Double grant success for Ages and Stages

Professor Miriam Bernard, Ages & Stages Project Leader and Director of Keele's Centre for Social Gerontology, has been awarded two grants by the AHRC (Arts & Humanities Research Council) under their 'Cultural Value Project' scheme. 

A Research Development Award, exploring 'the cultural value of older people's experiences of theatre making', will enable Prof Bernard and Dr Jill Rezzano (Head of Education at the New Vic Theatre) to extend their research partnership and continue their innovative work with the Ages and Stages Theatre Company.

Members of the Company will conduct research with each other about their experiences of being involved with 'Ages and Stages' since 2009, and about their understanding of the cultural value of theatre making. It will lead to the devising of a new small scale performance piece to be shared at an invited symposium at the New Vic in May 2014.

Alongside this Prof Bernard, and Research Associate Dr Michelle Rickett, will undertake a Critical Review on 'ageing, drama and creativity'. The review will document what is known more broadly about older people's experiences and understandings of the cultural value of theatre making, and its findings will also form part of the event in May 2014.

Leverhulme Grant

Dr Chris Stiff, School of Psychology, and his collaborator, Dr Harriet Rosenthal at Durham University, have been awarded a Research Project grant of £71,291 from the Leverhulme Trust for a project entitled "Campus Citizen Behaviours: Predicting students' pro-social behaviours". 

This project will examine what factors influence students' positive on-campus behaviours (e.g. recycling), and will ascertain whether it is possible to increase the likelihood of these behaviours occurring to enhance the University experience. 

The project take place over the next academic year at four Higher Education sites across the UK, and the findings will be presented at the 2014 British Psychological Society Social Section conference.

Sydney Collaboration on Leaning Disability Project

Professor Sue Read has collaborated with colleagues from the University of Sydney on a learning disability research project awarded £183,914 by the ARC.

Professor Read, Professor of Learning Disability Nursing, School of Nursing & Midwifery, RISS, is the UK PI on a successful grant application for a 36 months research study entitled 'A toolkit to build the capacity of disability staff to assist adults with intellectual disability to understand and plan for their end of life'. This collaborative research study, led by Professor Roger Stancliffe, University of Sydney, has been awarded £183,914 by the Australian Research Council (Linkage fund) in conjunction with the Sunshine organisation (an Australian charity).

People with intellectual disabilities (ID) are living much longer than previously, yet this welcome news has various consequences. Because adults with ID now frequently outlive their parents (who have been their primary care providers), rarely have children to support them in old age, and typically have limited care from siblings, they rely heavily on continuous support from disability services in later life, and throughout associated ill health experiences. Preliminary research shows that adults with ID often lack access to pertinent information about death and have limited opportunities to discuss their concerns and wishes around end of life care preferences. The thrust of this research project is to design and trial a toolkit to train disability staff to assist adults with an ID to better understand and plan for their end of life. This mixed methods study will determine whether, following intervention, people with an ID are better able to understand and plan for the end of life. Assessing depression, anxiety and fear of dying over time will yield the first robust research evidence regarding concerns that discussing death could lead to emotional distress

Untitled Stories of Volunteering

Professor Mihaela Kelemen (PI) and Dr Anita Mangan (CI), KMS/RI for Social Sciences and Humanities, have been awarded an AHRC follow on grant (£90K) for Phase 2 of their project entitled 'Untold Stories of Volunteering: A Cultural Animation Approach'.

Working closely with volunteers from Staffordshire and beyond and other stakeholders involved in volunteering, particularly the New Vic Theatre and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, the project co-designs and co-produces untold stories of volunteering coming from a variety of sources: 'voluntolds', professional volunteer managers, disabled volunteers, Roma volunteers, volunteers with bad experiences and corporate volunteers including civil servants and MPs.

A documentary drama will be performed at the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme, the Richard Attenborough Centre for Disability and the Arts, University of Leicester, and the Houses of Parliament, London.

Seeing the sun in a new light

On behalf of Keele Observatory, astronomers, Jacco van Loon, and Joana Oliveira have been successful in securing funding for a large (15cm aperture) solar telescope, equipped with a special hydrogen-alpha filter that allows one to see the eruptions in the solar atmosphere.

After awards had been made towards the project by the Royal Astronomical Society (£1,000) and Keele Key Fund (£5,000), the Science and Technology Facilities Council have pledged the remainder of the £10,000 project.

