Insigneo spring 2017

Spring 2017

COURSES

PROJECT NEWS

ROUNDUP INSIGNEOEVENTS NEWS | ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2016 1

CONTENTS AND WELCOME

Contents Inside this issue 4 - 5

Events

6 - 7

Feature: I can’t keep calm: I’m five!

8 - 9

Masters Courses and Collaborations

10 - 11 Partnerships, Bursaries and Placements 12 - 13

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New Projects

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International Exchanges and Visitors

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Where are they now?

Welcome Five years of the Insigneo Institute for in silico Medicine This newsletter provides an update on the activities of Insigneo five years after its inception, along with our annual Showcase event which highlights the outcomes of Insigneo research projects.

Both the Showcase and the newsletter provide a chance to reflect on recent achievements and to look forward to the upcoming opportunities in the area of in silico research.

Future research activities include effort to support the recently established NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Translational Neuroscience in Sheffield, which will leverage the expertise of Insigneo members in the simulation of neuromusculoskeletal biomechanics and in advanced image acquisition and image processing.

This year will also see the first intake of students into the Insigneo Masters

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in Computational Medicine. This will provide bespoke training for the next generation of Insigneo researchers, ensuring they are well equipped to create an impact through future careers across the academic, industrial and healthcare sectors.

The Showcase provides an opportunity to bring together academic and clinical researchers with commercial partners to set the agenda for future translation of Insigneo technologies through to the clinic. The event this year highlights ongoing Insigneo research which bridges the pathway to translation from fundamental science, supported by in silico technologies, to applications in predictive medicine and examples of industrial exploitation.

We welcome you to the Showcase and encourage you to use the event to influence the future direction of the Institute to deliver solutions for your research.

Dr Andrew Narracott Director of Operations Insigneo Institute for in silico Medicine April 2017

Cover: Demonstration of Virtual Reality simulations of patient-specific treatment solutions within the Cave environment of the Diamond building as part of an education project funded by La Fondation Dassault Systèmes to be incorporated within the MSc in Computational Medicine.

NEWS

Facilities - The Clinical Research Facility (CRF) The CRF is a collaboration between the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Sheffield and is available for all members of Insigneo to use for clinical studies. The facilities are free of charge

for small, Insigneo-linked studies not requiring the full support of the CRF clinical nursing staff and consist of: Administration Space: six work spaces and two PCs Clinical Space: bedrooms, an en-suite treatment room, consultation rooms and interview rooms Meeting Rooms: reception area, small meeting room and a sample processing lab. Further details can be found on the Insigneo website.

New Executive Director for VPHi, Professor Liesbet Geris, Universities of Liège and Leuven Professor Geris has taken over this executive role from Adriano Henney following his appointment as Secretary General of the newly established Avicenna Alliance. Liesbet said: “It is a great honour and privilege to follow in the footsteps of Marco and Adriano as the next Executive Director of the VPH Institute. I would first and foremost like to thank them for the amazing job

they have done over the last decade and their continued investment in the Institute. I would also like to thank them and the board of the VPHi for the confidence they have placed in me”.

Celebrating 100 years of Mechanical Engineering at Sheffield The Department of Mechanical Engineering (MEC) was born on 21st June 1917 at the first meeting of the Faculty and, starting with only six academic staff, the department has grown to over 60 academics with the first woman, Dr Rachel Tomlinson, joining in 1998.

The Department has shown itself to be adaptable to industrial needs, particularly during the First and Second World Wars. In the First World War MEC trained 1000 men to make shells and later produced aircraft and gun

components and trained hundreds of munitions workers, many of them women, in the Second World War. There has been a lot of change over these hundred years, from new people to new buildings, new technology and new ideas. Many memories have been created over the years and you are invited to share your story too. If you’d like to tell your story, or share photos, please contact Mechanical Engineering at me-centenary@sheffield.ac.uk

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EVENTS

Events Out and about with Insigneo

The Big Walk – June 2016 The Big Walk returned in 2016 to raise funds for refugee academics and students at the University. Two teams each walked over 120 miles over six days along the Trans Pennine Trail and on the final day both teams walked the final stretch of the journey back to Sheffield together. Insigneo is very proud that several members of staff took part in this event.

