The “Smart advances in ageing research” workshop was co-organised by Dr Kasia Pirog and Dr Tony Sorial and sponsored by The Dunhill Medical Trust and The Wellcome Trust. The event took place at The Catalyst, the home of the National Innovation Centre for Ageing and National Innovation Centre for Data. Participants included osteoarthritis patients from the DMT Working Group and from Voice Global, and members of the public.

The event consisted of 3 talks highlighting recent technology assisted achievements in aging research, by Dr Sorial (on developing a tissue engineered model to assist with personalised medicine approaches to OA treatment), Dr Pirog (on using genetic engineering to investigate the role of asporin in OA progression and uncover potential treatments), and a key note lecture by Prof Farshid Guilak from Washington University on future of osteoarthritis treatments. The presentations were followed by great discussion and round table demonstrations of wearables to measure mobility and activity in the older population (Dr Pantall’s lab), AI interventions for frailty in care homes and private homes (OpenLab), tissue engineering approaches to cartilage modelling (Pirog and Sorial groups), mouse models of cartilage ageing and disease (Pirog lab) and spatial transcriptomics to investigate cartilage degeneration (Young lab). Thank you everyone for participating!

Come see us at the Wellcome Trust and Dunhill Medical Trust funded Osteoarthritis information day, co-organised by Dr Tony Sorial and Dr Kasia Pirog, with a keynote talk by Prof Farshid Guilak, discussing recent advances in the study of age related musculoskeletal conditions.

For details of how to register, please see the poster below.

It’s the official launch of the Black Box³ project!

BLACK BOX³: Unboxing invites artists and scientists at Northumbria University to present short 10-minute ‘unboxing’ talks: to share their research (or reveal their wildest research dreams), invite questions and solicit interdisciplinary relationships. The event includes talks and film screenings from two existing collaborative projects between the Arts and Applied Sciences at Northumbria University, ‘unboxing’ talks, an opportunity for discussion over a light lunch and coffee (provided), and a joint working session to establish an interdisciplinary film community at Northumbria where work can be shared through the BLACK BOX screening programme.

For more information, visit: https://www.cnosat10.com/black-box-3

Here’s the program of the unboxing event:

We hosted summer work experience students at the Centre for Life over the past two weeks, together with Diaz-Manera, Elliot, Munkley, and Veltman labs. It was really good fun, and great to see so much enthusiasm for science!

Thank you to all the labs for hosting the students, we hope you enjoyed it too.