The telescope will be taken to public places to reach people who may not otherwise have engaged with science, but it will normally reside at Keele Observatory for the benefit of visitors and students.

AHRC Early Career Research Fellowship

Dr Anthony Carrigan, Research Institute for Humanities, has been awarded a prestigious AHRC Early Career Fellowship for a project entitled Representing Postcolonial Disaster: Conflict, Consumption, Reconstruction.

The project's overarching aim is to complete a comparative study on literary representations of postcolonial disasters that will bring interdisciplinary disaster studies into sustained dialogue with humanities-based research, and seeks to inform future developments in post-disaster policy and practice.

The award, which lasts for 24 months, will fund the writing of a monograph and other collaborative academic outputs, alongside a range of leadership development and international networking activities, public engagement and impact events. 

Bridging the gap

Professor Mihaela Kelemen (PI) and Anita Mangan (CI), KMS/RI for Social Sciences, have been awarded £19K by the AHRC to showcase the results of their AHRC collaborative grant to the Connected Communities Showcase in Edinburgh (July 4) and to further display their installation in cultural venues in Stoke-on-Trent, Sheffield and Newcastle-on-Tyne.

The starting point of this interactive audio-video installation is that academic theories are not ends in themselves; rather that they must serve the needs of the communities studied.  The interactive audio-visual installation designed in collaboration with Sue Moffat, from the New Vic Theatre (Newcastle-under-Lyme), takes people on an imaginary voyage where they experience lost worlds and imagine new ones.  They step into a specially constructed boat decorated with images of the lost worlds of coal, steel, earth and water - images created by participants in the Keele/New Vic Theatre workshop, entitled 'Bridging the gap between theory and practice'.

There will be an audio projection of the stories collected at the workshop, along with a music and light display to suggest that vessels may encounter storms but they come out strongly at the other end and are able to build bridges between past, present and future and get to the shore safely.

Prestigious Senior Lectureship

Dr Kika Konstantinou, a physiotherapist and clinical academic based at the Arthritis Research UK Primary Care Centre and the Haywood Hospital, has been awarded a prestigious Senior Clinical Lectureship by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

This award provides support for sustained personal and clinical academic development at a high level.

Dr Konstantinou's award will also facilitate high quality physiotherapy research and leadership in clinical practice as well as develop further research capacity within allied health professionals. Her research focuses on back pain and sciatica.

She is currently leading the first primary care clinical observational cohort of patients with back and leg pain including sciatica and/or suspected sciatica (the ATLAS study; Konstantinou K et al (2012) in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders 2012, 13:4).

The study will describe the characteristics of patients with sciatica and suspected sciatica and identify the key factors that predict clinical outcomes over 12 months.

The award will support Dr Konstantinou over the next five years.

NIHR Funding for Keele's Research Design Service guaranteed for another five years

Since 2008 Keele has been part of the NIHR funded RDS national network. By offering free specialist methodological advice in areas including statistics, health services research, mixed methods research, health economics, and patient and public involvement in research, the RDS helps health and social care researchers to formulate high quality research grant proposals. The Keele RDS serves researchers from across Staffordshire and Shropshire and since 2008 the support offered has led to grant successes (mainly for researchers from Keele and/or UHNS) that have generated income in excess of £3 million. Thanks to the NIHR, RDS support is now guaranteed for a further five years from October 2013.

The Keele RDS is hosted by the Institute of Primary Care and Health Sciences and the core RDS team includes Roger Beech (Director), Julius Sim (Assistant Director), John Bankart, Clare Jinks, Faye Foster, Lucy Riley and Debbie Cooke (other Keele staff who supported the bid for ongoing funding were Peter Croft and Rhian Hughes).

The RDS team are available to offer advice on formulating research questions; building an appropriate research team; designing a study; involving patients and the public in research; appropriate methodologies (quantitative (including statistics), qualitative, health economics); identifying the resources and costs required for a successful project; identifying suitable funding sources; regulatory issues and writing lay summaries.

Researchers who are preparing grant submissions can access RDS support, by going to http://www.rds-wm.nihr.ac.uk/web/guest/keele-hub-contact and registering a query.

 

 

MRC Centenary Awards

As part of the Medical Research Council's Centenary celebrations, Keele received an extra award of £30,000 for the benefit of newly-recruited scientists and medics at the start of their independent research careers.  Keele received the award due to the number of MRC research students it hosts and the training environment it offers in biomedical sciences.
 
