CaseStudies.

2013 update

Achieving Excellence

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A worldwide television audience of billions witnessed the flowering of the Olympic Park during London 2012. The five million visitors to the Olympic Games and the Paralympics shared in the magical experience of 80,000 square metres of colourful meadows, designed by two professors from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Landscape. James Hitchmough and Nigel Dunnett are the leading exponents of perennial meadows in the UK, following a decade of research and experimentation.

Created from former industrial land in East London, the 250-acre Olympic Park is the largest new urban park to be developed in the UK for 150 years. The master plan for the park was developed by a consortium of LDA Design and Hargreaves Associates, and Professors Hitchmough and Dunnett were appointed as the principal horticultural and planting design consultants in 2008. They produced a whole-site planting strategy, and developed concepts and

detailed proposals for the herbaceous (non-woody) vegetation. Innovative thinking was required to ensure the display was colourful and vibrant throughout the duration of the Games, using irrigation and pruning to control flowering times.

Professor Dunnett said, “We wanted this to be a demonstration of a whole new approach to the design and management of public landscapes: where ecology and sustainability is at the forefront, combined with a very strong aesthetic.” The Olympic Park comprises two different character areas. Plantings in the North Park largely represent designed versions of native UK habitats and celebrate native biodiversity. They include species-rich meadows of different types, wetland plantings, woodland plantings and dramatic perennial plantings. The South Park focuses on visual drama – including a ribbon of golden meadows around the Olympic Stadium, buzzing with bees and butterflies.

Their work at the Olympic Park has become an integral part of Professors Hitchmough’s and Dunnett’s teaching, and is proving to be an important element in student recruitment. Some postgraduate students worked directly on the planting schemes, including the programme of trialling plant combinations. The park itself will now be transformed into a green space for the local communities in East London. The resulting Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park will maintain, and develop, much of the existing plantings. The legacy of the Olympic Park will be far-reaching, raising the profile of the importance of good landscape architecture, demonstrating the great value of urban parks and ‘city greening’, as well as introducing a worldwide audience to the approaches to urban planting developed at Sheffield.

Olympic fields of dreams

Achieving ExcellenceExcellence indicates the very highest quality, significantly exceeding the norm, as reflected by the ‘Made in Sheffield’ stamp. It reflects a refusal to accept the ordinary. We aim to create an environment that supports and promotes success, encouraging staff and students to achieve and excel.

Achieving Excellence

A major discovery by a Europe-wide team of researchers is providing answers to one of the puzzles in modern astrophysics – why the atmosphere of a star, like the Sun, is considerably hotter than its surface. Solving this heating problem is crucial for understanding the Sun, including the generation of the solar wind and its impact on the Earth’s atmosphere. Team member Professor Robertus Erdélyi, Head of the University of Sheffield’s Solar Physics and Space Plasma Research Centre, is one of the authors of the paper which was published in Nature in June 2012, ‘Magnetic tornadoes as energy channels into the solar corona’.

The team’s observation of solar magnetic tornadoes has only been made possible by combining the capabilities of a state-of-the-art, ground-based solar telescope (Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope) with a new solar

space telescope (NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory). The tornado events are rather small details of the Sun. They are most visible as rotating structures in the chromosphere, the atmospheric layer between the photosphere (the ‘surface’) and the corona above. The chromosphere is very difficult to observe. The tornadoes, which have a magnetic skeleton, exist in the hottest areas of the Sun’s atmosphere where the temperature is a few million degrees kelvin, thousands of kilometres from the Sun’s surface. They are also thousands of times larger and more powerful than their earthly counterparts and spin at speeds of more than 6,000mph. They operate in plasma – the fourth known state of matter beside solid, liquid and gas. It is estimated that there are as many as 11,000 of these swirling events above the Sun’s surface at any one time.

The team used the data from the telescope observations to create 3D-layered sequences of images of the tornadoes. These were then manipulated to simulate the tornadoes’ evolution with numerical codes using the magnetic imprints detected by the telescopes, unravelling the fascinating physics of these phenomena. The team have demonstrated that the tornadoes carry the energy from the energy reservoir below the Sun’s surface, called the convection zone, to the outer atmosphere in the form of magnetic waves. Professor Erdélyi said, “If we understand how nature heats up magnetised plasmas, like in the tornadoes observed in the Sun, one day we may be able to use this process to develop the necessary technology and build devices on Earth that produce clean, green energy. Our collaborative research is an essential leap forward towards unveiling the secrets about an exciting problem in plasma astrophysics.”

