The UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Healthcare will train anew generation of PhD-level researchers,including clinical PhD fellows and allied healthcare professionals,to develop AI systems that address healthcare challenges with afocus on patient needs and societal values.Centre Director and Principal Investigator Professor Aldo Faisal,from the Departments of Computing and Bioengineering,said:“This is an incredible opportunity for the UK and NHS,and one that demonstrates Imperial College London’s thriving digital healthcare ecosystem."The Centre will allow us to develop anew generation of more than 120 future leaders who we will recruit over the next five years.During their PhD studies they develop patient-ready solutions that align with patient needs.Our aim is to help transform the healthcare ecosystem and help reduce the unmet demand for health and care.“Designing patient-ready AI requires not only state of the art research in AI and healthcare,but also understanding the regulatory,legal,ethical,and human constraints that are specific to health and care.This means it is extremely challenging to develop and deploy practical AI systems.We have created over the past five years an ecosystem of experts,institutions,stakeholders,data,and networks so thatour new UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Healthcare is ready to face this challenge head on.” 查看详细>>

Notpla,founded by Pierre Paslier and Rodrigo Garcia while they were students at Imperial,has developed aseaweed-based biodegradable alternative to plastic.They are the first UK team to win aprize in the competition.The team won in the Earthshot category‘Build aWaste-Free World’,awarded to efforts to eliminate food waste,single-use packaging and inspire anew generation of people,companies and industries to reuse,repurpose and recycle.Founded in 2014,the Notpla team met while studying Innovation Design Engineering,offered jointly by Imperial and the Royal College of Art.During their time at Imperial,they received support from Imperial’s well-established entrepreneurial ecosystem,including Imperial Enterprise Lab,the Centre for Climate Change Innovation and the Imperial White City Incubator.Imperial College London’s President,Professor Hugh Brady,said:“Imperial students are known for their creativity,tenacity and entrepreneurial spirit.That’s why we have avibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem to support their ideas at every stage.Pierre and Rodrigo embody the best of Imperial,and their business has the potential accelerate the world to asustainable,zero pollution future.The Earthshot prize is richly deserved.”Notpla’s products drew public attention during the 2019 London Marathon,where over 36,000 of their edible capsules filled with Lucozade were handed out to runners in abid to reduce plastic waste.More recently,the team have made over one million food boxes for takeaway company Just Eat.The coating of this packaging is seaweed-based,greaseproof and waterproof,biodegrading in weeks.The Earthshot prize,which was launched in 2020 by the Prince of Wales and Sir David Attenborough,awards agrant of£1 million to individuals or organisations for work to address one of the five Earthshot categories:‘Protect and Restore Nature’,‘Clean our Air’,‘Revive our Oceans’,‘Build aWaste-Free World’and‘Fix our Climate’. 查看详细>>

The Imperial Global Science Policy Forum event,organised with the London Education and Research Network(LEARN),highlighted some of the work that Imperial is doing to find solutions to some of the most pressing climate and environmental challenges.Professor Emma McCoy,Vice-Provost(Education and Student Experience),spoke about Imperial’s Transition to Zero initiative,which aims to inspire fundamental changes in areas such as the way materials are used in manufacturing,how we produce food and energy,and will help mitigate the impact of air pollution on people‘s health.Professor McCoy said:“Our focus is to educate the next generation of leaders that can tackle the sustainable development goals and climate targets.“But we can’t just have education in one narrow silo if we are to solve these large global challenges.The role of universities is research and innovation,supporting future generations,raising awareness and building partnerships.”Dr Peggy Oti-Boateng,Director of Science,Policy and Capacity Building at UNESCO,explained that science is‘at the core’of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs).Dr Oti-Boateng said:“Making science education more connected to societal needs and promoting equal opportunities for all can be atrue game changer in bridging the science,technology and innovation gaps between and within countries and fulfilling the human right to science for sustainable development for all.”Dr Mohamed El-Ansari,from the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates and founder of LEARN,spoke about how the network aims to help students engage more in research.The event was attended by delegates from the Embassies of Brazil,Mexico,Iraq,St Kitt’s&Nevis,Italy,Romania,Nepal,Malaysia,Algeria,Hungary,Yemen,and Uzbekistan. 查看详细>>

