Wearable neuroimaging technologies for the neonatal intensive care unit: mapping sensorimotor disruption in infants at risk of cerebral palsy.
Lead Research Organisation:
University College London
Department Name: Medical Physics and Biomedical Eng
Abstract
Newborn infants are extremely vulnerable to brain injury. The cause and nature of newborn brain injuries varies widely, but one common factor is that infants who suffer a brain injury at birth often go on to develop cerebral palsy.
Cerebral palsy is a group of permanent movement disorders that can severely limit the control of the muscles, and can have a devastating impact on quality of life. Cerebral palsy is the most common form of childhood disability in Europe and every year, approximately 1800 children in the UK are diagnosed with the condition. Cerebral palsy also has a significant impact on families and on society. It is estimated that the costs of care and support for people with cerebral palsy exceeds £1.4 Billion per year in the UK.
The early diagnosis of cerebral palsy is critical. While there is no cure for the condition, there are a number of treatments that can improve an infant's long-term motor ability. During the first few weeks and months of life the brain is highly adaptable, which means it is likely to be at its most susceptible to treatment. If infants with abnormal motor development could be identified early, these treatments would have the greatest chance of success. At present, the majority of infants with cerebral palsy are not diagnosed until 1 or 2 years-of-age. By this point it is likely too late for treatment to have the best possible impact. In 2015, the government held an inquiry into issues surrounding cerebral palsy in the UK and highlighted the urgent need for more research to support the early and objective diagnosis of the condition.
In healthy children and adults, the parts of the brain that control movement and receive somatosensory input (such as touch sensation) are organized like a map of the body. It has been shown that this organization is disrupted in children and adults with cerebral palsy. If we could monitor this disruption in the infant at the cot-side, it would be possible to provide an early and objective identification of infants who are developing abnormally. At present, there is no technology that can provide the precision, resolution, patient comfort or motion tolerance necessary to achieve this.
The aim of this fellowship is to address these challenges and develop a new wearable functional brain imaging technology that will allow infant somatosensory and motor organization to be mapped at the cot-side. I will use flexible electronics to construct a miniaturized imaging array that will incorporate hundreds of emitters and detectors of near-infrared light to safely monitor infant brain function. This imaging array will be fixed into a soft, elastic head-cap that can be worn comfortably by a newborn baby. By designing and integrating an advanced form of motion tracking, and by developing novel signal processing approaches, I will maximize the precision and motion tolerance of this imaging technology to allow brain function to be mapped during touch stimulation and during natural movement. I will then validate this system using carefully controlled laboratory experiments and a comprehensive functional imaging study in healthy adults. Finally, I will translate this technology to the neonatal clinic and investigate the development of somatosensory and motor function in both healthy and brain-injured infants from preterm through to 6 months-of-age. In doing so, I aim to demonstrate a new approach to the objective identification and monitoring of infants with cerebral palsy.
Cerebral palsy is a group of permanent movement disorders that can severely limit the control of the muscles, and can have a devastating impact on quality of life. Cerebral palsy is the most common form of childhood disability in Europe and every year, approximately 1800 children in the UK are diagnosed with the condition. Cerebral palsy also has a significant impact on families and on society. It is estimated that the costs of care and support for people with cerebral palsy exceeds £1.4 Billion per year in the UK.
The early diagnosis of cerebral palsy is critical. While there is no cure for the condition, there are a number of treatments that can improve an infant's long-term motor ability. During the first few weeks and months of life the brain is highly adaptable, which means it is likely to be at its most susceptible to treatment. If infants with abnormal motor development could be identified early, these treatments would have the greatest chance of success. At present, the majority of infants with cerebral palsy are not diagnosed until 1 or 2 years-of-age. By this point it is likely too late for treatment to have the best possible impact. In 2015, the government held an inquiry into issues surrounding cerebral palsy in the UK and highlighted the urgent need for more research to support the early and objective diagnosis of the condition.
In healthy children and adults, the parts of the brain that control movement and receive somatosensory input (such as touch sensation) are organized like a map of the body. It has been shown that this organization is disrupted in children and adults with cerebral palsy. If we could monitor this disruption in the infant at the cot-side, it would be possible to provide an early and objective identification of infants who are developing abnormally. At present, there is no technology that can provide the precision, resolution, patient comfort or motion tolerance necessary to achieve this.
