Conference and small outreach fund

Outreach

Dr Antonina Mikocka-Walus (Health Sciences)

A power walk: How does Crohn’s and Colitis UK (CCUK) annual York walk contribute to the empowerment of its members?

Crohn's and Colitis UK are holding a number of fundraising walks across the country on Sunday 17th May 2015, including one for Yorkshire through the City of York. The theme of the Yorkshire walk is 'empowerment'. Patient empowerment (i.e. designing and delivering health in an inclusive way to enable patients to take control of their health care needs) is an important component of patient-centred care, which is gaining momentum in the NHS, as it has a potential to improve both clinical and psychological outcomes. C2D2 funding has been awarded to support the creation and delivery of a survey to the walkers which will explore views about the patient’s role in care and the factors which empower IBD patients/parents/carers in IBD care.

Professor Jenny Southgate (Biology)

York Engineers Meet University of York Cancer Researchers

In October 2013 Mmembers of the York Society of Engineers were invited to enjoy an evening at the Biology Department. The evening was designed to give PhD students an opportunity to present their research to a lay audience and provide guests an opportunity to learn about some of the cancer-related research going on in the Department. Presentations were followed by lab tours of the Brackenbury, Coverley, Maitland (Cancer Research Unit), and Southgate (Jack Birch Unit) labs. The evening ended with a buffet supper, where students were able to discuss their research with guests in a more casual setting. The funding for this evening was provided by C2D2 and the Department of Biology.

Dr Adar Pelah (Electronics)

Walking in Virtual Reality

Funding was used to support the purchase of equipment and development of a portable StroMoHab system for use in outreach activities. StroMoHab is an innovative virtual reality walking simulator, developed for rehabilitation and diagnosis of gait-impairing conditions such as stroke, Parkinsons disease, limb prosthetics etc. The principal goals of the demonstration were to publicise and explain science and engineering to the general public in the Yorkshire region and beyond. The funding enabled public demonstrations of StroMoHab in a number of UCAS and Open Days in the Department of Electronics, as well as a during the University of York Science Trail event held on 18th March 2013.

Professor Simon Duckett (Chemistry)

Opening of Centre for Hyperpolarisation in Magnetic Resonance (CChyM), 11 September 2013

The Centre for Hyperpolarisation in Magnetic Resonance (CHyM) held its official opening on the 11^th of September 2013. The new, purpose-built facility on York Science Park was opened by Sir William Castel, Chairman of the Wellcome Trust who delivered a public lecture entitled ‘a new lexicon of medicine, how our understanding of the human body has been transformed through the application of engineering’. In addition to the public lecture, a scientific meeting to discuss the underpinning science was held. Lectures by the Centre’s Director, Prof. Simon Duckett, Co-Director, Prof Gary Green , Prof. Jurgen Hennig (University Hospital Freiburg) and Prof. Hugh Perry (University of Southampton) were given to an audience of academics, industrialists and university students. The meetings included live demonstrations of the equipment required to carry out CHyM’s research, scientific posters detailing the principles and applications of these findings and an exhibition of posters aimed at communicating CHyM’s research to a lay audience. The event was well attended by industrialists, including representatives from the Wellcome Trust, Bruker Biospin, Smith and Nephew, and Covance, colleagues from the University of York, and members of the general public. The event was sponsored by the Centre for Chronic Diseases and Disorders (C2D2), Bruker Biospin and the University of York.

Conferences

Ms Catherine Oakley, Ms Harriet Ryder, Mr Duncan Robertson, Ms Maxine Gee (Department of English and Related Literature, Department of Theatre, Film and Television)

Rethinking Disability on Screen: A One-Day Symposium, 14 May 2015

This one-day interdisciplinary symposium at the University of York aims to unite early career researchers, established scholars and industry practitioners working across a range of fields and disciplines – including film studies, history, literature, cultural studies, gender studies, sociology and health sciences – to explore the ways in which cinema, television and other screen media have reflected, and shaped, subjective and objective experiences of impairment and disability throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The event seeks to facilitate constructive conversations on existing scholarship and practice, to discuss new avenues of enquiry, and to promote interest and growth in this important but relatively under-studied area. 