Two former Imperial students have been honoured by the European Patent Office(EPO)for an AI-recycling technology first conceived at the College.Environmental engineer Victor Dewulf and computer scientist Peter Hedley were awarded first place in the inaugural Young Inventors prize for developing arecognition and sorting system that can help waste management facilities quickly and accurately separate rubbish to ensure that valuable materials can be recycled.The system has been rolled out to recycling facilities in the UK and Europe through their London-based start-up Recycleye.António Campinos,President of the European Patent Office,said:“Victor Dewulf and Peter Hedley are using cutting-edge AI technology to tackle asubstantial problem–how to drastically reduce our waste.“By increasing the likelihood that waste will be recycled,their innovation contributes to acleaner world for us all and this is exactly the type of sustainable venture that the Young Inventors prize was set up to recognise.”The invention was conceived when Victor and Peter were at Imperial,studying master‘s degrees in Environmental Engineering with Business Management and Computer Science respectively.Victor visited arecycling facility as part of his course,where he was struck by how labour-intensive waste sorting was,making the process prohibitively expensive for companies.This inspired him to write athesis on waste sorting automation using computer vision,which was developed into aprototype for acomputer vision-powered waste recognition system in 2019.Victor said:“Applying computer vision and new technologies like robotics means that we can start accelerating the automation of[the waste]industry."Ultimately that means accelerating our economy‘s transition to acircular economy to the point where our removal chains can be merged back into our supply chains.”The Young Inventors award was created by the EPO to honour innovators aged 30 years old and under,offering acash prize to inventors who have developed solutions that contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and positively impact society.Victor and Peter will receive€20,000 as one of two first-prize winners,alongside Erin Smith,a US-based researcher who developed an AI-powered app that uses video footage to enable early detection of Parkinson‘s disease.The Recycleye system consists of two parts–a waste recognition system that takes photos of passing waste and sends them to an algorithm,which then ranks them in terms of picking priority,and arobotic arm that picks up and places the waste for sorting.The Imperial alumni developed the system in agarage at Peter’s parents’home using acamera,a treadmill and apile of rubbish,before founding their company in 2019.Recycleye has so far deployed 17 vision systems and five robot arms and raised millions of pounds in funding for its work. 查看详细>>

Imperial postgraduate students collaborated with 36 schools across London as part of an exciting STEM research and innovation project,Great Exhibition².The project is inspired by both the cutting-edge research happening at Imperial today and the Great Exhibition of 1851 where leading innovators of the age responded to the changing world around them in new and imaginative ways and showcased their designs and inventions for the world to see in Hyde Park.Inventions designed through the project will then be reviewed by aspecialist panel to select ones to be featured in next year‘s Great Exhibition Road Festival.Led by the Public Engagement team at Imperial College London in partnership with Big Ideas–a local organisation that supports projects that bring communities together-this competition aims to address the skills shortage and lack of diversity in STEM.Students could see how‘real-life’scientists and engineers innovate,creatively explore STEM subjects,learn new skills,experience the wonder of science and have fun coming up with their own inventions.School pupils kickstarted their journey to becoming‘Great Innovators’by researching and designing incredible innovations to tackle global issues,such as climate change and COVID-19.Imperial PhD student at the Grantham Institute,Beltran Sajonia-Coburgo-Gotha,worked with four of the schools.“I have to admit that Idid find the sessions very inspiring myself!The students far exceeded my expectations of how aware they are of the challenges faced and their abilities to design aplan for the complex projects that they came up with.They all seemed to be very engaged in their projects.Some students gave outstanding presentations and showed communications skills that even A-level students would find enviable!It was really apleasure to hear from the students and provide some guidance where Icould!”Some of the students he worked with created prototypes for their inventions which included plant domes to go on top on chimneys and capture carbon dioxide,a kennel for anxious pets and an app for explaining physics concepts. 查看详细>>