The aim of this fellowship is to address these challenges and develop a new wearable functional brain imaging technology that will allow infant somatosensory and motor organization to be mapped at the cot-side. I will use flexible electronics to construct a miniaturized imaging array that will incorporate hundreds of emitters and detectors of near-infrared light to safely monitor infant brain function. This imaging array will be fixed into a soft, elastic head-cap that can be worn comfortably by a newborn baby. By designing and integrating an advanced form of motion tracking, and by developing novel signal processing approaches, I will maximize the precision and motion tolerance of this imaging technology to allow brain function to be mapped during touch stimulation and during natural movement. I will then validate this system using carefully controlled laboratory experiments and a comprehensive functional imaging study in healthy adults. Finally, I will translate this technology to the neonatal clinic and investigate the development of somatosensory and motor function in both healthy and brain-injured infants from preterm through to 6 months-of-age. In doing so, I aim to demonstrate a new approach to the objective identification and monitoring of infants with cerebral palsy.
Planned Impact
The most significant impact of this fellowship will be on infants at risk of developing cerebral palsy (CP). CP is the most common form of childhood disability in Europe and causes a lifelong, debilitating loss of motor control and co-ordination that has a significant impact on quality of life. At present, approximately 1800 infants are diagnosed with CP each year in the UK, and this figure is not decreasing. While there is no cure for CP, there are a number of proven therapeutic approaches that can mitigate its impact. There exists a critical period of neuroplasticity in the first weeks and months of life, and the early identification of infants with sensorimotor abnormalities is essential to optimizing their motor outcome. Furthermore, because the condition evolves in a complex manner over the perinatal period, it is essential to be able to monitor high-risk infants over time. By producing a new generation of wearable DOT technologies that can be used to track the development of infant sensorimotor functional organization, I will demonstrate that it is possible to objectively identify and monitor motor abnormalities across the perinatal period. Cost-effective, longitudinal monitoring will make it possible to target clinical resources where they can have the greatest benefit. It will be possible to instigate individualized physiotherapeutic intervention earlier than ever before, which will maximize the treatment's potential to mitigate the effects of brain injury. By investigating post-injury neurodevelopment and by providing the means to monitor the effect of treatment on the sensorimotor cortex, this research programme will also impact the development and assessment of future interventional strategies.
In addition to infants at risk of CP, this fellowship has the potential to affect the diagnosis, management and treatment of a broad range of neurological conditions. This research programme will stimulate the development of a new generation of wearable neuromonitoring technologies that will have wide-reaching clinical implications. Accurate, real-time, continuous bed-side imaging of cerebral haemodynamics will be possible for the first time. This will have a significant and long-lasting impact on conditions including epilepsy, hypoxic ischaemic injury, traumatic brain injury and stroke.
The innovations of this research programme will also have a significant commercial and economic impact. The IP generated by this fellowship, and the licensing, production and sales of the associated technology will yield substantial economic benefit to the UK. By dramatically broadening the range of possible applications, the technological advances described in this fellowship will immediately accelerate the growth of the optical neuroimaging research market. The research stimulated by this fellowship will ultimately result in a new generation of clinical devices that will also have significant commercial potential. The clinical market will include maternity hospitals, physiotherapy and neurorehabilitation centres, intensive care units and neurology hospitals. By exploiting existing links with Hitachi Ltd., Hamamatsu Photonics K. K. and project partner Gowerlabs Ltd., I intend to ensure the rapid commercialization and translation of this technology. This fellowship therefore has the potential to stimulate the creation of a new UK-based medical device industry.
In addition to infants at risk of CP, this fellowship has the potential to affect the diagnosis, management and treatment of a broad range of neurological conditions. This research programme will stimulate the development of a new generation of wearable neuromonitoring technologies that will have wide-reaching clinical implications. Accurate, real-time, continuous bed-side imaging of cerebral haemodynamics will be possible for the first time. This will have a significant and long-lasting impact on conditions including epilepsy, hypoxic ischaemic injury, traumatic brain injury and stroke.