Following two competitions, connected to the well-established "Bridging the Gaps" grants and Keele ACORN scheme, the following members of the Research Institute for Science & Technology in Medicine (ISTM) have received funding for their medical research ideas (in alphabetical order):

- Dr Ed Chadwick, Lecturer in Biomedical Engineering, for a new collaborative project on "Continuous control of advanced myoelectric prostheses" involving Dr Theo Kyriacou & Dr Cath Bücher.

- Dr Ruoli Chen, Lecturer in Clinical Pharmacy & Pharmacology, for a PhD project on "Proteomic Analysis of Thrombi Retrieved from Cerebral Arteries of Patients with Acute Ischaemic Stroke"

- Dr Wen-Wu Li, Lecturer in Analytical Biochemistry, for his novel work on "Plant-derived anti-infective molecules: a Keele-based nexus for their identification, characterisation and development" involving Dr Paul Horrocks, Prof Trevor Greenhough and Dr Tony Curtis.

- Dr Mark Skidmore, Lecturer in Biochemistry, for a PhD project on "Next generation, anticoagulant, low molecular weight heparins".

Professor Mark Ormerod, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research & Enterprise), who is leading the activity on behalf of young researchers in biomedical sciences, congratulated them by saying "Keele is very grateful to the MRC for providing this extra support for some of our outstanding early-career researchers recruited into the Schools of Medicine, Pharmacy and Life Sciences. They have put forward some truly novel, high quality medical projects and we want to encourage them to develop these into new publications and new strengths in Keele's research over the next few years." 

Leverhulme International Fellowship

Professor Matthias Klaes, Keele Management School, has been awarded a highly competitive Leverhulme International Academic Fellowship to support his on-going research related to digital history of economics collections.
 
The prestigious award (£22K) will allow him to spend time at the Centre for History of Political Economy at Duke University, US and liaise with the Roy Rosenzweig Centre for History and New Media at George Mason University.

Following his recent Headship of Keele Management School, Professor Klaes is set to join the School of Business at the University of Dundee as Dean and Professor for History and Philosophy of Economics, retaining his longstanding involvement in Keele's Forum for Philosophical Research.

Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award

Alicia El Haj, Professor of Cell Engineering in the Faculty of Health and Director of the Institute of Science & Technology in Medicine, has received the prestigious Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award. 

This is a personal award of five years duration given by the World's oldest scientific academy in recognition of outstanding senior scientists.  The award recognises Alicia's research achievements in the field of stem cell biology and the associated enabling technologies for cell therapy that underpin regenerative medicine.   This technology provides the ability to replace or regenerate a patient's own cells or organs to restore function as Alicia's work in disorder of bone and connective tissue has shown.  The concept of growing cells, often on inert or biodegradable scaffolds to create entire new organs is fast becoming a reality. 

Her research is at the sharp end of molecular medicine and is underpinned by a strong desire to support and train the next generation of researchers as evidence by her commitment to training PhD and postdoctoral students, including her role as co-lead of the Doctoral Training Centre in conjunction with colleagues at Nottingham and Loughborough. 

In recognising Alicia's achievement, PVC and Dean of Health, Professor Andy Garner noted that both RI Directors in the Faculty were now in receipt of highly prestigious national awards following Professor Elaine Hay's Senior Clinical Investigator award by NIHR.

Marie Curie Fellowship for Keele Academic

Dr Sorin Baiasu, SPIRE (RI Social Sciences), has secured a prestigious Marie Curie Fellowship, under the European Commission's Framework Programme 7 for research and development.


 This 'Intra-European Fellowship' will bring a researcher from Kocaeli University in Turkey, Dr Mehmet Demiray, to work on a project with Sorin for 24 months, starting in September 2013.

Sorin, a prominent scholar in the field of Kantian practical philosophy, will lead the team and Dr Brian Doherty, a well-established scholar in the field of political sociology from Keele, is research advisor.

The research will deal with the problematical relations between modern law and religious commitments, as they have been arising in contemporary European societies and Turkey, e.g. the French ban on face-veils, Köln state-court's decision against boys' circumcision, the new Turkish law on education envisioning courses on the Koran and the life of Mohammed the prophet in public schools, and Turkish government's recent proposal of a law banning abortion and caesarean-births.

Marie Curie Fellowships are very competitive. The deadline for proposals this year is 14 August 2013.

