CDF Feedback

Sarah Roscoe and Ben Hall - Postdoctoral Research Associates

Division of Neuroscience

Event organised: Mini Symposium on "Nutritional and Metabolic Assessment in Neurodegeneration", on the 11th of December 2023

"The support provided by the FoHRSA Committee allowed us to successfully organise and execute a comprehensive program encompassing the fields of metabolism and energy expenditure, clinical nutrition, and digital health technologies in neurodegeneration.

One of the highlights of the event was the attendance and plenary presentation by Dr Derik Steyn from the University of Queensland. The Steyn Lab are recognised worldwide for their ground-breaking research and innovative expertise in assessing energy expenditure and clinical nutrition in motor neuron disease. This is very closely aligned to our own research aims, and therefore provided a platform for focussed, detailed discussions and the possibility of future collaborations. During these discussions, Dr Steyn generously shared his expertise and relevant previous experience to offer constructive input and guidance into our own research projects. This will not only save us time and energy, but also increase the quality, efficiency and credibility of our results.

The provision of lunch and refreshments made possible by this funding facilitated the ability for us to organise a day-long event, which enabled networking opportunities in the form of small group discussions between researchers of both universities. This invitation was extended to encompass researchers in other neurodegeneration/nutritional research disciplines. Your support therefore not only benefited ourselves, but also enriched the experiences and knowledge of all participants."

Helen Quirk - Research Fellow

Division of Population Health

Event/Course attended: Course on 'Theory of Change for Evaluation' delivered by the UK Evaluation Society, on the 17th and 18th October 2023

"This was an online foundation course in the use of theories of change in intervention evaluation. Theories of change are an important tool and particularly useful for reflection and learning about the effectiveness of an intervention. This was a suitable course for me because I am about to embark on a new evaluation role as an Embedded Researcher with the parkrun Global, a charity that organises weekly community running/walking events in communities across the world. As part of my role, I will be leading on research activities relating to their ambition to grow and diversify Junior parkrun events in the UK, and also responsible for guiding and managing parkrun staff through evaluation.

One of my aims for this project is to start to design a robust evaluation framework that parkrun can use to evaluate the interventions they implement which aim to grow and diversify Junior parkrun. My previous parkrun research has identified a need for robust, replicable and scalable evaluation framework(s) that will give parkrun clarity, purpose and structure to the evaluation of initiatives they implement. A significant gap in their current practice is learning and reflecting on what works, why and how. An essential part of robust intervention evaluation is theory of change.

This theory of change course provided me with an understanding of what theories of change are and how they are used with intervention design, implementation and evaluation; the key components of a theory of change development process and how to use it to reflect on assumptions involving different audiences; and how to critically review existing theories of change and provide constructive feedback. The course has provided me with an introduction to theories of change and the resources and signposting provided during the course have helped me feel more informed going into this project with parkrun."

The HackMed 2019 organising committee.

Ellen Buckley - Research Technician & PhD Staff Candidate

Department of Neuroscience

Event/Course attended: Ellen as Life-Science Lead and Publicity Officer was tasked with organising the social media for the HackMed 2019.

"The CDF contributed towards the cost of running a 2-day event (HackMed 2019), organised by MedTech Society. HackMed, is a hackathon aimed at encouraging technological innovation within healthcare. Over a 24-hour period, small multi-disciplinary teams of university students (undergraduate or postgraduate) and recent graduates come together to develop creative and innovative solutions to problems within medicine and healthcare."

"Technical mentors and external sponsors to provided workshops, demonstrations as well as expert advice. Throughout the weekend, hackers learned new skills, and developed amazing projects before presenting what they built at the end of the weekend. By the end of day two, teams demonstrated their solutions prior to judging. Prizes were given to the winning team members as decided by the judging panel."

"As the committee’s Life-Science Lead and Publicity Officer I was tasked with organising the social media for the event whilst also helping with general organisation and on the day coordinating. My involvement with HackMed encouraged me to explore the wider implications of my research and helped me to develop a vast array of transferable skills including event organisation, grant applications and interacting with industry partners. I enjoyed the opportunity to promote events, manage social media accounts, and run workshops as well as ensuring our events are inclusive and accessible and support minority groups such as women in technology."

Amy Harding - Post Doctoral Scientist

Department of Clinical Dentistry

Event/Course attended: Amy undertook a laboratory placement in the School of Engineering, Newcastle University with Dr. Daniel Frankel for five days. (2018)

"This is the second time visiting Daniel at Newcastle University and this collaboration was the result of him being, an expert in a technique known as atomic force microscopy. The placement involved a five-day visit to his lab in order to use the atomic force microscope in order to assess the stiffness of the oral mucosa models I develop, and for the results obtained from this visit to be used in a potential publication; benefiting both the UoS and Newcastle University.

I worked closely with both Daniel, his post-doc, as well as his PhD student both at the department of Engineering and at the Cancer Research Institute in Newcastle University. I learned both how to set-up, implement and analyse the experimental data, and am now confident in adding this technique to my skill set.

I was also afforded the opportunity to meet other collaborators of Daniels, both within the University as well as at Cambridge University. From these meetings and discussions, I have also visited the collaborator at Cambridge University and am currently undertaking collective work with them, which is directly a result of visiting Daniel.