The innovations of this research programme will also have a significant commercial and economic impact. The IP generated by this fellowship, and the licensing, production and sales of the associated technology will yield substantial economic benefit to the UK. By dramatically broadening the range of possible applications, the technological advances described in this fellowship will immediately accelerate the growth of the optical neuroimaging research market. The research stimulated by this fellowship will ultimately result in a new generation of clinical devices that will also have significant commercial potential. The clinical market will include maternity hospitals, physiotherapy and neurorehabilitation centres, intensive care units and neurology hospitals. By exploiting existing links with Hitachi Ltd., Hamamatsu Photonics K. K. and project partner Gowerlabs Ltd., I intend to ensure the rapid commercialization and translation of this technology. This fellowship therefore has the potential to stimulate the creation of a new UK-based medical device industry.
People |
ORCID iD |
Robert Cooper (Principal Investigator / Fellow) |
Publications
Ayaz H
(2022)
Optical imaging and spectroscopy for the study of the human brain: status report.
in Neurophotonics
Billing ADN
(2021)
Pre-SMA activation and the perception of contagiousness and authenticity in laughter sounds.
in Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior
Blanco B
(2021)
Group-level cortical functional connectivity patterns using fNIRS: assessing the effect of bilingualism in young infants.
in Neurophotonics
Brigadoi S
(2017)
Image reconstruction of oxidized cerebral cytochrome C oxidase changes from broadband near-infrared spectroscopy data.
in Neurophotonics
Bunketorp Käll L
(2018)
Adaptive motor cortex plasticity following grip reconstruction in individuals with tetraplegia.
in Restorative neurology and neuroscience
Chalia M
(2019)
Diffuse optical tomography for the detection of perinatal stroke at the cot side: a pilot study
in Pediatric Research
Chitnis D
(2016)
Functional imaging of the human brain using a modular, fibre-less, high-density diffuse optical tomography system.
in Biomedical optics express
Description | In the first phase of this fellowship, I worked as part of a wider team to refine and demonstrate a prototype wearable optical neuroimaging technology. These devices (known as High-Density Diffuse Optical Tomography (HD-DOT) technologies) allow the brain to be images using near-infrared light. We used this technology to produce the first ever 3D images of human brain function using a wearable device (Chitnis et al., 2016). After this early success, my team and I then undertook a review of the progress of the field in this area (Zhao et al., 2017) and collected data for a second paper using this wearable technology on moving subjects for the first time (Zhao et al., 2020). Over the same period, my team and I were advancing this technology on multiple fronts, but with a focus on the newborn infant. Several prototypes of our infant neuroimaging system have now been constructed and tested in infants ranging from the newborn to 7 months of age. My PhD student (supported as a result of my fellowship) completed a 20-subject trial of one such prototype for imaging the brain in 6-month-old infants in 2019/2020. This work was published in Neuroimage (Friijia et al., 2021), and represents a landmark for my field. It was the first study to yield 3D images of infant brain function outside of the MRI scanner environment. This paper yielded significant media interest, with pieces in The Engineer, Optics and Photonics News, BBC World, The Telegraph, and BBC News (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9t04cTTX0U). In early 2021, my team completed the development of a first-generation flex-rigid, ultra-lightweight infant neuroimaging system (ANIMATE v1 - see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5lUQUru4Go), which was described and demonstrated in a paper in Neurophotonics (Zhao et al, 2021). Since that time, we have also finished the construction of a two further prototypes: ANIMATE v2, which is based on a different mechanical design to optimize robustness, and ANIMATE v3, which permits multi-wavelength measurements. My team and I then undertook recordings using several prototype HD-DOT imaging devices in the neonatal hospital environment, and refined our application methodology. These studies have already recruited around 30 neurologically healthy infants. One element of this research yielded new insight into the emergence of infant functional brain networks over the perinatal period, specifically its modulation by sleep state (Uchitel et al., 2023, NeuroImage). To achieve this required extensive development of new anatomically accurate models of the newborn brain, which were produced and disseminated as a public resource (Collins-Jones et al, 2021, https://figshare.com/s/71817570ea5c6d6755b0). In addition to core infant-focussed research work, my team and I have also undertaken a series of adult applications of novel wearable neuroimaging technologies as part of my fellowship to demonstrate the brain image quality that is now achievable outside of the laboratory environment. Using data collected during the pandemic, we have now demonstrated that high-quality functional neuroimaging is possible in the home (Vidal-Rosas et al., Neurophotonics 2021 and Uchitel et