u-Care at Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition

Image

The u-Care project, which sits within the Centre for Inflammation Research in the IRR,  brings together engineers, physicists, clinicians and biologists, working together to develop technology that uses deep UV light to cut away tumour cells without harming the surrounding healthy tissues. By using optical fibres, like those that carry the internet, to deliver low wavelengths of UV light, they hope to achieve ultraprecision surgery that could ensure complete resection of even the tiniest of tumours.

The team shared their research with the public at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition in July, an annual celebration of cutting-edge research taking place across the UK.

This year, 14 flagship exhibits, 40 talks, 30 hands-on activities and more than 250 scientists inspired over 10,000 visitors, including school groups, families and science enthusiasts, over six days.

Image

The u-Care exhibit, “UV or not UV?”, allowed visitors to try their hand at being a laser physicist by aiming a laser at a target brain, design their own UV reactive wristbands, and marvel at a chandelier made from the ‘drop-offs’ from the optical fibre production process.

We would like to spotlight some of the team from CIR who have worked on the uCare project and how they have been involved.

Aysha Ali

Aysha is a postdoctoral research associate within the u-Care project and wider Translational Healthcare Technologies group. She has worked in the group for over 3 years doing everything from biological model development, system evaluation of the devices going into clinical trials, and now the biological testing on the u-Care project.

Aysha completed her degrees at the University of Birmingham focusing on Biochemistry. She also worked for Science Capital, an event management company, helping to organise science events during her PhD. Aysha has a love for research but is also very social so, she says, her career goals tend to be something along the lines of, “maybe I could fly planes and be an oceanographer who cures antibiotic resistance while entertaining 15 friends”. Being a new mum has also brought a new spin to her life and she says she is learning to embrace it. Her goals are to move into the project management and public engagement side of science so she can continue to use her PhD while being able to work with people.

Image

Beth Mills

Beth a group-leader within the Centre for Inflammation Research and Translational Healthcare Technologies group at the University of Edinburgh. Their work focuses on improving outcomes for patients with corneal infections (microbial keratitis) - a leading cause of blindness worldwide. Using light-based technologies to treat the infection is one of their approaches, and this is why they work with Project uCare. 

Beth’s background (BSc (University of Sheffield) and PhD (University of Nottingham) is in microbiology, and she has an MSc in Global Health Policy (University of Edinburgh). Joining the University of Edinburgh in 2015 as a postdoctoral researcher on the Proteus project, Beth worked on infection model development and the validation of optical SmartProbes and imaging devices for clinical translation in pulmonology. In 2017 Beth started investigating how such technologies could be adapted for point-of-care diagnosis of infection, considering technological, user and health system requirements in low-resource settings, with a particular focus on corneal infections (microbial keratitis) – a leading cause of blindness. In 2022 Beth established her own research group with a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship to develop ways to diagnose, treat and reduce the burden of microbial keratitis. To do this her team works closely with the Aravind Eye Care System, India, which is the largest eyecare system in the world. 

Image

Alex Burden

Alex is a research technician within u-Care. Her role is to understand the effects deep UV light has on cells, human tissue, and bacteria and whether it is safe to be used within the human body. She performs laboratory techniques such as immunofluorescence to understand if there are DNA damages induced. 

Alex originally wanted to be a formula one engineer so did her undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering, however, she says, she did not enjoy this as much as she had hoped. The only module she really loved was bioengineering so she did a research Masters at the University of Edinburgh in bioengineering. Before this, Alex took a year out to work in a histology lab within the NHS which further cemented her desire to work within the biology field. Then after Alex’s masters, her current role came up and it was the perfect mix of her previous background and new passion.