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Director's view: April 2019

Message from the Director and Manager

Thank you

Welcome to the third edition of the Institute’s termly newsletter, which is an update and highlights some of the many excellent activities at the Institute.

We want to sincerely thank you for all your hard work which is critical in enabling the Institute to be highly successful across its full range of activities including education, basic science and translational science.

There have been many significant Institute successes some attracting major media attention: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ion/news  

Further updates and information are provided in the sections below.


 
UCL Council final approval for new Queen Square Institute of Neurology and UK DRI building
We are pleased to announce that UCL Council has given final approval and £281 million is now released to progress the extensive programme of capital works to significantly expand the footprint of the IoN to include a new-build on the site of the Eastman Dental Hospital Site

"This is a significant step in our journey to achieve a new building which began in a concrete form over seven years ago". Professor Michael Hanna, Director of UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology. "I want to thank you all for your help and support in the complex process required in getting to this very important stage."

"This project will create what will be a fantastic, new translational neuro science building as part of our dual hub vision; with more clinical/experimental research being based at Queen Square House and across Queen Square. I anticipate that this will be a great new translational neuroscience environment for all staff, students, patients and partners."

We anticipate enabling works will commence this autumn and subject to planning approval the building works will commence early 2020 and will be completed late 2023 and ready for occupation in early 2024.

ISG, the global construction services company, has been appointed as UCL’s main contractor to begin pre-construction work for the building. IoN news item
 
As part of engagement with the local community two further public exhibitions took place in February.  Please see exhibition boards  for further information.
 
Information from the stakeholder event on 4th December for IoN staff and PhD students is on our intranet pages which we will continue to develop as the programme progresses. 
 
Launch of new £5m International Centre for Genomic Medicine in Neuromuscular Diseases
We are delighted to announce that Professor Fiona Watt CEO MRC launched the new £5m International Centre for Genomic Medicine in Neuromuscular Diseases in an event hosted by Lord Kakkar on 3rd April 2019


The Centre is a £5m initiative, led by Professor Michael Hanna, Director of UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, bringing together skills and resources from five countries and aims to advance the genetic diagnosis and therapy for patients with muscle wasting neuromuscular diseases, including motor neurone disease and muscular dystrophy, which affect at least 17m children and adults globally.

We can all be very proud of what you and your teams continue to achieve. We hope you have an enjoyable Easter break
 
Michael & Helene

Focus - IT


IT software audit: following a reminder of the UCL software policy in the most recent Staff Newsletter, IT Teams will be following up with local activities which aim to keep all SLMS computers completely legal with regards to software licensing.  

GDPR compliance:
Laptop encryption and email forwarding to other providers: automatically forwarding email to a non-UCL address is no longer acceptable
Windows 10 migration: Microsoft will end support for Windows 7 in 2020.  IT have a hard deadline of January 2020 (8 months) to move all PCs on the network to Windows 10 unless there are specific reasons why it shouldn’t. 

Please see the IoN intranet for further information
 

Focus - Sustainability

Image result for ucl green impact logo
Sustainable development is one of the major global themes of the 21st century and UCL has an important role to play in driving sustainable development.

Green Impact is a UCL-wide environmental competition and accreditation scheme that allows departments and divisions across the UCL to improve their environmental impact, support UCL's Sustainability Strategy and engage peers and colleagues with these essential issues.

Many IoN offices and labs are already involved as showcased at the UCL Sustainability Awards ceremony on 4th September 2018 

Getting started 

Recent activities at IoN include: RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch; Ditch the Disposable cups and composting at WCHN; and moving to print@ucl

Creating a more sustainable UCL will take all of us. And whether you're interested in volunteering, gardening, cycling, reuse or research, there's a huge range of ways to get involved.

Read on to find out more and learn how you can get involved

 

Focus - Careers


SAVE THE DATE!

PhD & ECR career event 9th July, 33 Queen Square.

We are also developing a network of IoN staff who can advise students and ECRs on career pathways, as well as Careers pages on IoN Intranet. Please contact David Blundred, Careers Liaison Officer for further information.

Career resources

Focus - Wellbeing  

 Newly awarded grants over £500k

Medical Research Council
 
Dr Rickie Patani (Department of Neuromuscular Diseases) awarded MRC Senior Clinical Fellowship: £1,885,121 for research into ‘Capturing the spatiotemporal diversity of cellular and molecular mechanisms in ALS’ from 1st December 2018 for 60 months.
 
