ASPIRE research showcase

This years' Aspire research showcase took place at Keele University's School of Medicine on 22nd November, featuring talks and poster presentations from 37 Keele University Undergraduates on topics ranging from cluster headaches, their impacts and perceptions to developing the chick embryo as a novel standardised neurological injury model.

Opening the Showcase was our very own Dr Pensee Wu. She is a Lecturer in Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Honorary Consultant Obstetrician and Fetal Medicine Subspecialist at UHNM. Pensee gave an inspiring talk on Women, Health and Research

Dr Wu is an honorary Consultant Obstetrician and a Subspecialist in Maternal Fetal Medicine with an academic post at Keele University. As part of the fetal medicine team, she provides care for women with complicated pregnancies. She specialises in high risk pregnancies including both antenatal and intrapartum care, and has particular interests in hypertension and renal disease. Her research interests are: pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, congenital diseases and polycystic ovary syndrome. Nationally, she is the Clinical Specialty lead in Reproductive health and childbirth for NIHR CRN West Midlands.

We were also delighted to welcome Dr Andrew Ustianowski a consultant physician in Infectious Diseases and Research Lead at the North Western Regional Infection Unit at North Manchester General Hospital. Andrew spoke about Undertaking research as a clinician in the NHS, using his own career experiences to provide inspiration and advice for our many undergraduates in attendance at the event.

Dr Ustianowski is a Consultant Physician in Infectious Diseases & Tropical Medicine at the North Western Regional Infection Unit, North Manchester General Hospital, UK, which has a cohort of over 2000 HIV positive patients and is one of the largest treatment centres for HCV in the UK. He has been part of guideline writing committees for BHIVA & other bodies, is chair of the British Viral Hepatitis Group, lectures widely on HIV, hepatitis & related topics, and is part of several national and international educational steering groups.

He graduated from Guy’s Hospital, London, and subsequently trained in Infectious Diseases, Tropical Medicine, HIV and General Medicine in the London region.

Presentations from our undergraduate students featured research projects such as:

• The effectiveness of an elite rugby union player, coach, medical professionals and referee concussion education programme
• GP Perceptions of Perinatal Anxiety in Women: Implications for Medical Education
• Musculocutaneous nerve interaction: lessons derived from a case report

Overall winners were judged from both oral presentations and poster presentations. The prize for Best Oral Presentation went to Jessica Green for her talk on "A Cochrane Review into the Prevention of Distal Intestinal Obstruction Syndrome in patients with Cystic Fibrosis"

Best Poster Presentation went to Will Woods for his poster on "Investigating the feasibility of using the chick embryo as a traumatic spinal cord injury model"

Abstract Book 2017

This years' Aspire research showcase took place at Keele University's School of Medicine on 14th December, featuring talks and poster presentations from 25 Keele University Undergraduates.

Opening the showcase was our very own Professor of Cardiology, Prof. Mamas Mamas. He gave a talk on 'Changing clinical practice through data'. Professor Mamas is an interventional cardiologist treating patients with underlying coronary artery with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in both the elective and emergency heart attack setting and has a special interest in managing patients with heart failure. Professor Mamas trained in Medicine at the University of Oxford undertaking a MA in Physiological Sciences in 1994 and completed his DPhil in Physiological sciences funded by the British Heart Foundation (1994-1997), studying  the influence of substances derived from the endocardium on cardiac function. 

We also welcomed Professor Ian Bruce from the University of Manchester. Prof. Ian Bruce is a National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Senior Investigator and Professor of Rheumatology at the Arthritis Research UK Centre for Epidemiology, Centre for Musculoskeletal Research, University of Manchester. He participates in a number of national and international multicentre studies that are seeking to refine our understanding of SLE and serves on Data Safety Steering Committees in several commercial and academic clinical trials. His research is focused on the association between inflammatory rheumatic diseases and premature atherosclerosis /coronary heart disease as well as stratified medicine in SLE.  