Dr Sandra Pauletto (TFTV), Dr Howard Cambridge (SEI), Dr Radek Rudnicki (SEI)

SoniHED - a one day interdisciplinary Conference on the Sonification of Health and Environmental data, 12 September 2014

The Conference will be centred in the Holbeck Cinema in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television and will bring together experts in the fields of sonification, sound design, health sciences and environmental science to evaluate and discuss novel sonic ways to engage with data.  The focus of the Conference addresses the 5th strategic aim of Wellcome Trust as it connects Environment, Nutrition and Health. This Conference will also directly benefit the C2D2 funded Internship 'Using data sonification to promote public health risk communications' (Pauletto, Mason-Jones, Walus) by providing a stage in which to present and discuss initial results. Lastly it will provide an excellent opportunity for interdisciplinary networking and serve as a catalyst to develop future large projects grants in this emerging area.

Professor Yvonne Birks (SPRU)

Second International Incident Disclosure Conference, 12-13 May 2014 

C2D2 contributed toward the cost of this two day conference which brought together a number of disciplines, including clinicians, social scientists, patient groups, and lawyers, to contribute to the complex issue of error disclosure. 

Professor Tim Croudace (Health Sciences)

8th Annual UK Rasch User Day, 21 March 2014

The event was held at the University of York on 21 March with over 50 delegates (primarily from education, but also including health professionals) attending from as far afield as Cyprus, Spain and Germany, as well as UK attendees. The day saw 10 presentations describing the application of the Rasch Model to a wide range of topics from a variety of presenters – ranging from the more experienced to the relative newcomers. The morning session enjoyed presentations on the use of the Rasch Model in the development of an inventory to assess foreign language classroom anxiety, an evaluation of mindfulness awareness scale in a clinical population and two presentations on the EQ-5D. The afternoon session had a more methodological theme with presentations on the violation of independence, comparative judgments of examination data, category threshold problems, and ended on an engaging and interesting talk describing the unusual application of the Rasch Model in acquiring user feedback for product engineering. Both sessions generated lively discussion and debate in a supportive and informal environment. The day was generously supported by a grant from C2D2 with the after dinner drinks and snacks provided by the York Health Economics Consortium.

Dr Erik Wagenaars (Physics)

11^th Technological Plasma Workshop York, 16-17 December 2013

The event involved 69 participants from 25 institutions including 29 students and 10 industrial delegates and comprised invited talks, contributed presentations and a poster session. The emerging field of plasma medicine had a dedicated session in the programme with an invited presentation by Dr Brendan Gilmore of Queen’s University Belfast whose talk was entitled “Activity of atmospheric pressure plasma against bacterial biofilms: Efficacy, mechanism and tolerance” and another four contributed talks as well as several posters in the poster session. Participants from five different institutions, across four disciplines, all active in the field of plasma medicine were presenting, creating an environment of interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. Significant sponsorship was received from the Centre for Chronic Diseases and Disorders (C2D2) at the University of York, Hiden Analytical Ltd, Tech-X Corporation, and the Institute of Physics, through the Plasma Physics Group and the Ion and Plasma Surface Interactions Group. 

Dr Dimitris Lagos (CII)

Developing a York-QMUL partnership on structural and molecular cell biology approaches in the study of RNA silencing in development and disease, 2 December 2013

A focused workshop was held bringing together the Plevin and Lagos groups (currently funded by C2D2) with an external collaborator, Dr Tyson Sharp, Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL) to strengthen the synergy between the York and QMUL groups and to discuss a joint interdisciplinary application to BBSRC focusing on the interphase of structural and molecular cell biology approaches in the study of RNA silencing. The workshop included presentations from post- and pre-doctoral scientists and a PI discussion.

Ms Georgia Mortzou (Health Sciences)

'B-cell malignancies: the impact of biomarkers on treatment decisions' single-day international conference, 10 May 2013

This conference was hosted by the University’s Epidemiology & Cancer Statistics Group, in its role as major founding partner of the Haematological Malignancy Research Network (www.hmrn.org). The event was held at the National Science Learning Centre and organised in association with the Lunenburg Lymphoma Biomarker Consortium, an international initiative studying the application of biomarker analyses to clinical practice in lymphoma. Attended by over 90 delegates from a range of academic, clinical, pharmaceutical and biomedical backgrounds, the conference talks included mutually complementary contributions on all aspects of the pathogenesis and treatment of B-cell malignancies, both in a clinical pathway relevant context (diagnosis to prognosis to patient management and follow-up) and from a research-focused point of view (the application of novel bioinformatics concepts, development of stratified medicine-based clinical trials, integration of biomarkers onto large-scale population-based data).