, G. E. Pavlovskaya, T. Meersmann