Award Highlights
RC 1NOV11 13
Award highlights
iSS
Awarding body: MRC
Title: “Experiencing and managing HIV/AIDS in later life: social support, mental health and quality of life”
PI: Dr Dana Rosenfeld
Dr Dana Rosenfeld, in conjunction with colleagues at the University of Westminster, South Kensington and Chelsea Mental Health Centre, the Health Protection Agency and Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, has been awarded £211,316 by the Medical Research Council. The study, which will draw on expertise from colleagues in social science, medicine and the HIV/AIDS community, will investigate the issues surrounding the quality of life, mental health and social support needs of people living with HIV/AIDS and how their different histories and circumstances shape how they experience and manage HIV/AIDS in later life. The new knowledge gained will then be used to develop interventions to improve these aspects in the lives of older people living with HIV/AIDS
Awarding Body: Higher Education Academy
Title: Teaching Geography from Texts / Reading the World 2
PI: Dr Deidre Mckay
Dr Deidre Mckay has received two awards from the Higher Education Academy for £10,300 and £12,420, respectively, to carry out research to identify barriers to the widespread incorporation of literary techniques in Geography undergraduate training and to develop a template for curriculum redesign that incorporate literary material as one of the many valid types of data in Geographical study. The project ultimately aims to enhance graduate skills, increase student and staff awareness of cultural and environmental diversity and develop teaching materials and transferable teaching strategies.
iHumanities
Awarding Body: AHRC
Title: “MAES* Towards Structured Interactive Immersive Musical Experience”
PI: Prof Rajmil Fischman
Prof Rajmil Fischman has been awarded a Fellowship of £96,211 to enable music performance by using natural hand actions, furthering the possibilities afforded by game controllers. It will implement a self contained ‘Manual Actions Expressive System’ (MAES) consisting of a digital glove controlled by specialised software for the creation of musical gestures, resulting from tracking and analysing hand position, rotation and finger bending. The technology will allow the performers to concentrate on natural actions from daily use of hands. Thus, it will allow individuals who would not have had the opportunity otherwise, to engage actively in music making.
*MAES = Manual Actions Expressive System
Awarding Body: AHRC
Title: “Late-life Creativity and the 'new old age': Arts & Humanities and Gerontology in Critical Dialogue”
PI: Prof David Amigoni
Prof David Amigoni, in association with King’s College London, has been awarded £35,664 to bring together a network of scholars in arts and humanities and in critical gerontology, along with creative artists and performers, social care practitioners, and older people to investigate ‘late-life’ creativity, how it might be defined and how if differs from creativity at earlier phases of life. One area that will be considered is a comparison of the style of writers', artists' or composers' final works, in relation to their earlier outputs, and the practicalities of their creativity in old age and/or the proximity of death.
iEPSAM
Awarding Body: EPSRC
Title: A Combined Computational and Benchtop Chemistry Approach to a Model of the Formation, Growth and Precipitation of
Hydroxyaluminosilicates.
PI: Dr Chris Exley
Dr Chris Exley has been awarded £291,631 for a three year project to investigate the formation of hydroxyaluminosilicates, in particular with respect to the role this chemistry plays and has played in biochemical evolution. The project will involve developing a computational model of the kinetics of hydroxyaluminosilicates formation. Hydroxyaluminosilicates are critical secondary minerals in the biogeochemical cycles of both aluminium and silicon and thus this chemistry plays an important role in the biological availability of silicon and aluminium, keeping aluminium out of biota and thus acting as a natural antagonist to the potential toxicity of aluminium
Awarding Body: NERC
Title: Scales of preservation and root causes of mantle heterogeneities in the Iapetan Ocean convecting upper mantle
PI: Dr Brian O'Driscoll
Dr. Brian O'Driscoll has been awarded a NERC New Investigator Grant of £81,550, the first such award under this scheme to be made to iEPSAM. The project, in collaboration with scientists from University College Dublin, the University of Maryland (USA) and SCRIPPS Institute for Oceanography (USA) will examine the manner in which evidence of the formation and destruction of an ancient ocean (Iapetus) is preserved in the underlying oceanic mantle. To achieve these goals, very precise measurements of platinum-group elements (including osmium isotopes) will be made on samples of ophiolites (which represent fragments of ancient oceanic mantle) that occur in both Scotland and Norway.
iSTM
Awarding Bodies: NHS NIHR RfPB and Baxter Healthcare Corporation
Title: Encapsulating Peritoneal Sclerosis
PI: Prof Simon Davies
Professor Simon Davies has recently been awarded £246,000. This study will bring together world-wide experience from established cohort studies in the UK and Australia to provide critical evidence to underpin a Patient Decision Aid that is being developed to improve renal patients’ choice of dialysis modality. The study will facilitate patients and their clinical teams in their decision as to whether they should continue on peritoneal dialysis or switch to haemodialysis in order to avoid encapsulating peritoneal sclerosis, which is a serious complication of peritoneal dialysis.
