News

Very happy that students in the lab are thriving and enjoying what they do! Occasionally, their daily grind gets recognised.

Congratulations to :

- Michaela Pawley for winning the PGR day best presentation award

- Peter To for securing funds to host and lead a R-workshop

- Lauren Wilkinson for winning the William Campbell Prize at the British Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting, Newport, Wales

Michaela Pawley wrote down her thoughts in her first blog post as a UK Data Service Impact Fellow. She reflects on her clinical and academic background, current PhD research, and future plans to expand her impact beyond academia.

Read more here: UK Data Service Data Impact Fellows 2025: Michaela Pawley – Data Impact blogLink opens in a new window

NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Professor Nicole Tang about sleep quality and why it's difficult to define and measure.

"Highlight: We often obsess about nighttime routines for good sleep, but mounting evidence shows that what we do during our waking hours is also important – a more holistic view that could ease the modern pressure to create a perfect environment for when our heads hit the pillow"

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26535272-800-why-sleep-quality-is-so-important-and-so-difficult-to-measure/

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26535273-000-what-nine-sleep-researchers-do-to-get-their-best-nights-rest/

Pain often goes hand in hand with trouble sleeping. Previously, our lab found that people with chronic pain tend to think about their sleep through the lens of pain and developed the PBAS to measure pain-related beliefs and attitudes about sleep (https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.6130).

Thanks to our colleagues in Korea (led by Prof Seockhoon Chung), we now also know that PBAS mediates the association between pain and insomnia. Using the Korean PBAS, they found the concept useful in explaining the pain-insomnia link in Asian countries/cultures.

New paper published in Behavioural Sleep Medicine: https://doi.org/10.1080/15402002.2024.2441786