Category: Conferences & Events

Cohort 2 student Immi speaks at the European Digital Medicine Conference in Luxembourg

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Cohort 2 student Immi Biswas had this to say about her experience:

‘I was a speaker, and I presented my PhD project which is a part of NHS run clinical trial Rested Study investigating remote sleep monitoring in patients with Neurodegenerative diseases.

It helped me to put some of my initial research findings to the research community to make people more aware of the importance of understanding user experiences to better plan clinical trials in the future. This activity is having a positive impact on the study design and enabling me to gather richer data.’

Cohort 4 student Veronica attends the Population Health and Health Inequalities Conference in London

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Cohort 4 student, Veronica Blanco Gutierrez had this to say about her experience:

‘This event was aimed at key stakeholders and those with an interest in improving workforce capability to improve population health and in reducing health inequalities.

The general topic covered in this conference was Population Health and Health Inequalities. The event showcased new and emerging roles in population health and health inequalities and the latest education and training resources. It also facilitated an opportunity to learn about new and emerging training opportunities in population health and health inequalities and how these are helping transform the workforce.
During this event, I made new connections with experts in the field of Population Health. I was particularly interested in the work undertaken by Kumbi Kariwo, a senior NHS nurse and Equality & Inclusion Project Lead in Birmingham. I found her work on a digital intervention to diagnose different skin conditions and diseases in different skin colours truly inspirational and stimulating.
At this conference, we, Population Health Fellows, were asked to showcase our digital posters. My poster was about my journey as a Population Health fellow and my project: a Health Equity Audit on the uptake of the Covid-19 vaccine during pregnancy among different ethnic groups. Attendees were able to vote for the best poster and I was awarded the first prize. Thanks to this award, I will be to meet Professor Sir Michael Marmot for a mentoring session.
It will be a honour to meet Professor Sir Michael Marmot, a world expert leader in Population Health and Health inequalities, for a mentoring session. I am very passionate about reducing health inequalities in the provision of maternity care and improving health outcomes for underrepresented groups. Meeting with Professor Marmot will guide my project to focus on a meaningful area of Population Health research by taking into consideration his expertise and vision. I am also hoping that this meeting will provide me with useful insights about career development and aspirations in the long term future.’

Cohort 3 students Eszter, Lois and Sydney attend UCL Workshop

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Cohort 3 students Eszter Vigh, Lois Holliday and Sydney Charitos attend the ‘How to get the most out of your PPI activities’ Workshop at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

https://uclpartners.com/event/ppi-training-facilitation-how-to-get-the-most-out-of-your-ppi-activities-2/

Cohort 1 student Henry attends the European Respiratory Society (ERS) International Congress

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Henry Glyde presented thematic poster PA2728 “Exacerbation predictive modelling using real-world data from the myCOPD app” as part of the Digital health interventions in respiratory practice session at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) International Congress.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6972482477261021185/?actorCompanyId=51699863

Cohort 2 student Neshika attends the MARSS Conference in Toronto

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Neshika Wijewardhane had this to say about her experience:

The conference was 4 days long with over 200 participants at the University of Toronto. Participants included micro and nano robotistic, clinicians, engineers, and physicists, across all research careers, masters, and PhD students, to professors and industry partners. Each day started and ended with 3 plenary talks from leaders in the field with a series of parallel talks in the middle from the authors of the submitted papers. The general themes of the talks included swarm robotics, medical applications for micro-robots, automation and characterisation, and control by optical, thermal, and mechanical stimuli. I presented my paper entitled ‘Long-term Imaging and Spatio-temporal Control of Living Cells Using Light’ at a special session on ‘Optical Based Automated Micro-Manipulation’ about our robotic device ‘Dynamic Optical MicroEnviroment’ which can now visualise living cells and project light to facilitate closed-loop control of cells. Between sessions, there were breaks and lunch which lead to interesting conversations between new peers. As this was my first conference it was hugely beneficial in making new connections for future collaborations and building my network of micro/nano roboticists as well as opening my eyes to the vast amount of research being conducted in the field. I also had the opportunity to explore the beautiful city of Toronto and Niagara Falls.

Cohort 1 student Romana attends the Bumblekite Machine Learning Summer School in Zurich

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Romana Burgess had this to say about her experience: This week I attended the Bumblekite Machine Learning Summer School in Healthcare and Biosciences, held at ETH Zurich. The school invited participants from 42 institutions around the world, and a diverse range of speakers from both industry (e.g., Novartis, Microsoft, Genomics England) and academia (e.g., Stanford, ETH, Princeton).
Over the week, I attended many interesting sessions covering a broad range of machine learning topics and applications. For example, we looked at AI techniques for prostate cancer detection, and using fusion models for combining electronic health records and medical images. Additionally, the tutorials provided us with access to some fantastic and unique datasets, allowing us to practice new techniques throughout the week. Each evening I attended an interactive leadership conversation, where academic and industry professionals shared their personal experiences within the ML x Healthcare space. These engaging discussions included ethical considerations in AI and genomics, succeeding in a data science job application, and how to be an inspiring leader.
At the end of the week, we were asked to present on something that we had had learned. My group chose to discuss the benefits and disadvantages of aggregating patient data for use in machine learning models; we discussed loss of information and biased models, versus the importance of patient privacy.
I was fortunate enough that the school organisers gave me the award for “best application” at the end of the school. In my application, I had discussed my desire to learn more about patient care and experience within healthcare systems, and to find new connections. I did in fact build many professional and personal connections with the other applicants over the course of the week; I also spoke with some of the lovely speakers, who gave me great advice and ideas for my own work going forward.
I have always found some more complex machine learning techniques to be intimidating, and I would have been hesitant to try using them myself. However, I have come away from the summer school feeling less apprehensive of these methods, and I believe that some could be worth implementing in my work. For example, I will now consider implementing k-means clustering to identify profiles of depressed or non-depressed parents.