British Academy Grant Awarded

The British Academy has awarded £9,938 to Dr Alena Audzeyeva, Economics and Finance Group, Keele Management School, to conduct a study investigating the predictability of sovereign emerging markets credit spreads.

This is a collaborative research project with Professor Ana-Maria Fuertes from Cass Business School, City University. As the recent sovereign financial crises demonstrated, the risks attached to sovereign debt are poorly understood. Securitised emerging market debt which is dominated by sovereign borrowers reached over $7 trillion in 2010.

Given large holdings of such debt by financial institutions, the mismanagement of associated risks can lead to systemic bank failures and financial crises. The project will investigate the determinants of sovereign emerging market credit spreads which serve as the market-based gauge of sovereign risk and build a credit spread forecasting model. The findings will improve our understanding of sovereign risk and will be of direct relevance to financial institutions and also marker regulators and policy makers.

Preventing death by indifference - £52,300 award

The award winning access to healthcare Toolkit for generic healthcare staff supporting people with a learning disability in acute care settings is now three years old and requires timely updating.

Funding has been awarded by the West Midland's LETC to enable a collaborative working group, led by Professor Sue Read, School of Nursing and Midwifery and involving people with a learning disability, parents, clinicians, advocates and academics at Keele to update the existing Toolkit for implementation across local UHNS NHS Trust and Staffordshire hospitals (thus expanding its local use).

New themes will include important contemporary areas such as safeguarding; dementia; visiting the GP; having complex health needs; and autism; the funding will also enable formal evaluation of the Toolkit's impact from an individual, family, and healthcare professional perspective.

The ultimate aim of this project it to build on the strengths of the existing Toolkit and develop, design and update the contents so that it remains fit for contemporary healthcare practice.

Keele astrophysicist co-investigator on multi-million dollar survey

Professor Coel Hellier of Keele's Astrophysics Group is a co-investigator on a major new grant for 4.83 million dollars awarded by the Qatar National Research Fund. 

The grant will develop the Qatar Exoplanet Survey into a major international collaboration with new survey facilities looking for transiting extrasolar planets. While most of the money will be spent internationally, with little coming to the UK, Professor Hellier brings to the team experience and expertise developed through the WASP project.
 
This grant is also significant for the development of scientific research in Qatar and the surrounding region. 

Major Award for ISTM Research Group

Professor William Farrell, Dr Derek Mattey, Dr Jon Packham, Dr Peter Dawes and Dr John Glossop have been awarded a grant by the Haywood Rheumatism Research and Development Foundation for a bench-to-bedside research project titled "Epigenetic mechanisms in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis".

The grant represents a major long-term investment in research in ISTM by the local charity based at the Haywood Hospital in Burslem. The three-year project will build on exciting preliminary genome-wide DNA methylation data based on the analysis of approximately 450,000 gene-specific candidate sites in more than 21,000 genes in three different cell populations that impact on rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
 
The research will analyse and validate the methylation of these sites/genes in a larger independent cohort of RA patients. The team will then conduct a prospective study investigating methotrexate therapy and DNA methylation in RA. The findings from these studies will increase our understanding of this disease and perhaps lead to improvement in long term clinical management strategies.
 
Keele staff in the research includes Professor Farrell, Dr Mattey and Dr Glossop, together with consultant rheumatologists, Dr Dawes and Dr Packham, based at the Haywood Hospital. 

ESRC Grant for project on Climate Policy and Political Parties

Professor Robert Ladrech (SPIRE) and Professor Neil Carter (University of York) have been successful in securing an ESRC grant for a project on Climate Policy and Political Parties.

Professor Ladrech, as Principal Investigator, will lead the comparative study, which is a two-year project that aims to understand and explain the way mainstream political parties in Western Europe develop their positions on climate change policy.

It will examine the impact on party policy development of domestic factors, including internal party dynamics and party system competition, environmental and business interests, and external factors notably European Union legislation and international commitments.

Research into educational attainment

Professor Farzana Shain and Professor Steve Cropper, together with Dr Ruth Dann of MMU, have been awarded £50,406 by Stoke-on-Trent City Council to conduct research into Key Stage One educational attainment. While attainment at the end of Early Years is improving, this is not being reflected in pupil outcomes at the end of Key Stage One. 
 
Based on existing successful strategies and initiatives, the team, in collaboration with schools will design, deliver and evaluate a set of targeted initiatives to improve attainment in reading, writing and maths. The project will draw on wider expertise within the School of Public Policy and Professional Practice at Keele including Diane Swift and Dr Jane Essex who supported the team in securing the contract.