The power of solar magnetic tornadoes

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Cultivating Ambition

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Philosophy in the City (PinC) is an innovative programme run entirely by student volunteers, with the backing of the University of Sheffield’s Department of Philosophy. Formed in 2006, PinC aims to widen access to philosophy across the social and cultural spectrum, particularly focusing on children from deprived and minority backgrounds in Sheffield. The students work with children in primary and secondary schools, developing their critical thinking, writing and verbal communication skills with the help of philosophical arguments and ideas.

PinC has developed into a large-scale project, with over 100 volunteers working on a sustained basis in several local schools and a homeless refugee centre. They also run a mentoring programme in Longley Park College and Silverdale, King Ecgbert and King Edward VII Schools. In some cases, PinC provides one-off classes around particular subjects; in others,

volunteers visit schools regularly, provide mentoring for sixth-form students or deliver lectures via video conferences. PinC also runs an annual conference called Philosophise, which attracts dozens of local schoolchildren aged 15 and upwards. The conference aims to give participants a taste of university life and instil, or develop further, an interest in philosophy or the humanities more generally.

The project’s latest innovation is Examined Life, which aims to help solve the problems that schools face in providing adequate ‘spiritual, moral, social and cultural development’ (the legal requirement stipulated by Ofsted). Working initially with Silverdale School, the programme covers themes including identity, feminism, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of the mind and science, and concepts such as free will. PinC plans to roll this programme out to other schools across South Yorkshire.

Representatives from PinC were invited to speak at a conference at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, where they were the only delegates invited from outside the USA. The conference, Engaging Philosophy, discussed how philosophy can directly affect the world beyond academia, from childhood development to socio-economic problems. The experience encouraged PinC to start to consider working with prisoners and ex-offenders.

When Sheffield was named University of the Year in the Times Higher Education Awards in November 2011, PinC was cited as an example of the University’s close connection with its city. Paul Moore-Bridger, a teacher in charge of philosophy at Silverdale School, said, “PinC are blazing a trail for how university departments should reach out to the schools in their communities. PinC massively enriches the educational landscape of Sheffield.”

Challenging thinking in schools

Cultivating AmbitionWe set challenging and important goals. We are willing to grapple with the most difficult intellectual and practical problems of our time and are not easily daunted. We want to attract and retain people with ambition and to provide them with the opportunities to realise their dreams and develop their talents.

Cultivating Ambition

The University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) with Boeing is a world-class centre for advanced machining and materials research for aerospace and other high-value manufacturing sectors. It is a partnership between industry and academia, which has become a model for research centres worldwide. The expertise of the team, led by Research Director Professor Keith Ridgway CBE, was recognised by a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in 2007. The AMRC has also been named Boeing Supply Chain Company of the Year, the first time such an award has been given to a UK company.

The AMRC grew out of an initiative within the University’s Faculty of Engineering, which put postgraduate engineering students into local supply chain companies to work on live manufacturing challenges. This developed into a collaborative vision of leading researchers working with businesses and major international

companies to become more efficient, sustainable and competitive. Over the past decade the AMRC has gone from strength to strength. It employs 250 highly qualified researchers and engineers, and brings together over 70 partner companies supporting aerospace and high-value manufacturing, and over 35 partner companies involved in the manufacturing required to support the development of civil nuclear energy plants.

The AMRC family now includes the Nuclear AMRC, a Knowledge Transfer Centre and a Training Centre, which will provide those who aspire to work in advanced manufacture with both practical and academic skills. It will offer a range of opportunities – from apprenticeships to doctorates, MBAs and continuing professional development. The AMRC Training Centre aims to take on 250 people, aged 16 and upwards, each year for advanced apprenticeships lasting three or four years, with as many as 400 on site once the programme is fully underway.

Professor Ridgway believes this latest AMRC development is fundamental to the continued regeneration of the local area and beyond. “The AMRC Training Centre is essential to our vision of bringing together research and world- class engineering of the kind carried out at the University of Sheffield,” he said. “As well as the latest equipment and facilities, companies need staff who understand the new context and who have worked alongside engineers with the very latest understanding. The AMRC Training Centre will provide exactly that – real opportunities for young people to work but also learn the latest in engineering, even potentially taking a degree part-time or beyond that. Our apprentices will be gaining experience at the cutting edge of manufacturing technology.”

A new model for developing skills in advanced manufacture

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Making a Difference

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Legal advice for the local communityStudents from the School of Law at the University of Sheffield are encouraged to use their legal skills to make a difference and give something back to their local community. The legal advice clinic, FreeLaw, was launched in 2008. Staff and students provide a free service for members of the public, many of whom would have problems affording professional legal advice without this voluntary support.