I intend to use the data collected from this visit to write a first author publication, as well as maintaining links in order to be included in grant proposals that include both my PI and Daniel in the future. I thoroughly enjoyed this experience and am grateful to MDHRSA for funding it; a particular highlight as with most of these visits is meeting up with like-minded researchers who share the enthusiasm for learning and teaching.

Aban Shuaib - Post-Doctoral Research Associate

Department of Oncology and Metabolism

Event/Course attended: Aban visited the research groups of Professor Luc Mongeau and Dr Nicole Li-Jessen McGill University (Montreal, Canada) to establish future collaborations and to validate a computational model developed in Sheffield. (2019)

“Developing multi-scale models which integrate ABM is an area I am developing my expertise in the MultiSim project. McGill University is ranked as one of the top research universities in Canada and globally. Dr Li-Jessen’s group have developed computational infrastructure and methodologies, allowing for efficient simulation parallelisation on high performance computers and live model visualisation and data analysis. These techniques are resolving bottleneck issues in ABM research and have the potential to accelerate its impact. Thus, collaboration and knowledge exchange between the groups at the University of Sheffield and McGill University will have mutual benefits. Therefore, part of my visit was to see the infrastructure and the projects underway in Li-Jessen’s and Mongeau’s group.”

“My talk presented the main outputs from work-package 5, which centred on a mechanical-ABM hybrid model, linking tissue, cellular and molecular events. The model examined the dynamic cell-extracellular matrix interaction (mechanoreciprocity) and the resultant intracellular signalling dynamics, specifically at the level of the protein ERK (Extracellular signal-regulated kinases). One immediate outcome of my visit, based on the presentation, was professors Luc’s group interest in examining the dynamics of ERK activation as part of their mechanostimulation regimes. The second outcome was a road map on the writing a future joint grant to develop a computational model for fibrosis. This will be submitted in September 2019 as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship. This collaboration might also yield a strategic collaboration with industrial partners such as MIMETAS B.V., a biotechnology company developing human organ-on-a-chip tissue models and products for drug development.”

Irina Vázquez-Villaseñor - Post-Doctoral Research Associate

Department of Neuroscience

Event/Course attended: Bioinformatics Training courses offer by the Sheffield Bioinformatics Core (2019)

“The bioinformatics courses were well designed and their content relevant and helpful for my current research.”

“The knowledge acquired from these sessions allowed me to identify potential tools that could help in the data processing, quality control and analysis of small RNA sequencing data that I obtained a few days before, for my research project.”

“I also had the opportunity to discuss with Matt Dunning, the course leader, about my small RNAseq data and statistical analysis… Matt’s advice on this was extremely helpful, since it clarified concepts that I had struggled to understand previously to the workshop.”

“The course also directed me to online resources that helped me improve my programming skills after the workshop.”

Ya-Hui Lin - Post-Doctoral Research Associate

Department of Neuroscience

Event/Course attended: The Early Career Researcher workshop in Translation UK held in Glasgow, UK. (2019)

"I am in my 3rd year of postdoc, now my career plan is to stay in academia, to apply for a fellowship then lectureship, the typical career path in academia. However, sometimes I would feel second guess to myself and be worried about what kind of job I can do in the future, if I don’t want to carry on in the academia."

"The workshop expanded my knowing to the other kind of scientific position in research field, no matter in academia or industry, these senior members shared their daily working life to us, let us have more pictures about the life of a journal editor, a CEO of a company or a senior research manager in a company involved."

"These senior members shared their turning point, what made their decision to change their career path and also gave us suggestions of how to prepare ourselves when we might make the similar decision as they did."

Nora Markus - Post-doctoral Research Associate

Department of Neuroscience

Event/Course attended: Two-day training course for pre-clinical drug discovery process, organised by the Biochemical society (October, 2019).

The course provided me with a very thorough overview of modern drug discovery. Topics covered all aspects of the drug discovery process, including lead optimisation, drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics and safety profiling of drugs. As I work on a project in collaboration with BenevolentAI (an artificial intelligence company using AI to aid drug discovery), aiming to identify novel targets for the treatments for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), I am directly able to apply the knowledge I’ve learnt on this course to improve my input into the project. As part of my job, I have to attend meetings with BenevolentAI, both in the form of conference calls and face-to-face meetings, where it is expected that I am aware of the drug development process. The knowledge delivered on the course has expanded my knowledge in understanding pre-clinical drug development and is invaluable in the meetings with our collaborators, who carry out the lead optimisation of compounds and run toxicology studies for example, and these topics are often discussed at meetings. The knowledge I acquired on this course has helped me to understand the work carried out at the company better and has made communication with them more efficient, allowing the project to progress faster. The input we have on the project also determines future funding for the project, which has been extended by a further year since this course took place. Furthermore, the course was delivered by experts from industry (such as GSK), smaller biotechnology companies and academia. This allowed me to network with a wide range of experts in the field, and I believe this will be invaluable if I choose to move into industry following my current post-doc. It also gave me insight into the types of roles which are available at larger pharmaceutical companies.

I also received funding for first year membership at the biochemical society. This has given me access to their monthly newsletter, their publications, as well as several courses run by the society which are offered at a reduced price for members.

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