Inspire Grant for Medical School

The Keele School of Medicine has been awarded a two year INSPIRE grant (£10,000) - a funding programme co-ordinated by the Academy of Medical Sciences and supported by the Wellcome Trust.  The scheme constitutes part of the academy's portfolio of activities "aimed at nurturing the next generation of medical researchers".

INSPIRE aims to engage medical students with basic/clinical research and encourage students to consider research careers.  Coordinated by Dr Sam Hider (Primary Care Sciences) and Dr Divya Chari (Institute for Science and Technology in Medicine) together with two 5th year medical students Sohel Samad and Paul Nderitu, the grant will support a diverse range of activities including the setting up a student-led research network and promotion of research opportunities to students via a dedicated website and links to national student academic societies.  

The grant will also support a competitive summer studentship scheme, hosted by the research institutes of Primary Care and Science and Technology in Medicine, that have supported the scheme through matched funding, and an annual student Research Showcase featuring invited external speakers.

Through this initiative, the medical school aims to foster and evolve an innovative research strand within the medical curriculum.

Grant Charity Funding for Age-Related Hearing Loss Research

A cheque for £39,000 was presented to Dr David Furness, of ISTM, by Dr Sandy Stewart on behalf of the Freemason's Grand Charity last Friday.  The presentation took place in the Huxley Building despite the number of attendees being depleted because of the inclement weather.  The visitors were greeted by Dr Peter Thomas, deputy head of the School of Life Sciences.

The award is for Dr Furness to continue his work on age-related hearing loss and the use of stem cells to try to prevent it.  It follows a previous three-year award by the same charity through Deafness Research UK.

Medical Institute Awards for Staff and Students

Staff and students from Keele attended a prize giving event at North Staffordshire Medical Institute to formally receive grant and performance awards.

Staff awards went to Dr Bernadette Bartlam, Dr Linda Machin and Professor Julius Sim who are developing work identifying vulnerability in grief.  Their work touches on some of the most important issues in research being pursued with the Research Institutes for Social Sciences and Primary Care and Health Sciences.  People who are vulnerable in their grief (by whatever cause) are significant users of health and social care services.  The effective identification of such individuals and the appropriate targeting of interventions and resources are crucial, therefore, to both high quality care and cost efficient services.  This innovative research seeks to validate the Adult Attitude to Grief Scale, devised and developed by Dr Machin, as a measure providing evidence of such vulnerability.  The importance of this work was acknowledged in the award of a development grant by NSMI of £4,500.

Dr Sue Sherman and Professor Michael Murray, RI for Social Sciences, with colleagues from University Hospital of North Staffordshire, were awarded £9,703 to "identify and promote best practice in communicating to patients the results of cervical screening history reviews following diagnosis of cervical cancer".

Many women who develop cervical cancer will have had cervical smears.  It is a national requirement that all women are offered the results of a complete review of their cervical screening history following a diagnosis of cervical cancer.  However, up to 20% of patients can have incorrectly reported screening tests, which may have prevented the earlier detection and treatment of their cervical cancer.  Despite the potential for these review meetings to cause distress or conversely to be an opportunity for transparency, this is the first research to be conducted exploring patient' experiences.

Two medical students were also presented with awards: 2011/12 Year 2 Medical Institute Prize for Best Performance in the Summative Assessments Eleanor Johns; 2011/12 Year 4 Medical Institute Prize for Best Performance in the Year 4 OSCE Assessments Laura Davis.

Royal Society Grant

Dr Aleksandar Radu of the Birchall Centre and EPSAM cluster, has been awarded Royal Society Research Grant of £8,990.

The grant will help development of exciting research on application of hybrid materials in chemical sensors.

The long term goal of the research is to develop "smart" sensors whose functionality can be modulated using external stimulitherby enabling users to adapt their sensors to the demands of analysis.

This project would examine the ability of ionic fluids to tune the functionality of ionophore-based sensors.  The focus will be on synthesis of tunable ionic liquids and elucidation of mechanisms under which they influence the response of these sensors.

Three new AHRC Awards for Keele Management School

Professor Mihaela Kelemen and Dr Anita Mangan, Keele Management School, have received two AHRC awards as part of the prestigious Connected Communities programme. The awards stem from an initial AHRC study entitled 'Exploring personal communities: A review of volunteering processes'.
 
