The new£4.6 million project will bring together experts from more than 20 universities and research institutes,alongside industry partners including the BBC,Royal Shakespeare Company,GSK and Unilever,to transform doctoral supervision.Funded through aUKRI Research England Development award,the‘Next Generation Research SuperVision Project(RSVP):Transforming the culture of doctoral supervision and education’will test and evaluate how professional development and mentoring can help doctoral research supervisors to develop the confidence and capacity to support amore diverse demographic of researchers through agreater range of doctoral models,such as part-time and distance learning.Building on the experience and expertise of more than 100 doctoral supervisors,the project will also involve over 400 doctoral students from adiversity of routes,and over 20 Deans and Directors of Doctoral schools engaged in identifying what constitutes good and bad supervision practice.The consortium team will examine how to improve and enhance research supervision in the UK through;scholarship,practice interventions,culture and policy change and will contribute to the operationalisation of the forthcoming UKRI New Deal for Postgraduate Research and support the aims of the Research and Development people and culture strategy.The project will also promote greater transparency on the roles of‘hidden’supervisors,such as postdoctoral candidates,and help with the management of supervisory workloads.Dr Karen Clegg,University of York,who is leading the project,said:“What we’re hoping to do is enable asteady cultural revolution around supervision,breaking down barriers about who does it,how it’s done and how it’s recognised.This isn’t just a‘New Deal’for researchers,it’s aBIG deal for supervisors”.Professor Doug Cleaver,Consortium co-lead and Chair of the UK Council for Graduate Education(UKCGE),said:“We need to better understand research supervision as asector,and this project offers us afantastic opportunity to look at current provision and to develop benchmarks that will help both individuals and institutions across the UK.”Outputs will include the benchmarking of professional development for research supervision and the creation of world-leading professional development resources.The work will be carried out by UKGCE and five universities(King’s College London,University of York,Coventry University,University of Nottingham and Sheffield Hallam University).The project is funded by Research England,with support from UKRI Research Councils and the Wellcome Trust. 查看详细>>

A new€4.6million(£3.98 million)study led by King’s will see hundreds of patients with life-limiting and incurable cancer across the UK,France,Italy,Denmark,and Norway take part in atrial to assess the clinical and cost-effectiveness of palliative rehabilitation on patient quality of life,disability,and symptom burden.Funded by the European Union(EU)’s Horizon Europe programme,researchers will work with healthcare staff in the participating countries to implement amodel that empowers cancer patients to actively manage their condition themselves in their own environment–for example using self-management tools for breathlessness,physical activity advice and tailored action plans.The team of experts in palliative care,oncology and rehabilitation will assess if this approach improves clinical outcomes and reduces the cost of hospital inpatient days.They will also consider how by responding directly to each individual’s concerns,priorities,and goals,they are able to target the adverse impacts of symptoms like breathlessness and fatigue on function and social participation.Lead researcher Professor Matthew Maddocks,Professor of Health Services Research&Rehabilitation in the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing,Midwifery&Palliative Care,said:"Routine integrated rehabilitation has been achieved for people with chronic respiratory,cardiac and stroke conditions but this is not the case for people with cancer,especially those living with incurable disease.Access to palliative care services has increased but access to rehabilitation remains varied.“Our ambition is to identify an effective model of person-centred palliative rehabilitation that can be delivered as part of routine care for people with incurable cancer,that integrates with oncology,palliative care,and rehabilitation services across Europe.He added:“It is about keeping people mobile and independent in the last months and years of their lives–and part of that is keeping them active in the things they enjoy doing.”More than one million people in Europe are affected by disability related to incurable cancer every year.With population ageing and increased morbidity,the number of people living with disability and experiencing suffering towards the end of life is set to almost double by 2060,according to the World Health Organisation(WHO).While the WHO recognises both rehabilitation and palliative care as essential quality health services,it is currently estimated that 40 million people worldwide and nearly five million people in the European region require palliative care every year–yet only 14%and 35%respectively receive it.King’s will lead on the new study in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh,European Association of Palliative Care,European Cancer Patient Coalition,Hospices Civils de Lyon,Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori,Azienda Unita Sanitaria Locale di Reggio Emilia,Fonden for Almen Praksis,and University of Bergen. 查看详细>>

