The University of Warwick has been awarded £2.3 million of the funding as part of a £15m project, and will work with partners and experts at the lead partner University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, Royal Philips and teaching hospitals and universities at Belfast, Oxford and Nottingham in the three-year project, focussing on breast, prostate, lung and colon cancers.

The aim is to significantly speed up the time in which cancer is diagnosed and treated, by using Innovative solutions in digital pathology and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The PathLAKE (Pathology image data Lake for Analytics, Knowledge and Education.) consortium aims to meet the ‘Data to Early Diagnosis and Precision Medicine Challenge’ through two high-impact exemplar projects. Firstly, by embedding and demonstrating the diagnostic efficiencies of computer aided testing of pathology samples. Secondly, by developing novel AI tools to support advanced identification of predictive chemotherapy response markers for personalised medicine and markers of disease progression in disease surveillance.

Working ethically within stringent regulatory and industry standards, a unique data resource comprising of large number of pathology images will provide a foundation archive to support exemplar projects in AI based diagnostic efficiency and optimal treatment selection. These images and tools will be made available across the consortium partners, which includes Philips, Nvidia and four SMEs (Small and medium-sized enterprises – independent firms) in Perspectum, Oxford Cancer Biomarkers, Glencoe Software and Sonrai to support the development of a burgeoning UK digital health industry. The consortium will also provide the backbone of a network for multi-site clinical trials and further advanced research projects to provide world-class training and education to the pathology and computer science communities.

Professor Nasir Rajpoot, head of the Tissue Image Analytics laboratory at the University of Warwick, will be leading the computational arm of the centre, comments:

We are thrilled by the news of this award. The PathLAKE centre of excellence will play a leading role in the development, validation and implementation of AI in cellular pathology. The centre data lake will be an invaluable resource for AI researchers and UK based SMEs, enabling the development of cutting-edge AI algorithms for cellular pathology as well as capturing and revealing trends and patterns in the pathology image data for better understanding of disease and improved provision of patient healthcare.”

Full Press release

Professors Jane Hutton and Saul Jacka have been funded by the Royal Society to run a Hooke Discussion meeting on:

How should pension liabilities be valued? Risk aversion and demographic uncertainty
(link to: https://royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/2019/03/pensions/ )

Monday 25 March 2019 and Tuesday 26 March 2019, at
The Royal Society, London, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5AG

Several challenges arise in estimating the liabilities and assets needed for pensions provision. The UK Government has increased the State Pension Age to reflect longevity. For developing countries, achieving reliable estimates of life expectancy is not easy. Actuaries, economists, and statisticians use varied definitions of risk and methods for estimation and forecasting. Disagreement centres on concepts of risk and prudence.

This meeting will air some slow-burn economic and social issues, to initiate a more co-ordinated approach and to dispel some widely-held misapprehensions.

"Judgements made by committees, based on esoteric actuarial arguments, can have large implications for people's lives."

Registration is required.

"Pint of Science" is returning from the 20-22nd May 2019, in various pubs across Coventry and Warwickshire. The 2018 festival involved a number of staff and students from Physics, and the call for speakers and volunteers for 2019 is now open.

Congratulations to Mary J. Thomas, who is a PhD student in the Barrow Group, for winning the Barber Prize for best student talk at the 39th annual meeting of the British Mass Spectrometry Society in Cambridge. Based upon collaborative research with the British Geological Survey, Mary presented her talk entitled “Petroleomic Depth Profiling of Contaminated Staten Island Soil by GC and FT-ICR MS.” Using Rock-Eval 6 data and ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometry, complex compositional depth profiles were developed for environmental monitoring and to provide insight into the site’s history of contamination.

Applications are invited for a Professor and an Assistant Professor/Associate Professor of Quantitative Biology to join the School of Life Sciences. This is part of our strategic growth on the Gibbet Hill Biology campus, supported by investment in a new £54M Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Building that will bring together researchers from Life Sciences and Warwick Medical School.

The Impact on Campus Award is for the society that has gone above and beyond to support their members and the wider university to achieve success, in terms of careers, development of new skills and personal growth.

Coventry City Council, working with the University of Warwick, has taken the unusual step of arranging with the University to have a road named after Professor Lord Bhattacharyya.

The road running past the Prof. Lord Bhattacharyya Building (the home of the National Automotive Innovation Centre) will now be known as Lord Bhattacharyya Way.

Councillor George Duggins, Leader of Coventry City Council said,

“We wanted to celebrate and honour a man who has done much for Coventry – helping to promote the skills of the city around the world.

“We are proud to be recognising a man who has done the same for business and employment and who not only has an amazing drive, commitment and passion for manufacturing – but also for seeing it succeed in our city.

“So, for a man who has put our city on the road to success, made sure we are heading in the right direction, and kept us streets ahead of the competition – we thought this would be the perfect honour.”

Professor Jeremy Gray awarded the LMS Hirst Prize and will be invited to give the associated HIRST LECTURESHIP for his research and books on the history of mathematics, especially differential equations and geometry in and around the nineteenth century.

Our 2018 MB ChB Prizegiving Evening took place last week, 6 December, celebrating the fantastic work and achievements of our medical students over the last year and recognising teaching excellence amongst our staff.