Leadership
Leadership
Prof. Thilo Stadelmann
Head of a new research group and member of the Centre Board for a Senior Lecturer Autonomous Learning Systems and Reinforcement Learning (incl. responsibility in research & leadership) 50 - 100 %.
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The Department of Engineering Mathematics at the University of Bristol is seeking an outstanding candidate to fill the role of Professor in Artificial Intelligence. You will have the opportunity to provide visionary leadership to the department and its staff, students, & partners, helping to strengthen and further develop our already impressive research and teaching programs in AI. Our Intelligent Systems Group supports the Faculty of Engineering's AI/Data Science Theme, fostering an inclusive environment for all.
Prof. Thilo Stadelmann
Head of a new research group and member of the Centre Board for a Senior Lecturer Autonomous Learning Systems and Reinforcement Learning (incl. responsibility in research & leadership) 50 - 100 %.
Wildlife, Warriors and Women: Large Carnivore Conservation in Tanzania and Beyond
Professor Amy Dickman established is the joint CEO of Lion Landscapes, which works to help conserve wildlife in some of the most important biodiversity areas of Africa. These areas include some of the most important areas in the world for big cats, but also have an extremely high level of lion killing, as lions and other carnivores impose high costs on poverty-stricken local people. Amy and her team are working with local communities to reduce carnivore attacks, providing villagers with real benefits from carnivore presence, engaging warriors in conservation and training the next generation of local conservation leaders. It has been a challenging endeavour, given the remote location and secretive and hostile nature of the tribe responsible for most lion-killing. In her talk, Amy will discuss the significance of this project, the difficulties of working in an area where witchcraft and mythology abound, and the conservation successes that are already emerging from this important work.
The glymphatic system in motor neurone disease
Neurodegenerative diseases are chronic and inexorable conditions characterised by the presence of insoluble aggregates of abnormally ubiquinated and phosphorylated proteins. Recent evidence also suggests that protein misfolding can propagate throughout the body in a prion-like fashion via the interstitial or cerebrospinal fluids (CSF). As protein aggregation occurs well before the onset of brain damage and symptoms, new biomarkers sensitive to early pathology, together with therapeutic strategies that include eliminating seed proteins and blocking cell-to-cell spread, are of vital importance. The glymphatic system, which facilitates the continuous exchange of CSF and interstitial fluid to clear the brain of waste, presents as a potential biomarker of disease severity, therapeutic target, and drug delivery system. In this webinar, Associate Professor David Wright from the Department of Neuroscience, Monash University, will outline recent advances in using MRI to investigate the glymphatic system. He will also present some of his lab’s recent work investigating glymphatic clearance in preclinical models of motor neurone disease. Associate Professor David Wright is an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow and the Director of Preclinical Imaging in the Department of Neuroscience, Monash University and the Alfred Research Alliance, Alfred Health. His research encompasses the development, application and analysis of advanced magnetic resonance imaging techniques for the study of disease, with a particular emphasis on neurodegenerative disorders. Although less than three years post PhD, he has published over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles in leading neuroscience journals such as Nature Medicine, Brain, and Cerebral Cortex.
Leadership Support and Workplace Psychosocial Stressors
Research evidence indicates that psychosocial stressors such as work-life stress serves as a negative occupational exposure relating to poor health behaviors including smoking, poor food choices, low levels of exercise, and even decreased sleep time, as well as a number of chronic health outcomes. The association between work-life stress and adverse health behaviors and chronic health suggests that Occupational Health Psychology (OHP) interventions such as leadership support trainings may be helpful in mitigating effects of work-life stress and improving health, consistent with the Total Worker Health approach. This presentation will review workplace psychosocial stressors and leadership training approaches to reduces stress and improve health, highlighting a randomized controlled trial, the Military Employee Sleep and Health study.