al., NeuroImage 2022). These various strands of work under the umbrella of wearable optical functional imaging technologies have been extremely successful:- we have achieved numerous 'firsts', and this fellowship has allowed me to drive the fNIRS and HD-DOT fields forward significantly in recent years. Additional methodological advances have also been achieved and disseminated, including new methods of spatial registration for infant functional neuroimaging (Xia et al., Neurophotonics 2023). However, the primary clinical target of this fellowship (to apply infant-optimized HD-DOT to study the newborn motor system and cerebral palsy) has sadly been severely affected by the pandemic and the subsequent reduced availability of staff. While the primary engineering and methodological goals of the fellowship have been met, or actually exceeded, and we have made significantly more progress in older infant (~6 month) and adult populations than originally expected, I have not been able to collect the newborn clinical data in the volumes intended. Despite this set-back, this Fellowship have been extremely successful. First, I have been able to translate my Fellowship into a permanent academic role, and have been promoted to Associate Professor as of Oct 2021. Second, I have used my fellowship to build a sizeable, sustainable and successful research group. Known as DOT-HUB (www.ucl.ac.uk/dot-hub), the group currently consists of 1 post-doc, 5 PhD students, a Research Nurse and two MRes student working on a range of applications and developments of my fellowship technology. My Fellowship also supported the career of another post-doc (Dr. Hubin Zhao) who has now obtained a permanent academic position at UCL himself. Two of the PhD students I supervised during my Fellowship now have post-doctoral positions at Cambridge University, while one other has been awarded an EPSRC post-doctoral Fellowship. I also continue to work closely with Gowerlabs Ltd. (www.gowerlabs.co.uk) to aid in the continued commercialization of optical neuroimaging technologies and the software infrastructure that supports them. My work with Gowerlabs has been instrumental in the development of a new line of HD-DOT products that is already being sold across the world, is rapidly becoming the gold-standard in optical functional neuroimaging, and is providing significant revenue for this UK SME. |
Exploitation Route | In addition to the commercialization of this technology described above (www.gowerlabs.co.uk/LUMO), we have already seen several other groups produce technologies that are directly inspired by our own (e.g. Wyser et al., Neurophotonics, 4(4), 041413 (2017); von Lühmann et al., OSA BIOMED 2020 (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/33870999 3_Towards_Neuroscience_in_the_Everyday_World_Progr ess_in_wearable_fNIRS_instrumentation_and_applicat ions)). A US start-up company (Kernel: www.kernel.com), which recently raised ~$50m in investment capital, has also launched a device that I believe to be heavily influenced by the work of this fellowship. Furthermore, the methodological approaches pioneered as part of this Fellowship are already being adopted by groups across the world (Cambridge University, University of Washington at St Louis, among many others) who are now using the commercial HD-DOT systems developed by project partner Gowerlabs. This includes but is not limited to the use of our open-source analysis toolbox (www.github.com/dot-hub). |
Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Education Electronics Healthcare Manufacturing including Industrial Biotechology Other |
URL | http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dot-hub |
Description | My work with Gowerlabs Ltd. - a partner on this fellowship - has led to the creation of the 'LUMO' product line for the research market (www.gowerlabs.co.uk/LUMO). This product reached the market in 2019 and has already impacted research in numerous groups and research-focussed companies across the world, as well as generating hundreds of thousands of pounds for the UK economy. While this success is not directly attributable to my fellowship funding (licensing of the broad technology from UCL to Gowerlabs occurred prior), my fellowship and the Innovate UK-funded Gowerlabs Open Mind Project that underpinned the development of LUMO operated in parallel. This provided numerous mutual benefits between the academic and industry parties. In 2020, my team and launched an open-source software toolbox that is also supporting the commercial activities of my industrial partner by providing their customers with processing and analysis software. My fellowship funding has allowed me to demonstrate a range of wearable optical neuroimaging devices (both those developed as part of this fellowship project and those accessed via my industry collaborators) for the first time. The success of this work (see e.g. Frijia et al. 2021) has led to a surge in interest in these technologies across research and industry. Numerous other research groups and companies are now pursuing similar technologies that are directly influenced by the work of this fellowship (see Key Findings). |
First Year Of Impact | 2019 |
Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Electronics,Healthcare |
Impact Types | Economic |
Description | Best Practice Review for fNIRS Methods |
Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