The first award (with Dr Martin Phillips, University of Leicester) is a Development Project Grant entitled 'Untold stories of volunteering: A cultural animation project'.
This project aims to explore unspoken stories of volunteering by employing a cultural animation approach to ensure that such stories are co-produced from design/scripting through to production and performance with and by the volunteers themselves.  Working closely with the New Vic Theatre, volunteers from the Stoke-on-Trent area and NCVO (National Council for Voluntary Organisations), the grant explores and enacts (via a documentary drama) grass root stories and experiences of volunteering coming from the local community.
 
The second award is a Follow-on Grant for a project entitled 'Bridging the Gap between Academic Theory and Community Relevance: Fresh Insights from American Pragmatism'. Together with co-investigators at Southampton, Brunel and the Open University, and international partners in Japan, the main aim of this collaboration is to explore collectively the strengths and limitations of individual current projects in addressing and bridging the gap between academic knowledge and community relevance. Community partners on the project are New Vic Borderlines, The Glass-House Community Led Design and the Mondo Challenge Foundation.
 
In addition, Professor Kelemen is co-investigator on a Development Project Grant awarded to Brunel University on 'Unearthing hidden community assets'. 

Leverhulme Trust Research Award

A collaborative project between the Research Institute for Humanities at Keele, Southampton University and King's College London has secured a Leverhulme Turst research award of £247,692 to continue and complete a digital edition of the records of English administration in medieval Gascony.

In 1360, following Edward III's military victories, Aquitaine was transferred to the English crown in full sovereignty, and become a lordship akin to Ireland covering much of south-western France.  The project explores this important protoempire through innovative web-based presentation and analysis of the Gascon Rolls held in the National Archives in London.  Dr Simon Harris, currently at the Universite de Bordeaux 3, will join colleagues in History for the next two years to complete the critical editorial process of transcription and translation of the Latin texts.  These form the essential foundation of a digital edition combining text, maps, images and interpretation designed to reach an international audience, and reflect Keele's longstanding reputation in medieval palaeography.

Keele's Arthritis Research UK Centre of Excellence Status Renewed

Keele's Arthritis Research UK Centre of Excellence status has, following extensive external review, been renewed for a further five years with funding of £2.2million.

The five-year strategy for the Centre is to produce research that will underpin a shift in the way musculoskeletal disorders are managed in primary care management; away from a narrow focus on disease and reactive treatments (dealing with today's problems as presented by patients), to an increasing emphasis on:

  • pro-active, positive approaches to seeking out patients needing more support for self-management, as well as those needing more input from doctors or other health professionals, and developing and testing new ways of organising primary care which better meets these needs and takes the physical, psychological and social needs of patients into account
  • using our research into which physical, psychological and social factors predict what impact that musculoskeletal pain has on their every-day lives to define groups of patients with similar characteristics, and to match these patients with appropriate treatments, thus making sure that the right patients get the right treatment in a timely manner.

Professor Elaine Hay, Director, Arthritis Research UK Primary Care Centre at Keele, said "We will achieve this through three research programmes, addressing the two most common musculoskeletal problems (osteoarthritis and chronic musculoskeletal pain), and the two most common inflammatory diseases (gout and polymyalgia rheumatica) presenting to primary care.  Each programme brings together our clinical expertise in primary care with our strengths in observational research, clinical trials and qualitative research."

International award for Keele Researcher

Dr Matthew O'Brien, of the Lennard-Jones Laboratories and SMC cluster, has received a Thieme Chemistry Journal Award for 2013.

This international award recognises promising chemistry researchers, particularly in the field of synthetic organic chemistry, at an early stage in their academic career.  Awardees are chosen by the distinguished editorial boards of the Synthesis, Synlett and Synfacts journals.

Deafness Research UK Award

Dr Dave Furness, ISTM, has received a grant from the charity Deafness Research UK for approximately £15,000 to study the hair cells of the inner ear which detect sound.  The hair cells are highly sensitive to very quiet sounds and have a specialised region of tiny hairs at their tops that detect vibrations.  The method of detecting these vibrations involves and unknown protein ion channel.

The study uses Keele's high resolution electron microscopes to examine changes in mutant hair cells.  The work is in collaboration with Professor CM Hackney (visiting professor at the University of Sheffield) and Professor Robert Fettiplace, of the University of Wisconsin Madison.