From bench to clinic – Translating fundamental neuroscience into real-life healthcare practices, and developing nationally recognised life science companies
Dr. Ryan C.N. D’Arcy is a Canadian neuroscientist, researcher, innovator and entrepreneur. Dr. D'Arcy co-founded HealthTech Connex Inc. and serves as President and Chief Scientific Officer. HealthTech Connex translates neuroscience advances into health technology breakthroughs. D'Arcy is most known for coining the term "brain vital signs" and for leading the research and development of the brain vital signs framework. Dr. D’Arcy also holds a BC Leadership Chair in Medical Technology, is a full Professor at Simon Fraser University, and a member of the DM Centre for Brain Health at the University of British Columbia. He has published more than 260 academic works, attracted more than $85 Million CAD in competitive research and innovation funding, and been recognized through numerous awards and distinctions. Please join us for an exciting virtual talk with Dr. D'Arcy who will speak on some of the current research he is involved in, how he is translating this research into real-life applications, and the development of HealthTech Connects Inc.
Retinoblastoma: Canadian global leadership
Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People
Mahzarin Banaji and her colleague coined the term “implicit bias” in the mid-1990s to refer to behavior that occurs without conscious awareness. Today, Professor Banaji is Cabot Professor of Social Ethics in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and has received numerous awards for her scientific contributions. The purpose of the seminar, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, is to reveal the surprising and even perplexing ways in which we make errors in assessing and evaluating others when we recruit and hire, onboard and promote, lead teams, undertake succession planning, and work on behalf of our clients or the public we serve. It is Professor Banaji’s belief that people intend well and that the inconsistency we see, between values and behavior, comes from a lack of awareness. But because implicit bias is pervasive, we must rely on scientific evidence to “outsmart” our minds. If we do so, we will be more likely to reach the life goals we have chosen for ourselves and to serve better the organizations for which we work.
Life of Pain and Pleasure
The ability to experience pain is old in evolutionary terms. It is an experience shared across species. Acute pain is the body’s alarm system, and as such it is a good thing. Pain that persists beyond normal tissue healing time (3-4 months) is defined as chronic – it is the system gone wrong and it is not a good thing. Chronic pain has recently been classified as both a symptom and disease in its own right. It is one of the largest medical health problems worldwide with one in five adults diagnosed with the condition. The brain is key to the experience of pain and pain relief. This is the place where pain emerges as a perception. So, relating specific brain measures using advanced neuroimaging to the change patients describe in their pain perception induced by peripheral or central sensitization (i.e. amplification), psychological or pharmacological mechanisms has tremendous value. Identifying where amplification or attenuation processes occur along the journey from injury to the brain (i.e. peripheral nerves, spinal cord, brainstem and brain) for an individual and relating these neural mechanisms to specific pain experiences, measures of pain relief, persistence of pain states, degree of injury and the subject's underlying genetics, has neuroscientific and potential diagnostic relevance. This is what neuroimaging has afforded – a better understanding and explanation of why someone’s pain is the way it is. We can go ‘behind the scenes’ of the subjective report to find out what key changes and mechanisms make up an individual’s particular pain experience. A key area of development has been pharmacological imaging where objective evidence of drugs reaching the target and working can be obtained. We even now understand the mechanisms of placebo analgesia – a powerful phenomenon known about for millennia. More recently, researchers have been investigating through brain imaging whether there is a pre-disposing vulnerability in brain networks towards developing chronic pain. So, advanced neuroimaging studies can powerfully aid explanation of a subject’s multidimensional pain experience, pain relief (analgesia) and even what makes them vulnerable to developing chronic pain. The application of this goes beyond the clinic and has relevance in courts of law, and other areas of society, such as in veterinary care. Relatively far less work has been directed at understanding what changes in the brain occur during altered states of consciousness induced either endogenously (e.g. sleep) or exogenously (e.g. anaesthesia). However, that situation is changing rapidly. Our recent multimodal neuroimaging work explores how anaesthetic agents produce altered states of consciousness such that perceptual experiences of pain and awareness are degraded. This is bringing us fascinating insights into the complex phenomenon of anaesthesia, consciousness and even the concept of self-hood. These topics will be discussed in my talk alongside my ‘side-story’ of life as a scientist combining academic leadership roles with doing science and raising a family.