URL | https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/neurophotonics/volume-8/issue-01/012101/Best-practices-f... |
Description | Computational Neurodevelopment |
Amount | $2,814,118 (USD) |
Organisation | Wellcome LEAP |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | United States |
Start | 07/2021 |
End | 07/2024 |
Description | Investigation the interactions between sleep states and functional connectivity in the developing brain |
Amount | £119,802 (GBP) |
Funding ID | GN2859 |
Organisation | Action Medical Research |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 03/2021 |
End | 03/2023 |
Description | The Gowerlabs Open Mind Project: A wearable functional brain imaging system |
Amount | £194,626 (GBP) |
Funding ID | 720803 |
Organisation | Innovate UK |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 08/2016 |
End | 09/2018 |
Title | Array Designer |
Description | A automated fNIRS array design optimization tool to improve SNR. Brigadoi S, Salvagnin D, Fischetti M, Cooper RJ. Array Designer: automated optimized array design for functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Neurophotonics. 2018 Jul;5(3):035010. doi: 10.1117/1.NPh.5.3.035010. Epub 2018 Sep 13. PMID: 30238021; PMCID: PMC6135986. |
Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | Is being used increasingly by several research groups. |
URL | https://github.com/DOT-HUB/ArrayDesigner |
Title | DOT-HUB Toolbox |
Description | In 2020 I launched an open-source optical image pre-processing and reconstruction toolbox that is freely available online. It provides a centralised resource for my team and our wider collaborators, and in partnership with my industrial collaborator, Gowerlabs Ltd, this software toolbox will continue to be augmented over the next year to help support their customer base. |
Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
Year Produced | 2020 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | The centralised, source-controlled nature of this toolbox has made managing software across my group and our collaborators significantly easier. With the emergence of the hardware associated with my fellowship, and its uptake as the new gold-standard in optical neuroimaging technology, this toolbox will likely gain traction across multiple research groups worldwide in the next year. |
URL | https://github.com/DOT-HUB/DOT-HUB_toolbox |
Title | Neonatal Brain Model Database |
Description | We have released a database containing accurate anatomical head models for ~200 newborn infants from 32-44 weeks gestational age. These models will underpin our clinical imaging work as part of my fellowship, and will be of significant interest to a range of other researchers. The associated paper (Collins-Jones et al) was published in 2020. |
Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | So far, this database has only been applied internally, but we anticipate it will impact numerous researchers from a range of fields over the next 12 months. |
URL | http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dot-hub |
Title | Neonatal Head Model Database |
Description | This database contains over 200 individual level neonatal anatomical head models and meshes that support optical image reconstruction in fNIRS and DOT, but also will support numerous other methods, including source localization in EEG. The associated paper was published in 2020 (Collins-Jones et al.) and the database will be freely available online asap. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2021 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | This database is of significant benefit to the imaging research to be undertaken in this fellowship, and will likely be similarly beneficial to other research groups in due course. |
URL | https://www.ucl.ac.uk/dot-hub |
Title | Widespread nociceptive maps in the human neonatal somatosensory cortex - RAW DATA |
Description | Brain activity (fNIRS) was recorded following a clinically-required heel lance procedure or innocuous mechanical stimulation of the limbs (heel and hand) at the bedside in the neonatal unit at University College London Hospitals. Files are in .nirs format for use with Homer2 open access software. Note: Accidental triggers during recording have been removed. To revert file to original state in Homer2 would reintroduce these triggers as well as remove trigger labels. Triggers currently 'excluded' (dashed lines) during heel or hand touches, denote those during which movement of the baby was observed. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2022 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
URL | https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Widespread_nociceptive_maps_in_the_human_neonatal_somatosensor... |
Description | Collaboration with Basque Center for Brain and Language (BCBL, Spain) |
Organisation | Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language |
Country | Spain |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | In establishing a collaboration with BCBL, I hosted a visiting PhD student at UCL for 6 months and provided extensive training and support. |
Collaborator Contribution | This researcher (Borja Blanco) was present in my group at UCL for 6 months and contributed directly to my project research goals. |