MultiSim 2nd Modelathon – September 2016

Researchers’ Night – September 2016

Researchers’ Night is a Europe-wide public event dedicated to popular science and fun learning. It showcases what researchers really do for society, in interactive and engaging ways, and promotes research careers to young people.

Eight VPH-CaSE researchers came together in Sheffield to demonstrate how the Marie Curie European Training Network is developing state-of-the-art solutions for the next generation of medical devices and clinical interventions. The event was entitled “Engineering the future: simulations and experiments for new medical devices and better treatments”.

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For three days, 23 researchers, including participants from the UK, Australia and Hungary, competed in teams to solve a challenging multi-scale biomechanical problem focused on the musculoskeletal system using state-of-the-art modelling techniques and software. The challenge was to design footwear to prevent ulcers in the foot of a diabetic patient.

Industry members and multi-scale experts, including software providers Materialise and Ansys, and sponsors Simpleware and Dassault Systèmes, provided expertise and technical support to encourage participants to make the most of the software available.

Third Modelathon – September 2017 MultiSim will hold its third Modelathon on 11-14 September 2017, with the theme of combining experimental and computational research to reduce in vivo testing in a pre-clinical setting. To register and find out more visit Multisim-Insigneo.org

Workshop on Computationally Efficient Modelling & Simulation and its Applications – October 2016 The White Rose University Consortium and MultiSim held a joint workshop bringing together leading experts and early career researchers actively working in the fields of system modelling and simulation in both scientific computing and application areas. The aim was to: identify suitable numerical approaches that would be able to address the computational challenges arising in complex system modelling and simulation; and enhance existing cross-fertilisation between the areas of scientific computing, mathematics, and its real life applications in multiple areas such as medicine, engineering and life sciences.

Festival of Science: Dem Bones Gonna Walk Around – March 2017 As part of Sheffield’s Festival of Science and Engineering, MultiSim researchers demonstrated to the public how their measurements and multiscale simulations will be used in the hospital of the future. Participants visited the Insigneo Gait Laboratory, in the Mappin complex to learn how computer models of physical activities can be developed to predict the risk of osteoporotic bone fracture. Participants had an opportunity to: interact with the motion capture systems and force plates; find which muscles in a simulated leg were required to kick a football; and look at bone cells through a microscope.

Luke Boldock: STEM for BRITAIN award – March 2017 Mechanical Engineering PhD student Luke Boldock was presented with the Engineering Silver Award at the STEM for BRITAIN awards. The exhibition of posters was aimed at early-career research scientists, engineers and mathematicians and Luke received the Silver Award at the Houses of Parliament for his poster presentation on ‘The Impact of Stent Geometry on Haemodynamics and Cellular Migration in Vitro’. Luke’s work is a collaboration between Insigneo members Paul Evans and Cecil Perrault.

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FEATURE

I can’t keep calm: I’m five!

A brief history of the Insigneo Institute (So far)

By Marco Viceconti In early 2011, Professor Mike Hounslow, Vice-President & Head of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Sheffield was looking for new opportunities for expansion. Mike was looking for an engineering grand challenge that was strongly innovative, when his attention was caught by the Virtual Physiological Human initiative.

The VPH Institute, the not-for-profit international organisation, offered this definition: “The Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) is a methodological and technological framework that, once established, will enable collaborative investigation of the human body as a single complex system”. This research line was driven by considerable investments: Japan had a running Global Centre of Excellence in in silico medicine; various federal agencies in the USA, coordinated by the Interagency Modeling and Analysis Group, were aggressively funding what they called Multiscale Modelling

2007 – The “Seeding the Europhysiome” roadmap of the VPH is published

2005 – The term “Virtual Physiological Human” is proposed in a white paper

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for Biomedical, Biological, Behavioral, Environmental and Clinical Research.

The European Commission was investing over €200m in VPH research as part of the FP7, and Germany had funded a single research initiative, the Virtual Liver Network, with over €40m. A number of academics in Sheffield were involved in leading roles, including Rod Smallwood and Richard Clayton (Computer Science), Rod Hose and Pat Lawford (Cardiovascular Science) and Wendy Tindale (Sheffield Teaching Hospitals).