Cohort 3 student Tim attends the IEEE International Conference on Digital Health in Barcelona

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Tim Arueyingho had this to say about their experience:

‘The conference ran for five days and there were different stakeholders. Doctoral students, professors, and person’s working in the industry. The topics covered by the different panels include – the future of digital health, health data and services, analytics and visualization, health policy, systems and interoperability, IOT Data analytics and health data analytics. I was able to make a few new connections.

I was invited to the conference because I made an academic contribution in the form of a short paper and was required to make a presentation. I was the corresponding/major author and I invited master’s student, Korede Sanyaolu to collaborate with me. The conference paper would be published soon.

I am a digital health enthusiast and currently my PhD project is interested in exploring diverse ways in which technology is being used in collaborative healthcare management of type 2 diabetes (T2DM) in informal settings in Nigeria. Life style modifications are prerequisites for the long term management of chronic diseases and I am also a fitness enthusiast. Thus, I thought it would be interesting to write a review exploring the use of technology by fitness enthusiasts in Africa. Although there is no direct relationship, the review provides a corpus of literature that would be essential in establishing the current use of tech for the purpose of exercise in Nigeria. Exercise would be an interesting part of my PhD project as it is paramount in life style modifications.’

Cohort 2 students Megan and Immi attend the SigCHI Conference in New Orleans

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Megan Morgan had this to say about her experience:

‘I went along to CHI alongside many others from the Bristol Interaction Group including Paul Marshall, John Bird, Ewan Soubutts, Pete Bennett, Ollie Hanton, Elaine Czech and Immy Biswas. The conference covered a huge variety of topics involved in human computer interaction ranging from tangible interactions, UX design, ethics of research, health and long-term care. I made a wide variety of new connections with other PhD students, I also connected with entire HCI groups in Bath, Newcastle and Dublin. HCI researchers within my specific field including Madeline Balaam and Adrienne Pichon. As well as speaking to well renowned HCI researchers about my work including Yvonne Rogers, Madeline Tremaine and Roel Vertegaal.

I wrote a paper which was accepted for a workshop called ‘Challenges, Tensions, and Opportunities in Designing Ecosystems to Support the Management of Complex Health Needs’. This was a fantastic opportunity to meet HCI researchers in my field, but also to discuss and understand more deeply how my research can assist with ecosystem creation or support. I connected with many interesting researchers and learnt about how their research can add to the building of mine and discussed and worked together over the course of a day. I know that the connections I have made at this workshop will be invaluable through the course of my career.
I also went to the conference as a student volunteer, meaning I learnt about the workings of the conference and helped with various activities such as running sessions and checking people in at reception for a total of 14 hours through the week. This was hugely impactful to me in learning more about the conference and the CHI community, it also meant through my interactions as a volunteer that I met and could help many interesting people.
I know that through the vast amount on knowledge I have received and the connections I have made that my research with be greatly improved. The conversations I had through the week inspired me , not only about the current study I am doing but also helped me think differently about the future studies I am in the midst of planning. I have also made connections that may well lead to collaborations in the future.’

Cohort 3 student Dan attends Digital Methods Winter School at the University of Amsterdam

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Dan Joinson had this to say about his experience:

‘This was a training course run by the Digital Methods Initiative (DMI), who are a research group with the purpose of designing methods and tools to use online devices and platforms for research. The training course was attending by a range of participants, including international PhD candidates, new media postgraduate students and journalists. The course involved several keynote speeches from digital methods researchers, and tutorials highlighting the use of several of the methods that the Initiative has developed. The main portion of the course was spent participating in a group project, alongside a digital methods academic. My project comprised of both PhD and Masters students, and was focused on exploring the communication of science information and misinformation around three areas of debate (monkeypox, low traffic neighbourhoods, genetically modified organisms). This involved harvesting content from both

Tik Tok and Twitter, and performing data and network analysis on the themes emerging in this content.

The course ended with a poster event, in which our project was presented to digital methods academics and other participants. The poster will also be posted on the DMI website, alongside a video presentation I produced, explaining it. We were also required to write a report providing more details on our methodology and results. There is an opportunity for me to be credited on future publications stemming from this project. Furthermore, the aim is to present this work to the relevant British Research Council organisation.

This course provided me with the opportunity to learn new digital methods skills, which will help with future analysis I perform in my PhD project. Furthermore, I developed skills in highly interdisciplinary group work.’