News and events
Open days and networking meetings play a very important part to our initiative as they aim to bring together researchers from different parts of the University, who may never meet, to visit and see what is going on within their own campus ultimately improving communication across disciplines.
Keele supports a number of major initiatives in age-related research, supported by the research councils and leading charities.
More than 60 members of staff from various faculties attended the first Bridging the Gaps supported workshop on ageing at the Sustainability Hub on 1 February 2012. The aim of the event was to raise the profile of inter-disciplinary work in the field of ageing currently undertaken across the University. Keele supports a number of major initiatives in age-related research, supported by the research councils and leading charities.
The purpose of the day was to explore the contribution of different disciplines to understanding population ageing, and to assess ways of taking forward research collaborations which would demonstrate the strength of University activities in a priority area for research funding. Presentations were drawn from all of the faculties within the University, and included epidemiology, chemistry, medicine, biology, law, economics, psychology, English and sociology.
Professor Carol Jagger, from Newcastle University, the Symposium's external speaker, talked about the social and health challenges associated with ageing populations and the important role of inter-disciplinary research. The day concluded with a discussion reviewing ways of developing joint grant submissions drawing from work across a number of research institutes and centres.
ISTM's contribution to the Symposium included lectures from members:
Prof Christine Roffe - Stroke Research in Stoke-on-Trent and Beyond
Prof Alicia El Haj - EPSRC Healthcare programmes - technological advances for an ageing community.
EPSRC has awarded the 3-year "Bridging the Gaps" project an extension of £50,000.
All members of Keele’s 3ME Initiative had cause to celebrate in early July, because the three-year collaborative “Bridging the Gaps” project been awarded an extension with a further £50,000 committed from the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to continue it until summer 2012. The 3ME Initiative builds links in Modelling Methods for Medical Engineering between biomedical engineers, mathematical and geophysical modellers based in the Research Institutes of ISTM and EPSAM. Several novel projects and publications have already demonstrated the value of the Initiative to its sponsors.
At the latest 3ME Initiative Research Retreat, held on Monday 4 July at Wychwood Park golf centre near Crewe, all the pilot research projects supported as a result of previous residential “Sandpits” gave poster presentations on their progress so far. The standard was very high, so two winners were declared by the judges, Prof David Smith FRS & Mr Mark Smith (ISTM) and Dr Theo Kyriacou (EPSAM).
In the photograph the winners, ISTM PhD student Miss Angeliki Fouriki and ISTM Reader Dr Ying Yang, are seen with their posters, holding the certificates they received on behalf of their co-authors. Each winning poster received a prize of £250, contributed to the event by ISTM.