2010 – The term Digital Patient arises

2010 – The VPH Institute for integrative biomedical research is established

2012 – The Insigneo Institute for in silico medicine is established

2011 – The University of Sheffield decide to create an institute on VPH research

In October 2011, a working group was appointed, formed by myself, Alex Frangi, Rod Hose, Pat Lawford, and Wendy Tindale, with the mandate to explore the creation of a research institute focused on VPH. In May 2012 the working group approved the initial charter of the Insigneo Institute for in silico Medicine. A steering committee which included the PVCs of the Faculties of Medicine and Engineering, plus the medical director of the Trust, approved the charter a few days after: Insigneo was born.

2013 – Insigneo Launch

August 2012 – 50th Member

2013 – First General Assembly

May 2013 – 100th Member

Insigneo Launch 2013

Insigneo Launch 2013

The vision statement, as reported in the charter, is simple: “INSIGNEO will realise the scientific ambition behind the Virtual Physiological Human, producing a transformational impact on healthcare”.

The first part required an interdisciplinary research agenda, across the Faculties of Engineering, Medicine, and Science; the second part required engagement with the NHS, starting with the two local Hospital Trusts. This need drove the vision of a virtual institute, where most members would remain located in their university or hospital departments, but would participate in the life of the Institute through a series of initiatives coordinated centrally.

Today, five years after its foundation, Insigneo is universally considered a success story. Our last report, relative to the work done from October 2011 until

2014 – The FDA approves the first in silico medicine technology for clinical use

2014 – Insigneo moves into newly built Pam Liversidge Building

2014 – First Showcase

July 2016 speaks of 140 academics or consultants from 28 departments registered as members of Insigneo, £37m of research income affiliated to the Institute, four physical locations, 163 affiliated publications with 349 citations, three solutions (VirtuHeart, BoneDVC, CT2S) that have reached TRL7 (being tested on at least 100 patients).

I wish I could draw a rosy future; Brexit, the commercialisation of higher education, the contraction of funding to research and healthcare, the stagnation of the biomedical industry are all challenges we will have to face. But for sure, without initiatives like Insigneo, the future would look much grimmer. What’s our plan for the next five years? Keep getting bigger, stronger, more influential, keep developing and deploying technology that tangibly helps humanity.

Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, also thanks to Insigneo, in silico medicine is becoming a reality.

Clinical decision-support systems based on subject-specific modelling are appearing in many critical clinical pathways, and the main regulatory bodies are now considering new authorisation pathways that include modelling and simulation to reduce, refine, and partially replace animal and human experimentation in the safety and efficacy assessment of new biomedical products.

2015 – Showcase Big Data Analytics

“INSIGNEO will realise the scientific ambition behind the Virtual Physiological Human, producing a transformational impact on healthcare”

2016 – Showcase Translation

2016 – MEng in Mechanical Engineering with Biomechanics starts

2017 – Showcase Insigneo is 5 years old!

2016 – Insigneo welcomes its 140th member, linked research funding exceeds £36m

2017 – MSc in Computational Mechanics starts

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MASTERS COURSES

New MSc course in Computational Mechanics Our new course, taught by experts from the Insigneo Institute, invites the next generation of healthcare specialists to join the digital revolution. From September 2017 we are introducing a new course, an MSc in Computational Medicine, aimed at equipping the next generation of specialists with the skills in healthcare modelling and simulation that will enable them to go on to successful careers in research hospitals, biomedical companies and software development and consultancy firms providing in silico medicine services.

In 2015/16, both the US Congress and the European Union Parliament made recommendations to their respective regulatory bodies to support the use of modelling and simulation in the assessment of the safety and effectiveness of new biomedical products. The impact of this on the clinical and pharmaceutical industries will be significant and far-reaching, leading to a major increase in in silico activities towards improving patient safety, creating personalised medical treatment and improving medical decision making. Students joining this highly practical course will undertake lectures, carry out practical hands-on laboratories and conduct a research project focused on real-world clinical and industrial applications. Students will benefit from being truly embedded in the Insigneo Institute and will receive direct training with the most advanced technologies available. The course is unique, the only one if its kind in the UK at this level, and is the result of significant industrial collaboration to ensure that our curriculum corresponds with the needs of the workplace.

