New at St Andrews: Institute for Data-Intensive Research

The St Andrews Institute for Data-Intensive Research (IDIR) is a new institute set up to provide a focus for research and teaching activities across the University driven by access to “big data”. 

IDIR will bring the University’s strengths in humanities and social sciences with those in computer, mathematical, life, and physical scientists to share insights and techniques. IDIR results from the enormous volume of activity taking place across the University that could broadly be described as data-driven – from data science, through digital humanities and digital social science, to digital medicine, which all share common characteristics. They are exploring new techniques and opportunities brought about by the availability of large volumes of data and the processing power needed to manipulate them.

Some of the Schools included are Computer Science, Mathematics & Statistics, Physics & Astronomy, Medicine, Chemistry, Biology, International Relations, Earth and Environmental Sciences and History.

Novel microscope for biological imaging

A new form of ‘light sheet imaging’, has been developed by an interdisciplinary team led by Professor Kishan Dholakia and Dr Tom Vettenburg of the School of Physics. A light sheet microscope creates 3D images of cells by seeing how a sample lights up slice-by-slice when moved through a sheet of light. This sheet would ideally be as thin as a razor’s edge to be able to probe the inner workings of all cells, yet gentle as light to avoid cell damage. The St Andrews group achieved this by exploiting a beam of light that moves on a peculiarly curved trajectory. The beam is known as the Airy beam after the British astronomer Sir George Airy consists of multiple parallel sheets of light, achieving high resolution without being thin. Using this method, the light is used more efficiently to see the inner details of hundreds of cells with clarity.

It is hoped that the development will lead to improved understanding of biological development, cancer, and diseases such as Alzheimer, Parkinson, and Huntington that affect the human brain.
Partners are sought for the commercialization of the technology.

The work was funded by a UK EPSRC Programme Grant and carried out with St Andrews colleagues Dr Heather Dalgarno and Jonathan Nylk (School of Physics & Astronomy), Dr David Ferrier and Clara Coll-Lladó (Scottish Oceans Institute), Dr Tomáš Cižmár (School of Medicine), and Professor Frank Gunn-Moore (School of Biology).
Nature Methods, "Light-sheet microscopy using an Airy beam", doi:10.1038/nmeth.2922

NVIDIA Corporation award for Big Data researchers

NVIDIA Corporation has awarded Dr Blesson Varghese, from Computer Science, two Tesla K40 GPU accelerators worth over £11,000. The Tesla K40 GPUs were launched last month and Blesson’s winning proposal was ‘GPU Acceleration for Real-time Predictive Analytics’ which will be pursued at the Big Data Lab in collaboration with Dr Adam Barker from Computer Science and Prof Peter Donnelly from the School of Medicine.

Wellcome Trust Vacation Scholarships awarded

Two students have been awarded the Biomedical Vacation Scholarships to undertake work in the School of Medicine, with Dr Katarina Oravcova, and in the School of Psychology, with Dr Ines Jentzsch, each for a period of eight weeks. These awards provide promising undergraduates with hands-on experience of research during the summer vacation, with the aim of encouraging them to consider a career in research. The scheme has been run by the Wellcome Trust since 1959.

 

Royal Society Fellowships announced for 2011

The University of St Andrews is delighted to announce the appointment by the Royal Society, the UK's national academy of science, of three St Andrews scientists as new University Research Fellows. The prestigious University Research Fellowship scheme aims to provide outstanding scientists, who have the potential to become leaders in their chosen fields, with the opportunity to build an independent research career. The scheme is extremely competitive and URFs are expected to be strong candidates for permanent posts in universities at the end of their fellowships.

Dr Vasilis Archontis  - School of Mathematics and Statistics  

Discovering the nature of outstanding aspects of the solar magnetic activity

Dr Catherine Cazin - School of Chemistry

Catalytic C-H bond functionalisation

Dr Silvia Paracchini - School of Medicine    

A genetic and functional genomic study of neurodevelopmental disorders

Collaborative study of life expectancy in Scotland

Scottish life expectancy is amongst the lowest in Europe. Understanding the issues contributing to this statistic is essential if prevention of such early deaths is to be prevented. As a result, the University of St Andrews, along with the universities of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow, supported by a two-year £445,000 grant from the Scottish Funding Council, are to establish the Scottish School of Public Health Research, which will work in collaboration with frontline healthcare providers to pool their expertise in order to improve the way public health issues are researched and addressed. The five pooled universities will serve as a centre of excellence for this work.