The FreeLaw team conduct interviews with clients and, together with qualified volunteer practitioners, assess their problems and provide advice. The main topics covered are housing, family, employment, consumer rights, contractual issues, debt, personal injury and probate matters. The team also work on vital social welfare research for charities across South Yorkshire. Steve Drake, a law student and the Legal Clinic Manager, said, “We research real problems and it can be extremely satisfying being able to help the general public and local

community. We come across a diverse range of legal issues and working together to solve these problems can provide a fantastic taste of what our future careers may hold.”

Students’ work is carefully scrutinised and where the matter involves drafting legal documents or preparing litigation, referrals are made to local solicitors. Students on the scheme are also supported by a number of local and national law firms. FreeLaw is now available as an assessed third-year module, which provides a good grounding in key skills such as interviewing, legal research and legal letter writing. Taking part in FreeLaw can appear on a student’s Higher Education Achievement Report, a formal degree transcript that lists their curricular and extra-curricular achievements.

FreeLaw operates a weekly drop-in centre from the school’s Bartolomé Lodge – premises which recently underwent a £150,000 refurbishment

to meet the needs of the clinic and its sister initiative, the Innocence Project UK, which encourages students to research potential miscarriages of justice. The new facility was funded by donations from alumni, staff, students and friends. The clinic offers an additional drop-in session through Langsett Advice and Resource Centre in Walkley.

The FreeLaw students won the Enterprise Award at the Students’ Union’s Academic Awards 2012, in recognition of their work with the local community. Professor Claire McGourlay, who oversees the school’s pro-bono programmes with colleague Martyn Heathcote, said, “With the reduction in legal aid available to the most vulnerable in society, this kind of work is invaluable and also gives the students a sense of civic responsibility whilst learning.”

Making a DifferenceUniversities are one of society’s engines of change. We seek to create, discover, share and apply knowledge through teaching and research in ways that make a difference and ensure that our work has a genuine cutting edge. We also want to make the experience of being part of the University something that shapes the life and prospects of everyone who comes here.

Making a Difference

Engineering and enterprise come together at the University of Sheffield. Annual projects and competitions in the Faculty of Engineering are improving students’ employability, and they also get great satisfaction from feeling that their designs and innovations have made a real, practical difference to someone’s quality of life. Kieron Norton, who is 12 years old and suffers from cerebral palsy, and his family have developed close links with the faculty in recent years, and students have designed devices to help him achieve some of his goals.

Kieron needs adapted versions of everyday items in order to gain as much independence as possible. The latest competition – Making Kieron’s Life Easier – was organised by Professor Elena Rodriguez-Falcon, Director of Enterprise Education at the University. It attracted 140 engineering students who competed in teams to design a commercially feasible product to help Kieron and other cerebral palsy

sufferers. Thirteen products were pitched to a judging panel made up of industry experts, entrepreneurial alumni and business people, as well as Kieron’s family and teacher.

The winning product was designed by Cooking For All Ltd, a team of 10 aerospace engineering students. Their device – Easy Mix – consisted of a mixing bowl with a sealed lid, which a cooking implement fits through, enabling Kieron to mix or cut food independently without making a mess. The bowl was also designed to be put straight into the oven for baking. The students came up with the idea after meeting Kieron and hearing about his love of baking cakes, and his frustration at not being able to participate fully in this activity.

The second-placed design was an arched keyboard device, which featured large buttons and could be linked up with software to enable Kieron to play games and learn. The arch shape

of the keyboard was designed specifically to accommodate his restricted arm movement. Third place was taken by an interactive board game, which could help people suffering from severe communication or neurological disorders to actively play games and interact with other people.

This is the second time that Kieron has worked with students from the University. A similar competition in 2007 helped him achieve his dream of writing. The Scribbler was a writing aid designed for Kieron, sufferers of neuromuscular disabilities or people with severe arthritis. Professor Rodriguez-Falcon said, “The students genuinely wanted to help Kieron. The project has been an amazing way to engage the students and the talent they’ve shown is incredible.”

Engineers break down barriers for Kieron

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Working Together

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As new technologies emerge, the global aerospace industry takes another leap forward. The University of Sheffield has a long-standing relationship with Rolls-Royce plc, the global provider of integrated power systems and services to the aerospace, marine and energy markets. Rolls-Royce adopted a policy of focusing on undertaking its academic research with selected university partners in the late 1980s. Since then, a global network of University Technology Centres keeps the company directly connected to cutting-edge academic research capability.

The Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre (UTC) in Control and Systems Engineering was established in 1993 in the University’s Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering; this is the largest academic department in the UK devoted to research in

this field. The UTC coordinates and directs programmes of systems and control research for Rolls-Royce and looks after the company’s technical interests in the fields of control and monitoring systems, and systems architecture. The team carries out both short-term and long-term research, supporting business aims through improving the product, improving productivity and reducing the cost of ownership.

Applications include gas turbine engines for fixed and rotary wing aircraft; industrial turbo-generator systems; and marine vessels. A number of work programmes are investigating strategic research topics in the fields of systems and control law definition, monitoring systems, system architecture optimisation and wireless technologies. Recent successful projects include the PIMENTO design tool. This adopts a benefits driven strategy and evaluates costs associated

with the prognosis of events within a product’s architecture, associating a cost to the failure based upon Fleet Disruption Index data. The tool is a major improvement in risk assessment methods and will minimise any potential disruption to Rolls-Royce’s Trent XWB fleet.

The development of a new gas turbine fuel flow controller in aircraft engines has also been successful. Researchers from the UTC collaborated closely with an industrial research team to demonstrate the feasibility of the concept for large civil engines. After approval by Rolls-Royce’s chief engineer, the controller was swiftly implemented in the Trent fleet of engines and is in operation today, installed in the Boeing 787 and some Gulfstream and Airbus aircraft. “This was a remarkable achievement – the first new radical control law for 30 years” said Professor Visakan Kadirkamanathan, Director of the UTC.

Improving efficiency for the aerospace industry

Working TogetherSolutions to important problems depend increasingly upon collaboration: between staff and students, across disciplines and in partnership with others locally, nationally and internationally. We aim to build inclusive teams, maximising the benefits of difference and drawing on the skills and potential of the widest possible range of colleagues.

Working Together

International collaboration unlocks the universeThe discovery of a subatomic particle thought to be the elusive Higgs boson is a significant breakthrough in our understanding of the fundamental laws of physics. Scientists and technicians from the University of Sheffield are involved in the world’s largest physics experiment at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research near Geneva. The results acquired at the facility in July 2012 provide the most stringent test so far of the Standard Model of particle physics, which represents in a single equation our understanding of how the universe works at the smallest distance scales.

Sheffield is a founding member of the ATLAS Collaboration, which comprises over 3,000 members from 174 universities and laboratories in 38 countries. ATLAS is one of four main detectors which run at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC); it is designed to observe and detect what happens when high-energy particles

collide. It is also one of the two LHC experiments, the other being the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, involved in the discovery of the particle consistent with the Higgs boson. Our team, led by Professor Dan Tovey of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, have been active in all aspects of ATLAS, from its design and construction through to the analysis of the final data. The University is also one of the most effective sites delivering data processing to ATLAS, with its own computing cluster connected to the worldwide LHC Computing Grid. The focus of the team’s work is now on measuring precisely the properties of the newly discovered particle.

Through our links with CERN, our students are encouraged to visit this major international facility. Physics and philosophy student Katherine Chapman spent four months working as a science communication intern in the EU

Projects Group. She said, “What has been the most exciting part about being at CERN is how inspiring it is to become a physicist. Working in such a diverse and challenging environment makes you feel that you could achieve anything.”

In recognition of the role played by highly skilled scientific technicians in research, such as that undertaken at CERN, the University of Sheffield has announced plans to revolutionise this career pathway. For the first time, technicians – who are essential to both high-quality teaching and world-leading research in higher education – will be recognised with professional membership, qualifications and continuing professional development. This initiative is in partnership with the Institute of Science and Technology and the Science Council.

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Working Together

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Medical students at the University of Sheffield benefit from patients’ knowledge and experience as part of their training. Patients as Educators involves members of the local community volunteering their time to teach students how to become caring and effective doctors. The scheme, launched in 2004, has gone from strength to strength, growing from the original seven to 800 patient volunteers in 2012. It developed from the Medical School’s need to provide their students with opportunities to work with ‘real world’ patients, as opposed to the mannequins or actors of the past.

Changes to the delivery of care to patients within the National Health Service resulted in them spending less time in hospitals and clinics – with fewer opportunities for medical students to gain practical experience. The scheme started out as a very informal part of the medical degree; patient volunteers would work with students during their clinical skills modules and lectures.