“Developing this course was the obvious next step, to take advantage of the critical mass of experts we have at the Insigneo Institute; before this course was available there was no way for students to benefit from this expertise.

We have 140 academics and clinical specialists, with whom the students will be able to work and learn. We expect this MSc programme to be over-

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subscribed: we aim to produce the best of the best, creating an elite corps of trained professionals,” says Dr Cecile Perrault.

We are keen to develop and use innovative teaching techniques, for example we are working to develop some of the modules as MOOCs (Massively Open Online Course) and to use virtual reality technologies in the delivery of others, taking advantage of the VR Suite in the University’s state-of-the-art teaching facility in The Diamond. Advanced modules in both cardiovascular and musculoskeletal systems are under development, with significant funding from La Fondation Dassault Systèmes.

Dr Cecile Perrault Course Director MSc Computational Medicine c.perrault@sheffield.ac.uk

MEng in Mechanical Engineering with Biomechanics This is a 4-year degree specifically targeted at students who want the traditional mechanical engineering curriculum but have an inclination towards the life sciences and nonconventional engineering problems.

In the first two years, students will

acquire knowledge on traditional mechanical engineering subjects with a strong curricular focus on solid and fluid mechanics and dynamics. In the following years, the programme focuses more on learning how traditional engineering principles can be applied to analyse the biomechanics of the human body, with a strong focus on the musculoskeletal and cardiovascular system. The degree was designed to offer students double employment opportunities, satisfying demand in biomedical industries as well as the more traditional mechanical engineering sectors, and builds on the expertise available in Sheffield, where biomechanics is an area of intensive research and concentration of worldleading experts.

“This exciting new programme is in its third year. Our students have now started interacting with industry and clinical professionals to develop those essential multidisciplinary skills that will make them work effectively at the interface with medicine. This has already been a success and our industrial partners are enjoying the experience of working with our young and talented students”.

For more information contact Dr Alberto Marzo a.marzo@sheffield.ac.uk

COLLABORATIONS

Grants from La Fondation Dassault Systèmes The Insigneo Institute for in silico Medicine is developing two new virtual reality (VR) laboratories at the University of Sheffield. Professor Damien Lacroix, Dr Alberto Marzo, and Dr Andrew Narracott have recruited Dr Andrii Grytsan and Mr Kyle Murdock to oversee the development of the laboratories thanks to funding obtained from La Fondation Dassault Systèmes.

The purpose of these laboratories is to combine VR visualisation and personalised medical physics-based simulations into an innovative teaching tool. The virtual laboratories are part of the new MSc in Computational Medicine that will start in September 2017.

The laboratories will focus on simulating pre-operative planning of two diseases: 1. A musculoskeletal virtual laboratory will be used to simulate surgical treatment of lower back pain via placement of a fusion fixation device.

2. A cardiovascular virtual laboratory will be used to simulate endovascular treatment of a cerebral aneurysm via deployment of a flow diverting stent.

Students will gain skills to handle complex patient-specific engineering simulations, to interpret results of such simulations, and to convey their findings to broad audiences.

Visualisation in a VR environment will enhance the appreciation of a complex 3-dimensional nature of such patient-specific analyses, and make the communication between engineers and medical doctors more effective.

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PARTNERSHIPS

Strategic Partnership - Materialise New Strategic Partnership: The Insigneo Institute and Materialise NV

Insigneo’s goal is the transformation of healthcare practice through the introduction of personalised diagnosis and treatment, built on predictive simulation. Success requires the development and exploitation of sophisticated technologies, bringing them safely into use, and both these stages of the process can only be achieved in conjunction with carefully selected industrial partners. Insigneo is delighted to announce the completion of a strategic agreement with Materialise NV, a leading provider of additive manufacturing software and of sophisticated 3D printing services in the medical and industrial markets. The two have signed a Memorandum of Understanding, which covers both technical and commercial cooperation, with the aim of translating 3D computational modelling into clinical and patient care.

As part of the process, Insigneo has taken up multiple research and student licences for the Materialise Mimics Innovation Suite.