Impact | Lee CW, Blanco B, Dempsey L, Chalia M, Hebden JC, Caballero-Gaudes C, Austin T, Cooper RJ. Sleep State Modulates Resting-State Functional Connectivity in Neonates. Front Neurosci. 2020 Apr 17;14:347. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2020.00347. PMID: 32362811; PMCID: PMC7180180. Borja Blanco, Monika Molnar, Manuel Carreiras, Liam H. Collins-Jones, Ernesto Elias Vidal Rosas, Robert J. Cooper, Cesar Caballero-Gaudes, "Group-level cortical functional connectivity patterns using fNIRS: assessing the effect of bilingualism in young infants," Neurophoton. 8(2) 025011 (12 June 2021) https://doi.org/10.1117/1.NPh.8.2.025011 |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Collaboration with Cambridge University Psychology Department |
Organisation | University of Cambridge |
Department | Department of Psychology |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We have established a collaboration with the Babylab, Cambridge to allow the application of the technology arising from my fellowship. Our contribution will be to provide new equipment, and teach researchers in Cambridge how it can be used and how it is advantageous to their own research. |
Collaborator Contribution | The Cambridge babylab are providing access to their specialised infant research laboratory space, and support in recruitment, paradigm design and application. |
Impact | Frijia EM, Billing A, Lloyd-Fox S, Vidal Rosas E, Collins-Jones L, Crespo-Llado MM, Amadó MP, Austin T, Edwards A, Dunne L, Smith G, Nixon-Hill R, Powell S, Everdell NL, Cooper RJ. Functional imaging of the developing brain with wearable high-density diffuse optical tomography: A new benchmark for infant neuroimaging outside the scanner environment. Neuroimage. 2021 Jan 15;225:117490. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117490. Epub 2020 Oct 24. PMID: 33157266. In collaboration with Dr. Becky Lawson (Cambridge), we have won funding from the Wellcome LEAP fund. |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Collaboration with Centre for the Developing Brain |
Organisation | St Thomas' Hospital |
Department | Centre for the Developing Brain |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Hospitals |
PI Contribution | One of the PhD student's in my team (Liam Collins-Jones) has been working full time with the CDB to process elements of the brain imaging data from the developing human connectome project in order to make it suitable for application as part of my research project. |
Collaborator Contribution | Dr. Tom Arichi has supervised Liam at CDB, and has contributed a significant amount of time to support the project. |
Impact | Collins-Jones LH, Arichi T, Poppe T, Billing A, Xiao J, Fabrizi L, Brigadoi S, Hebden JC, Elwell CE, Cooper RJ. Construction and validation of a database of head models for functional imaging of the neonatal brain. Hum Brain Mapp. 2021 Feb 15;42(3):567-586. doi: 10.1002/hbm.25242. Epub 2020 Oct 17. PMID: 33068482; PMCID: PMC7814762. |
Start Year | 2018 |
Description | BBC News VT |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | In response to the publication of the paper by Frijia et al., in collaboration with BBC News digital, a short video was produced summarising the outcome of our work and its importance. This video was designed for social media and website/app engagement, and remained in the top five most-watch videos on the BBC News home page for several days. This led to a series of enquiries from members of the public about our work and how they might become involved. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9t04cTTX0U&t=21s |
Description | BBC World News interview |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | As a result of a landmark publication (Frijia et al., 2020) I was invited to be interviewed about our work by Newshour on BBC World, which has a weekly audience of around 400 million people worldwide. This led to a series of additional media interactions, and a significant increase in email traffic from parents wishing to become involved in our work studying the brains of infants. Interview is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uRjC-kyCUI |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uRjC-kyCUI |
Description | Fab Change 19: Engagement day at The Rosie Hosputal |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | We ran a stall and interactive demo as part of the annual celebrations relating to the founding of the NHS. This tool place within The Rosie Hospital, Cambridge and was an opportunity to engage with the public and healthcare professionals in the hospital, discuss our research and its wider implications. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
URL | https://www.facebook.com/FabChange19/ |
Description | Royal Institute Family Fun Day |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | My research group (DOT-HUB) led a research engagement stall at the Royal Institute Family Fun Day in October of 2019. This was a full day of discussing science (particularly optics) with members of the public - both children and adults. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
URL | https://www.rigb.org/whats-on/events-2019/october/public-family-fun-day-chaos-contagions-and-cur |
Description | The Daily Telegraph |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | Article in response to paper and associated press release for Frijia et. al, 2021. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
URL | https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/28/baby-brain-mapping-device-could-help-diagnose-autism-cer... |