It proved to be such a popular and effective way of teaching student doctors the importance of communication skills that the scheme was expanded and is now a regular timetabled element of the medical degree.

Students gain an unrivalled knowledge of a patient’s personal experience in dealing with their particular illness, ensuring they have a broad understanding of the implications of illness and disease. One of the volunteer patients, Jean White, said, “Being part of this initiative means that you are giving something back and I am delighted to be involved in something that supports and helps our doctors of the future.” Eleanor Rudge, a medical student, said, “The patients provide us with so much more, from their personal experience to how their condition has affected their family. Being able to interact with patients early on was one of the reasons I chose to study at Sheffield.”

All volunteer patients undergo a standardised training session, which covers such issues as the process of history taking, giving constructive feedback, communicating with students, confidentiality and consent issues. The volunteers are involved with students throughout the five years of the medical degree, including a physical examinations skills course, simulated ward rounds and participation in clinical skills teaching. They also provide verbal and written feedback. Martin Hague, Manager for Clinical Skills and Patients as Educators, said, “Students work with a range of volunteers, from people who have recovered to those who are still receiving treatment. We greatly appreciate their involvement and commitment to the scheme.”

Patients educating doctors

Protecting the Future

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Pioneering research into neurodegenerative diseaseThe first centre of its kind in the world, the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN) brings together scientists and medical specialists who are dedicated to researching the causes of and cures for neurodegenerative disease – motor neurone disease (MND), Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and spinal muscular atrophy. SITraN has the potential to have a major impact on the visibility of neurodegenerative diseases, bringing new treatments and new hope to patients and carers in the UK – together with the wider international community. The £18-million complex, which was made possible by the generous support of the Sheffield Institute Foundation for Motor Neurone Disease (SIFMND), was officially opened by Her Majesty The Queen in November 2010.

Centres of excellence for neurodegeneration research across the globe have made considerable progress in this field, but none are effectively poised to develop these advances to the full. The establishment of SITraN offers

the opportunity for a coordinated approach to the development and clinical trialling of new therapies based on rational targets of proven preclinical effectiveness.

Members of the research team, led by Professor Pamela Shaw, have multidisciplinary skills in neurology, pathology, gene therapy, molecular genetics, protein chemistry, cell biology, pharmacology, bioinformatics and computer science. They are exploiting the potential of modern neuroscience, the ‘post-genome’ era and exciting developments in biomedical therapeutics. This work complements the University’s existing partnerships with academic research groups, government and charitable research funding bodies, the pharmaceutical industry and the healthcare sector.

SITraN provides industry and the medical sector with knowledge that will help in targeting medicines more effectively, accelerating the rate at which new discoveries reach the health

sector – and ultimately patients. SITraN’s reputation for excellence is recognised through its continued success in applying for research funding and it secured more than £7.3 million in grants in 2011-12, bolstered by generous donations from members of the public and the continuing work of SIFMND.

Irene Beard, a patron of SIFMND, said, “The new institute embodies the hopes of all MND sufferers. They now have a world-class scientific institute devoted to finding the cause of this terrible disease, a treatment and hopefully a cure.” Neil Lawrence, Professor of Computational Biology, commented, “Our work will help us understand why some medicines work better on some patients than they do on others. And it will enable us to identify new – and potentially more effective – targets for drug treatments.”

Protecting the FutureWe have to think beyond the short term. In order to safeguard our core academic activities and the student experience for the future, we must ensure that our research and teaching are sustainable. We need to use resources effectively, transparently and responsibly and to be resilient and adaptable in the face of change.

Protecting the Future

For centuries the name ‘Sheffield’ has been synonymous with high-quality metallurgy and steel manufacture, and today the city enjoys a growing reputation as a world leader in the fields of engineering and advanced manufacturing. In acknowledgement of this great heritage, it is fitting that the centrepiece of the University of Sheffield’s development plans over the next decade is the New Engineering Building. This £81 million iconic addition to the campus, on the Jessop East site, will be a source of great pride for the city and region. The building will enhance the University’s drive to redefine excellence in engineering education well into the 21st century.

Construction is expected to start in 2013, and the building should be fully operational by 2016. It will create around 500 jobs during the construction phase, and is predicted to bring £44.5 million into the local economy during this period and the first year of operation, with an ongoing annual contribution to Sheffield’s economy of £20.6 million. The Faculty of Engineering is planning

to attract an additional 1,600 students by 2020, with around 400 additional staff recruited as a consequence of that growth. Vice-Chancellor Keith Burnett said, “We are grateful for the support we have received from a wide range of individuals and organisations in helping us develop this proposal over the last year, and the news that we have received planning permission for the New Engineering Building is good for the University, good for the city and good for the people of Sheffield.”

