Supercharging Medicine: Student-Led Conference

Georgina Norris, NIHR Cambridge BRC Patient and Public Involvement Coordinator

Talk title: Getting Involved in Health Research at Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH)

Time: 10.15am-10.30am

Georgina Norris is the PPI Coordinator for the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, helping researchers with PPI training and advice, and facilitating focus groups. Georgina is experienced in running a variety of advisory groups at local and national level, including public, lived experience, young people and rare disease panels.

Georgina also organises activities and events for NIHR Cambridge BRC including rare disease national events. She has previously worked for NHS Blood and Transplant as a Marketing Coordinator and has a background in media and event planning.

Prof. Raj Jena, Clinical Professor of Data Science & Machine Learning in Radiotherapy at the University of Cambridge Department of Oncology. Honorary Consultant in Clinical Oncology at Cambridge University Hospitals. Director of NIHR Oncology Translational Research Collaboration.

Talk title: OSAIRIS – Building an AI Powered Medical Imaging Device Within a Hospital

Time: 10.30am-11.00am

Raj Jena is a Professor of AI in Radiation Oncology based at the University of Cambridge Department of Oncology and Cambridge University Hospitals. His research interests focus on clinical image processing, data science and machine learning applications. Raj is the chief Investigator for Hamlet.rt, a multi-centre radiomics study in radiation therapy open at over 12 sites over the UK and Tata medical centre in Kolkata. He is a member of the Royal College of Radiologists’ AI in Clinical Oncology (AICO) committee and is Director of the Oncology Translational Research Collaboration (O-TRC) at the National Institute for Healthcare Research.

Raj enjoys working at the interface between the clinical, academic and commercial sectors. Following successful collaborations with Siemens and other imaging companies, he worked a clinical consultant to the InnerEye team at Microsoft Research. Here Raj had the opportunity to work with thought leaders in medical image analysis, and subsequently led the NHS AI lab funded OSAIRIS project, which developed the first cloud based open-source imaging AI solution to be deployed at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

Raj is now applying his knowledge of machine learning and image processing to the STELLA project, an international collaboration developing a novel smart radiotherapy unit for low- and middle-income countries.

Prof. Vikas Khanduja, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon & Research Lead (Elective) at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Clinical & Research Lead of the Cambridge Young Adult Hip Service, Affiliate Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge, 2021 Royal College of Surgeons Hunterian Professor, President of SICOT and Trustee & Board Member of the British Orthopaedic Association.

Talk title: The SMART Total Hip Replacement Story: Lessons in Innovation

Time: 11.00am-11.30am

Vikas Khanduja is a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon specialising in both sports’ surgery and arthroplasty aspects of hip surgery and has a particular interest in arthroscopic surgery of the hip. He has been instrumental in setting up the tertiary referral service for Young Adult Hip Surgery in Cambridge for the East of England.

Complementing his clinical practice, his research interests centre around Optimisation of arthroscopic management of femoroacetabular (hip) impingement (FAI). In particular, he has been working on disease stratification of FAI using novel imaging techniques, better pre-operative planning tools using dynamic analysis of the hip and optimisation of arthroscopic management of FAI via precision surgery using navigation to improve outcomes.

He also leads the Cambridge Young Adult Hip Research Group which is an active and productive group with a strong national and international presence. The focus of the research group is on the use of technology for the assessment and improvement of outcomes in young adults with hip pathology.

Prof. Eoin McKinney, Versus Arthritis Chair of Rheumatology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge,  honorary consultant in nephrology and transplantation at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and a faculty member of the Cambridge Centre for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine.

Talk title: Systems Immunology and Digital Twins

Time: 12.00pm-12.30pm

Eoin McKinney is a nephrologist with an interest in the pathways driving and marking severe, relapsing autoimmune disease. He holds a Wellcome Trust Fellowship, and his work explores parallel ways in which the immune response deals with persistent infection and persistent self-antigen during a number of relapsing autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.

The immune response is a powerful and complex system that has evolved to protect us from pathogens and from tumours. Losing control of that system results in immunopathology, manifest in a broad range of diseases including autoimmunity (such as T1D, lupus, multiple sclerosis), autoinflammatory disease (such as Crohn’s disease, Ulcerative colitis), infection and malignancy.