Professor Henry Houlden (Department of Neuromuscular Diseases) awarded £989,122 for research into ‘Leveraging the power of genomics and transcriptomatics to revolutionise the diagnosis and understanding of neurological disorders’ from 1st January 2019 for 36 months. 

Dr Liam Mason (Department of Imaging Neuroscience) awarded £696,717 from 1st April 2019 over 60 months for a project entitled ‘Identifying novel neuro-computational treatment targets for mood instability’.

Dr Pietro Fratta (Department of Neuromuscular Diseases) awarded MRC Senior Clinical Fellowship, jointly funded by the Motor Neurone Disease Association:  £1,926,270 for research into "The impact of TDP-43 on translation and the response to axonal damage in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis" from 1st October 2019  for 60 months

NIHR
Professor Olga Ciccarelli (Department of Neuroinflammation) awarded a NIHR Research Professorship of  £1,853,695 for ‘Predicting individual treatment responses towards personalised medicine in Multiple Sclerosis’ from 1st January 2019 for 60 months.
 
Professor Tom Foltynie (Department of Clinical & Movement Neurosciences) has been awarded £607,590 from 1st January 2019 over 60 months for research on ‘A randomized, double blind, parallel group, placebo controlled trial of Exenatide once weekly over 2 years as a potential disease modifying treatment for moderate severity Parkinson’s disease’.
 
UK DRI Ltd
Professor John Hardy (Department of Neurodegenerative Disease) awarded a grant of £504,581 as the DRI Core Award to the Hub at UCL from 1st January 2019 for 36 months.
 
Dr Carlos Sala Frigerio (UK Dementia Research Institute) awarded a grant of £1,584,209 as the DRI Core Award to the Hub at UCL from 1st November 2018 for 60 months.
 

Funding opportunities
 

Congratulations!

We’re pleased to announce the following recent prizes and awards:

IoN chosen for class of 2022 Edmond J. Safra Fellowship in Movement Disorders
UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology has been chosen by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) as one of five academic centers to host the fifth class of The Edmond J. Safra Fellowship in Movement Disorders.

NIHR 2019 Senior Investigators announced
UCL researchers have been appointed or re-appointed as National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Senior Investigators in the NIHR’s 2019 round of awards.18 new Emeritus Senior Investigators include Professor Nick Wood. It is a considerable achievement to attain Emeritus status, holders having succeeded twice in achieving Senior Investigator status in open competition and completed two terms as a Senior Investigator.
Dr Pietro Fratta has been awarded an MRC Senior Clinical Fellowship: only two were awarded by MRC, both to IoN: the other being  Dr Rickie Patani . Dr Fratta’s Fellowship investigates how genetic factors and environmental stimuli converge to trigger ALS.

“These are truly exciting times for ALS research and this Fellowship will allow us to address crucial questions about this devastating disease. I am grateful to the MRC for really wanting to fund this proposal, and to my numerous collaborators and colleagues in the Neuromuscular Disease Department and throughout UCL for their support.”
Marc Busche, UK DRI at UCL, received a Junior Faculty Award at ADPD 2019  'Tau silences neural circuits, dominating amyloid effects, in Alzheimer mouse models in vivo'
Stem cell model of motor neuron disease wins International 3Rs Prize 2018
The award was presented to Dr Rickie Patani, from the Francis Crick Institute and UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, for a paper describing the use of patient-derived stem cells to study motor neuron disease.
 Provost’s Awards
We are delighted to announce the following IoN staff's nominations

UCL Provost Education Awards
Bernadett Kalmar has been awarded a UCL Education Award by the Faculty and been shortlisted for a UCL Provost Education Award
These will be celebrated at a grand celebration on the Wilkins Terrace on Thursday 30 May 2019

Provost’s Awards for Public Engagement. There were an impressive response for nominations highlighting exceptional candidates and projects. An awards ceremony to celebrate all of the nominated projects will be held on Wednesday 15 May 2019.