When Materialise NV first began operations in 1990, CEO Fried Vancraen made it the company’s mission to innovate product development that results in a better and healthier world. Since then, Materialise’s open and flexible solutions have come to form the backbone of 3D printing technologies, enabling players in a wide variety of industries, including healthcare, automotive, aerospace, art and design, and consumer goods, to build meaningful 3D printing applications and make Materialise’s mission a reality.

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Advanced Tools for Anatomical Engineering The Materialise Mimics Innovation Suite puts the most advanced and certified toolkit at users’ fingertips, to solve the toughest challenges in engineering on the anatomy. Using the anatomy as the starting point, researchers and engineers from around the world use Mimics technology to develop and validate leading-edge medical devices, 3D planning methods, patient-specific implants and surgical instrumentation that improve and save lives like never before.

No two patients are the same, scan quality varies, new scan modalities arise, and so do their file formats.

Yet, if the end goal is quality patient care, 3D models must accurately represent the patient’s anatomy, and they should be created quickly and easily. Materialise has been working alongside leading researchers and engineers for more than 25 years, helping them solve their challenges with the Materialise Mimics Innovation Suite. The result is the most advanced segmentation toolbox for patient specific-device design and medical image-based research and development.

Where Materialise offers intuitive, certified systems capable of meeting a very wide range of challenges, Insigneo’s strengths lie in the innovative development of new approaches to complex clinical problems, where novel predictive simulations offer fresh insights that can provide decision support in clinical areas where conventional approaches have struggled to deliver optimised care.

The Insigneo/Materialise Memorandum of Understanding is designed to accelerate the wider adoption of modelling and simulation in healthcare, by allowing each of the organisations to benefit maximally from the progress of the other. The agreement covers cooperation across a wide range of topics including participation in, and support of, research activities, educational engagement for training and for the improvement of the student experience, agreement on publications, mutuallysupportive networking opportunities and coordinated publicity over developments. Importantly, it allows for routine discussion on technical and developmental strategy, enabling regular cross-fertilisation on emerging requirements, trends and opportunities.

BURSARIES AND PLACEMENTS

Bursaries for Clinical Translation from Sheffield Hospital Charities Three, 6-month bursaries were awarded in the 4th call for the Insigneo bursary for Clinical Translation. Each bursary was headed by one clinical and one non-clinical Insigneo member and the ultimate scope of the bursaries was to improve our ability to translate the results of our technological research into clinical practice. Bursaries were awarded to: • Dr John Fenner and Dr Helen Griffiths (Increasing Awareness of Nystagmus and Improving Patient Experience via the Application of Virtual Reality Technology)

• Dr Alberto Marzo and Dr Timothy Ellam (Non-invasive Assessment of Renal Haemodynamics by in silico Medicine) • Dr Claudia Mazzà and Dr Krishnan PS Nair (Sensory Barrage Stimulation for Upper Limb Spasticity following Stroke) The PhD (Prediction of the Risk of Vertebral Fracture in Patients with Metastatic Lesions as a Tool for more Effective Patients’ Management) supervised by Dr Enrico Dall’Ara and Professor Janet Brown that was funded by the charity in 2015 is still ongoing.

Insigneo Student Summer Placement Programme 2017 The 2017 placement programme runs for 10 weeks and is open to all students of the University of Sheffield enrolled in the 2nd or 3rd year of an undergraduate programme.

The 15 selected students started in April with an introductory week, during which they were trained to use one or more specific software tools required to fulfil a data processing/modelling task assigned to them. Each student is assigned to a supervisor - either a PhD student or a post-doctoral research associate - who is conducting the research project that requires the

data processing/modelling task. Gloria Lin, a 2nd year student in Mechanical Engineering, was one of last year’s successful applicants.

She said: “I applied for the placement because I didn’t know what research was about and wanted to know more and it turned out to be fun! As a result I am now considering doing a PhD in the field of in silico medicine so this has really shaped my future. I received a lot of support from my supervisor, Sara Oliviero, who is a PhD student based in Insigneo”. Sara added: “As well as giving students the opportunity to gain experience using new

software, this has been a great experience for me too. It has given me the experience of supervising a student as well as producing valuable results”.