Building on the NHS NIHR success, Baxter (a leading US Healthcare company) has awarded $359,000 for a study to investigate biomarkers that indicate the development of peritoneal fibrosis which ultimately leads to ultrafiltration failure and contributes to reduced patient and technique survival and can lead, less commonly but more seriously, to encapsulating peritoneal sclerosis.
Awarding Body: Arthritis Research UK
Title: Arthritis Research UK Tissue Engineering Centre
PI: Prof Sally Roberts
ARUK has awarded £713,417 for a five year research programme into osteoarthritis. Cell therapy research teams at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic and District Hospital NHS Trust will work on specific projects aimed at driving forward a new treatment for osteoarthritis.
The first project is investigating patients who have had cell therapy for cartilage damage and will research the factors which enhance recovery to see if it has delayed the start of osteoarthritis more than other treatments. Later a clinical trial will be run comparing the use of bone marrow stem cells with the alternative treatment of implanting cartilage cells.
Keele is a key player in the collaborative ARUK TE Centre, led by Newcastle University and involving York and Aberdeen and launched in early October. This is the second ARUK Centre in which Keele is involved, the first being its Primary Care Centre which opened in 2008.
iPCHS
In the context of research programmes funded by the Arthritis Research UK Centre Grant, two NIHR and one ARUK programme grants, we have focused on building research capacity among our doctoral and post-doctoral staff, and on developing the research trajectories of our mid-career academics by supporting individual clinicians and research methodologists to apply for personal fellowships.
NIHR National School of Primary Care Research (NSPCR) Postdoctoral Fellowships
Milisa Blagojevic: Biostatistics, £240,000
Sara Muller: Epidemiology, £240,000
NIHR NSPCR Doctoral Fellowships
Mehuli Ndlovu: Biostatistics, £84,000
Priyanke Chandratre: Clinical Rheumatology, £84,000
As part of our strategy to strengthen our research capacity in General Practice, and building on the fact that we host one of the NIHR Clinical Academic Fellowship Schemes in General Practice (where GPs in vocational training are hosted in an academic department to complete a Masters research training and to develop a research topic for doctoral training and fellowship grants), two of our GPs have been successful in gaining fellowship awards:
NIHR In-Practice GP Fellowship
Toby Helliwell: General Practitioner
Title: Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR) GP Study
Amount: £99,008
NIHR Doctoral Fellowship
Vicky Welsh: General Practitioner
Title: Multisite pain in older people
Amount: £429,949
Two members of Keele's School of Nursing and Midwifery have been supported to apply for fellowships as part of our joint research capacity development strategy with the Faculty’s Schools
NIHR Clinical Doctoral Fellowship
Andrew Finney: Nurse
Title: A model Osteoarthritis consultation in primary care for practice nurses and allied health professionals
Amount: £303,683
Julie Green: Nurse
Title: Chronic venous leg ulceration and health related quality of life
Amount: £116,295
Finally Christian Mallen has been awarded an ARUK Clinician Scientist award - the first time this fellowship has been awarded to a non lab-based scientist. The Fellowship will enable Christian to extend the Centre’s research programme into the new area of early primary care management of inflammatory rheumatological diseases
ARUK Clinician Scientist Award
Christian Mallen: General Practitioner
Title: Missed opportunities to improve the management of common musculoskeletal disorders in general practice
Amount: £411,000
Recent Applications
iSS and iHumanities have recently submitted four European Grants under the Marie Curie Actions scheme; one International Incoming Fellowship and three Intra-European Fellowships. If all prove successful it is anticipated that this will result in income to Keele of approximately €630,000.
iEPSAM has recently submitted three European Grants under the Marie Curie Actions scheme; two International Incoming Fellowship and one Intra-European Fellowships. If all three prove successful it is anticipated that this will result in income to Keele of approximately €549,000. An application has also been submitted to the ERC Starting Grant scheme for €1,407,265.
iSTM has recently submitted a Clinical Research Training Fellowship to MRC for £293,499. This represents one of the bids made in collaboration between iPCHS and iSTM through the Health Services Research Unit.
iPCHS has recently submitted an application for approximately £875,000 to the NHS National Institute for Health Research under the Research Professorships call. This is a highly prestigious scheme, only five applications will be funded and Keele has recently been notified that the applicant has been invited for interview.
Ann Diskin
Donna Sumner
Caroline Pugh
21 October 2011