See ION website for further examples of Public Engagement work across the IoN
 See more IoN news 

New Starters     
Welcome to the following staff who joined ION in the past 3 months:

Miss Elodie Martin; Miss Kata Diosi; Ms Joanna Blodgett; Miss Mina Borisova; Dr Marta Suarez Pinilla; Miss Lauren Gittings; Miss Sonia Garcruiz; Dr Oscar Lazo Jerez; Mr Phillip Muza; Miss Alkyoni ; Athanasiou Fragkouli; Miss Sandhya Seetah; Dr Giles Story; Miss Emily Upton; Dr Federico Colecchia; Dr Amy Tso; Mrs Helena Martins Custodio; Mr Nicholas Sharma; Dr Rita Demurtas; Mr Justin Hoke; Dr Trevor Smith; Dr Diego Jimenez Jimenez; Ms Laura Ussingkaer; Dr Lindsay Wilson; Ms Sophie Perry; Ms Jessica Mcfadyen; Ms Evridiki Gregoriou; Miss Maria Kalyva; Dr Dilan Athauda; Ms Ainslie Johnstone; Ms Emmeline Brown; Dr Elias Casula; Mr Joshua Duffield; Ms Anna Leigh Brown; Miss Paige Mumford; Mr Aram Amalietti; Dr Mie Rizig; Mr Ciaran Hill; Mr Elisha Chung; Miss Emily Abel; Mr Francis Kiernan; Miss Imogen Swift; Ms Heather Ging; Dr Michael Scholl; Dr Alexander Collcutt; Dr Sebastian De Schepper; Dr Silvia Ferrara; Dr Laura De Boni; Mrs Samantha Jones; Miss Jenna Carpenter; Ms Jessica Mcfadyen; Ms Rafaela Fernandez De La Fuente; Miss Claire Waddington; Miss Demelza Smeeth; Dr Yael Hacohen; Ms Laura Allum; Dr Jana Hartmann

Academic retirements: Professor Janice Holton

We wish our colleagues who have recently left IoN all the very best for the future.
 Please see IoN Vacancies for opportunities at IoN

Recent Queen Square Events

Queen Square Inaugural Lectures

Tuesday 19th March 2019

  • Professor Sven Bestmann (Professor of Movement Science)  Goals, and the brain
  • Professor Gareth Barnes (Professor and Head of MEG) Brains, trains and magnetic fields



Monday 1st April 2019

  • Professor Andrey Abramov (Department of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences)  Interplay of mitochondria, reactive oxygen species and calcium physiology and neurodegeneration
  • Professor Paola Giunti (Department of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences)  A Journey into the Ataxias

Tuesday 9th April 2019

  • Professor David Werring (Professor of Clinical Neurology, Department of Brain Repair & Rehabilitation). Medicine, magnets, and microvessels
  • Professor Rolf Jager (Professor or Neuroradiology, Department of Brain Repair & Rehabilitation). From large arteries to capillaries and beyond
World leading speakers at inaugural UCL "Biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases" course
Last week world leaders in the biomarkers field convened in London to teach on the Biomarkers for Neurodegenerative Diseases course. IoN news item


 

Upcoming Queen Square events

Tuesday 7th May at 5.30 pm
Professor Stephen G. Waxman (Bridget Marie Flaherty Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, and Pharmacology; Director, Center for Neuroscience & Regeneration Research Yale University and VA Connecticut). Chasing Men on Fire:  Huxley’s Science Fiction, and the Molecular Drivers of Pain”
Wolfson Lecture Theatre, followed by a Reception in the Old Boardroom. Please RSVP to: S.Jayasuriya@ucl.ac.uk.

Friday 31st May 2019
The 20th Annual Queen Square Symposium
The Symposium is organised by the Queen Square Committee and brings together MSc and PhD students across diverse neuroscience domains, including clinical, cognitive and computational scopes of study, and offers students at the IoN an invaluable opportunity to showcase and discuss their research     
 

Monday 10th June 2019, 1:30pm to 5pm
Reta Lila Weston Institute 50th Anniversary Symposium

We are delighted to announce that to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Reta Lila Weston Institute of Neurological Studies, a special symposium is being held. This will celebrate the achievements and staff of the Institute since its opening in 1969, and highlight future research directions

Monday 17th June 2019 from 5pm
Queen Square Inaugural Lectures
  
  • Professor Jeremy Chataway (Department of Neuroinflammation) Accelerating drug discovery for multiple sclerosis
  • Professor Raj Kapoor (Department of Neuroinflammation) Trialling Multiple Sclerosis
Venue: Basement Lecture Theatre,  33 Queen Square, followed by a reception.
Please RSVP to S.Jayasuriya@ucl.ac.uk  
 See more IoN events
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