Sara Oliviero with placement student Gloria Lin

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NEW PROJECTS

New Sheffield NIHR Biomedical Research Centre announced for Translational Neurosciences A new Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) at the University of Sheffield has been funded by the National Institute for Health Research. It will be led by Professor Dame Pamela Shaw and

will initiate a programme of research in Translational Neuroscience for Chronic Neurological Disorders.

The BRC key research areas will be neuroinflammation, cerebrovascular

neurology, and neurodegeneration and Insigneo will be responsible for the in silico medicine cross-cutting theme.

Centre of Excellence in Computational Biomedicine

Insigneo is a core partner in the CompBioMed project which is coordinated by University College London. This is a European wide Centre of Excellence (CoE) aimed at advancing the role of computationally based modelling and simulation within biomedicine. By nurturing collaborations among academic, industrial and clinical researchers, the CoE intends to build, develop and extend high performance computing capabilities in biomedical applications.

The exemplar research areas include

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cardiovascular, molecularly-based and near-musculoskeletal medicine.

Many of these models are multiscale, and require the coupling of two or more high performance codes. The CoE presents a powerful consortia of partners who work together to promote the use of high performance computing in these areas of computational medicine. It has an outward facing nature and will actively train, disseminate and engage with user communities across Europe and beyond.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 675451. This project is funded under H2020-EU.1.4.1.3. Development, deployment and operation of ICT-based e-infrastructures.

VPH-CaSE - Cardiovascular Simulation and Experimentation for Personalised Medical Devices

VPH-CaSE is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Training Network focusing on state-of-the-art developments in simulation and experimentation for personalised cardiovascular treatment and device design. Running until December 2018, the network as a whole hosts 14 early-stage researchers based in nine European institutions, four of whom are supervised by

Insigneo members. Researchers focus on addressing clinical and industrial needs not currently met by established systems, supported by input from industrial and clinical partners. VPHCaSE is coordinated by Dr John Fenner and Dr Andrew Narracott in the Department of Infection, Immunity and Cardiovascular Disease.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 642612

EurValve - Personalised Decision Support for Heart Valve Disease The EurValve project is a European Commission H2020 funded project coordinated by Professor Rod Hose in the Department of Infection, Immunity and Cardiovascular Disease. The consortium consists of 13 partners around Europe.

EurValve will implement, test and validate a model-based clinical decision support system (CDSS) for aortic and mitral valve diseases that allows simulating, comparing and understanding the outcomes and risks of different treatment strategies.

In addition, the CDSS will improve knowledge of disease mechanisms by applying a holistic assessment of cardiovascular function that includes

comprehensive haemodynamic data in the atria, ventricles, valves and vessels and multiscale modelling techniques spanning multiple length scales.

EurValve is an EC Research and Innovation Action. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement Number 689617

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INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGES AND VISITORS

Australia A three month student placement is currently underway between Insigneo and the Medical Device Research Institute at Flinders University, Australia.

Bart van Veen, PhD student at Insigneo, is visiting Adelaide to work under the supervision of Dr Saulo Martelli.

The overall aim of the placement is to further develop a computational

method that includes stochastic neuromotor control in the estimation of muscle forces during human movement. During the placement, Bart hopes to include Dr Martelli’s systematic approach to muscle force production in musculoskeletal modelling into his methodology.

Vietnam Cecile Perrault, Maria-Cruz Villa-Uriol and Paul Watton travelled to Ho Chi Minh City in January 2017 to meet our Vietnamese collaborators for the EPSRC-GCRF grant on diagnostic devices, of which Cecile is principal investigator. The collaboration is a stepping stone for two larger proposals, one on tackling the fight against dengue fever via development

of a novel microfluidic diagnostic device and another on better diagnostic solutions for sleep apnoea. The partner university, International University, is an English-speaking university in Vietnam, and most of its academic staff were trained overseas.

Visitors Bhaskar Birru: PhD student, Department of Biotechnology, NIT Warangal visited Insigneo through the Newton-Bhabha PhD placement programme.

Niccolo’ Fanchini: From Universty of Turin (Politecnico di Torino) was working on a project with Enrico Dall’Ara and Mario Giorgi called Growth Map of Mice Proximal Tibia.

