Advanced imaging techniques to understand the transport of the virus in air

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Advanced imaging techniques to understand the transport of the virus in air

This seminar series will showcase on-going COVID-19 related research at University College Dublin

By UCD Research Partners

Date and time

Wed, 2 Dec 2020 06:00 - 06:30 PST

Location

Online

About this event

The use of advanced imaging techniques to understand the transport of the virus in air

Seminar Summary

Join the UCD Research Partners team for our regular 30min chat with researchers currently pursuing research relating to COVID-19 from across the 6 Colleges of UCD. In this session we will talk with Prof Ronan Cahill (UCD School of Medicine and MMUH) and Dr Kevin Nolan (UCD School of School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering) about the use of advanced imaging techniques to understand the transport of the virus in air during healthcare procedures. Using highly sensitive large format Schlieren imaging he has characterised gas flows and aerosol generating events in laparoscopic surgery, anaesthesiology, ophthalmic procedures, speech and language therapy, physiotherapy and dentistry. This enables the design of engineering controls and PPE selection in near real time. The highly visual data has also been used for public outreach reinforcing the importance of mask wearing and social distancing. This work will continue as part of the H2020 funded PORSAV project.

Prof Ronan Cahill

Professor Ronan Cahill was appointed Professor of Surgery at University College Dublin (UCD) and the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital (MMUH) in June 2014 before taking over leadership of the Section and Subject of Surgery in UCD in 2017. In 2019, he was appointed Director of the Centre for Precision Surgery, UCD and the Digital Surgery Unit, MMUH.

Ronan graduated MB,BAO,BCh (Hons) from University College Dublin in 1997 and then completed his basic and specialist surgical training in Ireland, gaining both MD by thesis (Health Research Board Clinical Research Fellow) and FRCS by examination. Thereafter, he was a clinical fellow at the IRCAD/EITS Institute in Strasbourg, France from 2007 to 2008 before moving to the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals as senior fellow and then consultant and senior clinical researcher from 2008 to 2010. Ronan returned to Ireland in 2010 as consultant general surgeon (specialist interest in colorectal surgery) at Beaumont Hospital before moving to the Mater and UCD. He is a recipient of both the Bennett and Millen Medals (RCSI Millen Lecturer 2010) and was the ASGBI Robert Smith Lecturer in 2014. He has authored over 200 peer reviewed publications, five book chapters and four National Guidelines. He is an editorial board member of five indexed surgical journals, including Colorectal Disease and the European Journal of Surgical Oncology and is a member of the SAGES Research Committee (SAGES Career Development Award recipient 2009). He has a major academic interest in Surgical Innovation and New Technologies and active basic science, clinical and device development research partnerships both nationally and internationally. Most recently he is co-awardee of a major Disruptive Innovation and Technologies Fund (DTIF) award by the Irish Government for a project entitled "The Future of Colorectal Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment", a consortium including UCD, RCSI, IBM Research and Dechiphex using artificial intelligence for decision support in surgery and pathology.

Dr Kevin Nolan

Dr Nolan studied Aeronautical Engineering at UL and obtained a PhD in experimental fluid mechanics at the Stokes Institute. He was a Marie Curie fellow at Imperial College London where he worked with large datasets of turbulent flow simulations. He has worked with microfluidics and optics in the biotech and telecommunications sectors. His research interests are in experimental fluid mechanics, in particular flow structure identification, optical measurement techniques and non-Newtonian flows.

UCD COVID-19 Seminar Series

In order to help tackle this pandemic, we must leverage multidisciplinary research and innovation expertise from across our academic institutions. This highly relevant expertise spans a wide range of disciplines both scientific and non-scientific. Indeed, it is important to note that while the fundamental challenges is a health-related emergency, this pandemic will have significant implications for our society, our economy and future policy.

Across UCD and in our university hospitals, researchers are rising to the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic. They are providing critical supports that have a real and tangible impact on patients’ lives. They are expanding Ireland’s testing capacity, developing new supply chains, manufacturing reagents, developing national contact tracing capability, and investigating new ways to tackle the disease.

Our researchers are working to better understand the impact on the health of our children during this pandemic, the impact on individuals with intellectual and disabilities and their caregivers, they are new methods for screening antiviral compounds, coordinating primary care networks, manufacturing PPE, producing critical reagents for testing, modelling populations behaviours, developing new medical devices to mitigate the risk of disease spread, investigating the host response to the disease, developing innovative remote monitoring technologies, and developing novel national disease surveillance methods.

This seminar series will showcase on-going COVID-19 related research at UCD to help facilitate greater interdisciplinary collaboration within UCD and with external partners.

We are using Basecamp to continue the conversation and facilitate collaboration online at UCD. Please select "Yes, please add me to UCD C19 Research Basecamp Portal" when prompted during the Eventbrite event registration process. Alternatively, please complete the webform linked here to join the UCD C19 Research Basecamp Portal.  

Organised by

The Research Partners team advise and support academic leaders in the development of medium to long-term plans across UCD’s major research themes. Specifically, the team works on developing strategic elements of major funding proposals and they complement the work of the Research Programmes team.

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