Three Imperial researchers have been awarded Future Leader Fellowships from UK Research and Innovation to tackle pressing global challenges.The prestigious fellowships were established to support anew generation of rising stars.They provide early career academics with the flexibility and time they need to tackle ambitious challenges.The three researchers will investigate how to use nature’s solar cells to power sustainable chemistry,develop anew understanding of single cells,and map cellular pathways involved in ageing.They each receive around£1.5m to support them for four years and allow them to grow their own teams.Sir Mark Walport,Chief Executive of UK Research and Innovation,said:“The Future Leaders Fellowships are UKRI’s flagship talent programme,designed to foster and nurture the research and innovation leaders of the future.“We are delighted to support these outstanding researchers and innovators across universities,research organisations and businesses.” 查看详细>>

16 April 2020 Newly-qualified doctors from Imperial College London have spoken about joining frontline NHS staff in the fight against COVID-19.Stephen Naulls,Gargi Samarth and Lieze Thielemans are just three of over 500 Imperial Medicine students who have begun helping the NHS and community efforts to fight the pandemic.In avideo,the students have shared the mix of emotions they are feeling as they prepare to start working on the frontline.Moral obligation Lieze said:“My mind is constantly switching between wanting to be holed up in my room to then feeling agreat sense of moral obligation and being determined to help in any way Ican,using the skills that Ihave learned over the last six years.We really are all in this together,and together we will beat this.”“I am confident in my education”View embedded Twitter content“I would be lying if Isaid Iwasn’t nervous,”Stephen says.“Our health service is under an enormous amount of pressure at the moment but ultimately Iam confident in my education.I’m excited to get on the wards and to help out however Ican in these unprecedented circumstances.”Putting training to the test Gargi adds:“We’ve been training for six years–this is essentially what we’ve been training for.While Iam nervous Iam excited that we can finally put our skills to use!” 查看详细>>

The two year study involved 75 university staff and students and was conducted by Dr Tiffany Chiu,Senior Teaching Fellow in Educational Development at Imperial,and Dr Billy Wong,University of Reading.Dr Chiu and Dr Wong argue that exploring definitions of the‘ideal‘student can encourage students and staff to discuss more openly what the explicit,implicit and idealistic expectations of students are in the modern higher education system.Dr Chiu said:“What we found from our conversations is that most staff and students across the five universities thought that the ideal university student is not about perfection,nor being the brightest or the best.” 查看详细>>

Each weekly session of the programme is facilitated by Imperial student mentors who provide personalised support to ensure that each participant can engage with maths in away that works for them.There is no fixed agenda to the club,but the students can bring along their homework or other things they would like help with.Additional support in maths homework was recently highlighted as apressing priority by local schools.An understanding of the subject is vital for many career paths and for further study in awide range of subjects,yet many young people find it hard to complete homework without support. 查看详细>>

Imperial‘s Vice-Provost(Education)Professor Simone Buitendijk said:"Our students have expressed good levels of satisfaction with their experience at the College,but we are ambitious to provide them the very best experience and we know there is more work to do.“We are making sustained investment in improving facilities and transforming our teaching.This academic year we set up agroup with representation from across our College community to focus on analysing the NSS feedback,particularly to identify areas which would benefit from whole-College,collaborative actions.The group has provided invaluable insight to make sure we are directing our attention and resources where we can have the most impact on the student experience.Working in partnership with students,we want to focus on building asense of community and belonging,improving our facilities,and supporting and promoting student wellbeing.This complements our goal of ensuring aworld-class experience for our students in teaching,learning and assessment. 查看详细>>