Presentations featured research projects such as 'Effects of renal disease on pregnancy', 'Formative moments in education that inspires careers'. Bridget Kemball & Ben Nyemi-Tei presented their experiences in Brazil with their presentation 'Focus on Brazil - Experiences of Botucatu'

The prizes for Best Oral Presentation were awarded to Alex Delany for his talk on 'Using advances biomaterials to augment cellular therapies for chronic spinal chord injury' and to Katie Pattison for her talk on 'A review of newborn screening results and anthropometric measurements in infants diagnosed with cystic fibrosis in the West Midlands'

Best Poster Presentation was awarded to James Walker his poster of 'A cross-sectional analysis of concordance for depression and anxiety in 13,507 couples in primary care'

Abstract Book 2016

The 2015 ASPIRE Research Showcase took place on 25th November at the Keele School of Medicine and featured talks and poster presentations from 23 Keele undergraduates on topics ranging from paediatric asthma, to cardiology, to tropical medicine.

Prof Simon Davies opened the session with a talk entitled "From simple metrics to global health - where an academic career can take you", outlining the benefits of pursuing research alongside clinical practice.

Prof Phyo Myint, Chair in Old Age Medicine of the University of Aberdeen, gave a presentation on "The ABC of Clinical Research - who, what, when and how", which offered advice on avenues of personal and academic development.

The award for Best Poster Presentation went to Rachel Chubsey for her poster “A New Radiological Scoring System for Massive Pulmonary Embolism – The UHNM PE Score”.

The prize for Best Oral Presentation was awarded to Amy Taylor for her talk on “Comparisons of the clinical outcomes after de-novo heart transplantation between adults with and without congenital heart disease”.

Amy and Rachel are pictured below with guest speaker Professor Myint.

Eight student oral presentations and 20 student posters were showcased at the second ASPIRE Research Day on 10th December 2014.

Professor Robin Franklin, Professor of Stem Cell Medicine and Head of Translational Science at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, gave a talk entitled "Myelin Regeneration—from mechanisms to medicines" and Professor Sanjeev Krishna, Professor of Molecular Parsitology and Medicine, St George's, University of London, gave a talk entitled "My wanderings with malaria: clinical practice and a research career". We were also delighted to welcome Professor Elaine Hay, who spoke to us about the Keele University Research Institute for Primary Care and Health Sciences.

Prizes were awarded to Louise Edge (Year 5 student) for her talk "Trainee doctors' perceptions, learning and practice of end-of-life care in the context of newspaper coverage: a qualitative analysis".‌

And to Cara Jenvey (Year 5 student) for her poster about "Molecular and genetic predictors of the requirement for joint replacement in rheumatoid arthritis".

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Students J‌enna Hawkins and Katie Patterson received awards from Ed Roddy for the two best performing students out of 26 completing the Research SSC "Research: what every doctor needs
to know".

The inaugural ASPIRE Research Showcase was held on 27th November at the School of Medicine. The ASPIRE programme, supported by an award from the Academy of Medical Sciences and Wellcome Trust, aims to support the next generation of medical researchers.

The event, attended by over 100 delegates, including medical students and staff from research institutes, showcased a range of undergraduate research conducted during ASPIRE funded summer studentships, SSCs and intercalation years, in areas as diverse as medical ethics, medical education and nanomagnetics. 15 posters and nine oral presentations were showcased in total.

Professor Val Wass opened the event and Professor Christian Mallen gave a talk entitled "Academic Medicine; a career choice for all". Professor Siddharthan Chandran, MacDonald, Professor of Neurology at the University of Edinburgh, the invited external speaker, gave an inspirational talk entitled "The Promise of Regenerative Neurology", highlighting the potential of stem cells in a range of neurological diseases.

Prizes were awarded to Arani Vivekanantham (Year 4 student) for her poster "Evaluating on-line health information for patients with polymyalgia rheumatica" and Tom Kwan (PhD intercalation student) for his talk "Nanomagnetics for Orthopaedic Tissue Regeneration" (pictured below with Professor Chandran and Professor Wass, Head of the School of Medicine).