Based in the Department of Informatics,the Centre will bring together world-leading experts from King’s and Imperial College to train anew generation of researchers.The CDT will train scientists and engineers in model-based AI approaches and their use in developing safe and trusted AI systems.Such systems are safe,meaning that some assurance can be provided about system behaviour,and they are trusted,meaning that people can have confidence in the decisions they make and the reasons for making them.CDT researchers will also be trained in the implications of AI for wider society including,for example,the relevance of safe and trusted AI to legislation and regulation,and to different industry sectors and application domains.Model-based AI techniques provide an explicit language for representing,analysing and reasoning about systems and their behaviours.Models can be verified and solutions based on them can be guaranteed as safe and correct;and models can provide human-understandable explanations and support user collaboration and interaction with AI–key for developing trust in asystem.King’s and Imperial are renowned for their expertise in model-based AI and host some of the world’s leaders in the area.Core research areas include:Verification&Testing,to provide guarantees about system behaviour;Logic in Artificial Intelligence,for efficient and expressive knowledge representation and reasoning;Planning,which allows the synthesis of solutions to achieving complex tasks that are correct by construction;Argumentation&Dialogue,which supports explanation and transparent reasoning,and can allow joint decision-making between humans and AI systems;Norms&Provenance,to guide behaviour in the context of organisational structures,and track and explain data,allowing identification and mitigation of anomalies;Human-oriented AI,which aims to support collaboration and communication between machines and humans.This depth and breadth of expertise in model-based AI is complemented with related expertise in related technical areas such as cyber security and data science,and with expertise related to the implications and applications of AI in areas such as security studies&defence,business,law,ethics&philosophy,social sciences&digital humanities,natural sciences&medicine. 查看详细>>

The research will focus on immunology,cancer,neuroscience and bone with the aim of translating early research into human studies and further understanding of the disease to develop treatments for patients.The co-location of researchers from UCB will allow significant research to take place at King’s,while also exposing staff and students to commercially relevant research which can better prepare them for future employment.UCB will have direct access to expertise at King’s,facilitating new and innovative solutions to long-standing technical challenges.The team from UCB will be based at the Guy’s Campus,where King’s is developing aBiotech Hub to enable on-site partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry and direct access to world-leading research. 查看详细>>

The largest ever research grant to improve palliative and end of life care for people with dementia and their carers in the UK(£4.7m)has been awarded to researchers at the Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department,UCL,and the Cicely Saunders Institute of Palliative Care,Policy&Rehabilitation,King’s College London.The programme grant called Empowering Better End of Life Dementia Care Programme(EMBED-Care)will create new ways of supporting patients with advanced dementia,where they live and receive care.The research will build understanding on the current and future needs for dementia palliative care,how people with dementia move through the health and social care system and develop new ways to deliver these vital services.The research is one of four collaborative projects being funded by the ESRC-NIHR Dementia Research Initiative 2018,which aims to improve the lives of people living with dementia across the UK.Further research is essential in informing better quality of care and ensuring that people living with dementia receive the support and guidance they need to plan for their future care while they still have the capacity,and to have important discussions with those closest to them.The researchers say the£4.7m investment is ahuge step in the right direction to prioritising palliative and end of life care for people living with dementia,now and in the future.With dementia the most common cause of death in the UK,it is vital that healthcare professionals can support people’s individual care needs as well as support families and carers.Palliative and end of life care aims to reduce pain and manage symptoms,so people with dementia can maintain the best possible quality of life as death approaches–whether that is at home,in hospital or in acare home.However,research shows care for people living with dementia is not always underpinned by apalliative approach.Determining aperson’s palliative care needs,then initiating and delivering this care for patients with dementia is one of the research gaps identified by the Palliative and end of life care Priority Setting Partnership with the James Lind Alliance. 查看详细>>

The results of the research have prompted senior author and Director of King‘s Environmental Research Group,Professor Frank Kelly,to argue that improving air quality in cities should be apublic health priority.The full research findings are published in BMJ Open.Although air pollution is now an established risk factor for heart disease/stroke and respiratory disease,its potential role in neurodegenerative diseases,such as dementia,hasn’t been clear.Researchers used carefully calculated estimates of air and noise pollution levels across Greater London to assess potential links with new dementia diagnoses.To do this,they drew on anonymised patient health records from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink(CPRD).This has been collecting data from participating general practices across the UK since 1987.The researchers focused on just under 131,000 patients aged 50 to 79 in 2004,who had not been diagnosed with dementia,and who were registered at 75 general practices located within the London orbital M25 motorway.Based on the residential postcodes of these patients,the researchers estimated their annual exposure to air pollutants–specifically nitrogen dioxide(NO2),fine particulate matter(PM2.5),and ozone(O3)–as well as proximity to heavy traffic and road noise.The health of these patients was then tracked for an average of seven years,until adiagnosis of dementia,death,or deregistration from the practice,whichever came first.During the monitoring period,2181 patients(1.7%)were diagnosed with dementia,including Alzheimer’s disease.These diagnoses were associated with ambient levels of NO2 and PM2.5,estimated at the patients’homes at the start of the monitoring period in 2004.Those living in areas in the top fifth of NO2 levels had a40 per cent heightened risk of being diagnosed with dementia compared to those living in the bottom fifth.A similar increase in risk was observed for higher PM2.5 levels.These associations were consistent and unexplained by known influential factors,such as smoking and diabetes,although when restricted to specific types of dementia,they remained only for patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. 查看详细>>