Cecile Jebane: Masters student in physics at University Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France; worked on the implementation of live traction force microscopy.

Luca Tagliapetra: From the University of Padua.

Jasmin Gattringer: Masters student from IMC FH Krems, Austria; worked in the development of a co-culture model of the arterial wall to study artherogenesis.

Paola Tamburini: A visiting student from Bologna funded by the ESB.

Koichiro Maki - (front row fourth left) - with colleagues from Insigneo

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Anke de Leeuw: A final year undergraduate student from Maastricht University in The Netherlands.

Investigating the osteogenic development of hES-MP cells on biobased beer production- derived silica scaffolds cultured in xeno-free media.

Rasmus Wagner: A final year undergraduate student from Hochschule Niederrhein University of Applied Science in Germany. His project was on the improvement of a medical device used to remove clots in patients suffering from ischemic stroke.

Koichiro Maki: From University of Kyoto working on the understanding of cell mechanotransduction using atomic force microscopy with Stefania Marcotti who had spent 4 months in Koichiro’s lab last year at the University of Kyoto (Japan).

Eylül Demir - right of picture fourth from left with Insigneo colleagues

Eylül Demir: From Yildirim Beyazit University in Turkey. She has been working in the development of finite element model of the lumbar spine in order to treat spinal disorders.

Alessio Amicone: On an internship from Bologna.

Luca Conigliaro: A final year student from Turin.

Simone Conigliaro: A final year student from Turin.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Iain Hannah completed an MEng in Mechanical Engineering with German and returned to Sheffield in 2014 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Insigneo. In 2016, he moved to work as a simulation engineer for the adidas FUTURE Team in Herzogenaurach, Germany.

“I completed a PhD at Loughborough University’s Sports Technology Institute in 2013 and, after a period of travelling abroad, was seeking an opportunity to use the skills that I had developed in biomechanical simulation. I was delighted to be offered a postdoctoral position on the MultiSim project and return to Sheffield.

I was impressed by the vision of Insigneo and the MultiSim project, as it seemed to have a clear and meaningful application, but without sacrificing academic rigour. I enjoyed the opportunity to couple my experience in the finite element modelling of biomechanical systems to an area that was relatively new to me: the development of subjectspecific musculoskeletal models. The approachable nature of everyone in the group allowed me to settle quickly and also helped foster a culture of collaboration that I feel both benefited the quality of my work, and ensured that my time with Insigneo was as enjoyable as it was.

The experiences I gained as part of the MultiSim project have served me well in my current role as a simulation engineer with the adidas FUTURE Team, the arm of the company responsible for research and innovation. Whilst my work in Sheffield was geared towards more medical applications, sports products cannot be successful unless the biomechanics of human motion are considered during their design and development. This is key in my current position and we are encouraged to keep this in mind, irrespective of what we are working on, whether it be the optimisation of component geometries, characterisation of material properties, or establishment of new design principles.

Currently my department at adidas employs a broad mix of engineers, designers and developers, and most projects require significant collaboration between these diverse groups. The ability to manage these relationships is crucial and I definitely feel that there are clear parallels to the MultiSim project which also requires such a wide range of competencies to achieve its goals.

The final aspect of Insigneo that I’d like to touch on is the more social opportunities that there are to be enjoyed. We set up a monthly sports club and took part in a range of activities including six-a-side football, archery and my personal highlight, a trip to see the mighty Sheffield

Wednesday defeat Arsenal at Hillsborough. I can certainly say that my time as a Research Associate on the MultiSim project played a huge role in my development as an engineer and has given me the skills and confidence to succeed in this next step of my career. Thank you to all those with whom I worked alongside during this time.”

“The experiences I gained as part of the MultiSim project have served me well in my current role as a simulation engineer”

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140 MEMBERS

43

CLINICIANS

178

£37

MILLION RESEARCH INCOME

AFFILIATED PROJECTS

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DEPARTMENTS

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RESEARCH AREAS FIGURES CORRECT AT TIME OF WRITING

Room F19 - F Floor The Pam Liversidge Building Corner of Broad Lane and Newcastle Street Sheffield S1 3JD +44 (0) 114 222 0162 /5 /7 info@insigneo.org www.insigneo.org @insigneo