Projects
Assessing the viability of a device for improving patient adherence
Contact: Dr. Andrés Arcia-Moret, Dr. Whitney Scott & Dr. Maria Sharmina, D-FLEX and Computer Lab Mentor: Bill Matthews Patient adherence to complex or long-term medication regimens is a known problem in both developed and developing contexts. Sub-optimal adherence to prescribed medication is linked to poorer health outcomes and greater healthcare costs. There are many reasons,…
Investigating the need for blockchain technology in developing economies
Contact: Dr. Melvyn Weeks, Economics Mentor: Dr. Lara Allen, Director, Centre for Global Equality Blockchains allow for distributed digital ledgers, rather than centralised systems governed by a single authority. Although the initial use has focused on new peer-to-peer currencies such as Bitcoin, blockchain systems can be used in any situation where a transaction takes place…
Developing antimicrobial ointments and wound dressings for the developing world
Contact: Dr. Nuno Faria, School of Veterinary Medicine Mentor: Dr. Mark Priest, Harrogate Partners Metals are known to have antimicrobial effects and silver has been used widely in recent years. However silver is an expensive material, and although silver dressings remain sterile for longer than normal dressings, they do not actively treat the wound underneath.…
Investigating the market potential for a new microscope designed to
Contact: Dr. Andrew Thompson, Department of Medicine, and SMi Drug Discovery Mentor: Peter Hill The use of microscopy to observe biological processes has undergone huge advances in the last decade, an achievement recognised in 2017 with the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. A paralleled increase in commercial investment has coincided with the development of new fluorescent…
Finding the best commercial approach for a tool to monitor
Contact: Andrew Rice and Matthew Danish, Computer Lab Mentor: Adrian Swinburne For more information: See CamFort on GitHub FORTRAN was one of the first computer languages to became widely used in the 1970s and 80s, in particular being used as a way to carry out computational modelling. As well as providing the underlying code base…
Developing a go-to-market strategy for an online real-time laboratory notebook
Contact: Jake Schofield, Founder & CEO, LabStep & Alisa Molotova Mentor: Tiffany Morris Labstep is a new solution to an age-old problem in scientific experimentation: how to ensure that all the details of an experimental method are captured accurately, so that experiments can be more reliably reproduced. The Labstep tool can capture data in real-time…
Monitoring plastic pollution in island states
Inventors: Dr. Steve Roberts, Dr. Huw Griffiths & Dr. Claire Waluda, British Antarctic Survey Mentor: Brian Corbett Plastic waste is everywhere, even in remote lakes near Antarctica, and is a particularly difficult problem for island nations which rely heavily on tourism. In these cases the islands generate waste locally, waste is brought by tourists, and…
Saving lives in the developing world by reducing the carbon
Inventor: Dr. Steve Marshall, British Antarctic Survey Mentor: Dr. John Mullett Paraffin stoves have been used for cooking in Antarctica since the first expeditions over a century ago. Modern stoves are very similar to those originally used, though they have become lighter and more compact. Paraffin is one of the best available fuels since it…
Using single photons in visible light quantum systems, for cryptography,
Single-photon source inventor : Dr. Rachel Oliver, Materials Science & Metallurgy Single-photon detector inventor : Dr. Matthew Applegate, Physics Mentor: Dr. Julian White Single photon devices are being proposed for a wide variety of applications including quantum cryptography, quantum sensing and computation, satellite communications, and imaging across all length scales. Infrared single photon sources are…