The Faculty of Engineering has been an integral part of the University of Sheffield since the granting of its Royal Charter in 1905; classes for workers in the steel industry started in 1884 at the faculty’s precursor, the Sheffield Technical School. It is now one of the most successful engineering faculties in the UK, attracting the third highest amount of research funding after only Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge, with ambitions to build on this success.

Pro-Vice-Chancellor Professor Mike Hounslow, Head of the Faculty of Engineering, said, “We aim to work across the full spectrum of engineering activity, from fundamental science to professional practice, and we will contribute fully to ensuring a sustainable future both locally and globally. The New Engineering Building is the key element in our ambitious project to expand and improve the faculty’s estate. The Engineering Graduate School is due to welcome students in mid-2013, and our existing buildings are also being transformed.”

Growth and investment in engineering

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Leading the Way

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Deafness is a major public health issue worldwide, with more than three million people in the UK alone enduring a moderate to profound hearing loss. The numbers rise to around 10 million if sufferers of mild impairments are included. Current developments in stem cell technology led by Dr Marcelo Rivolta, from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Biomedical Science, could offer new hope for the treatment of auditory neuropathy, a common form of deafness in which the damage occurs at the level of the cochlear nerve.

Dr Rivolta has spent 10 years researching how to differentiate human embryonic stem cells into the two cell types that are essential for hearing: auditory neurons and the inner-ear hair cells that translate sound into electrical signals. He is also a member of the University’s Centre for Stem Cell Biology, which was the first laboratory

to undertake research on human embryonic stem cells in the UK and has played a major role in training scientists in this dynamic field.

His research team converted human embryonic stem cells into cells similar to spiral ganglion neurons – the nerve cells which pass sounds into the brain. They then delicately injected them into the inner ears of deaf gerbils. The gerbils, on average, recovered 46 per cent of their hearing. The improvement was evident about four weeks after administering the cells and observed for 10 weeks. This is the first time that transplanted cells have successfully restored hearing in animals. The equivalent improvement in humans would be a shift from being unable to hear traffic to hearing a conversation.

“We believe this is an important step forward,” said Dr Rivolta. “We now have a method to produce human cochlear sensory cells that we

could use to develop new drugs and treatments, and to study the function of genes. And more importantly, we have proof of the concept that human stem cells could be used to repair the damaged ear. These results should stimulate further research into the development of a cell-based therapy for deafness.”

The research was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the UK hearing research charities, Deafness Research UK and Action on Hearing Loss. Dr Paul Colville-Nash, Programme Manager for stem cell, developmental biology and regenerative medicine at the MRC, added, “This study clearly demonstrates that investment in UK stem cell research and regenerative medicine is beginning to bear fruit, and that is very exciting.”

Discovering a stem cell cure for deafness

Leading the WayWe believe that universities have a responsibility to look ahead to important new problems and to offer intellectual leadership to society in response to them. We expect our staff to be leaders both in their fields and in the governance of the University and we encourage our students to think how they too can shape the world both now and into the future.

Leading the Way

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Providing the evidence for policy changeResearchers from the School of Health and Related Research are making a major contribution to the national and international debate on alcohol pricing. Led by Professor Petra Meier, the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group has developed the Sheffield Alcohol Policy Model, which provides estimates of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of alcohol policies. Their work is influential in current debates around minimum unit pricing and the possible effects on patterns of alcohol consumption – and the resulting impact on alcohol-related health, crime and workplace problems. The model allows policymakers to estimate the effectiveness of alcohol pricing, availability, advertising and behavioural intervention policies.

The original model was built for the Department of Health and adaptations have been developed for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the Scottish Government and the Canadian Institute of Health Research.

The research has been published as government reports and in academic journals including The Lancet, and members of the team have given evidence to the UK and Scottish parliaments. The UK Government released its alcohol strategy in March 2012, and the headline measure was the commitment to introduce a minimum unit price for alcohol in England and Wales.

The Scottish Government published a report on a Scottish adaptation of the Sheffield Alcohol Policy Model in 2009, followed by updates in 2010 and 2012. The Sheffield team analysed a range of separate policy scenarios, including setting a range of minimum prices per unit of alcohol, a total discount ban in off-licences and supermarkets, and a combination of the two strategies. The research examined how policies affect alcohol purchasing and consumption for different population groups, including moderate, hazardous and harmful drinkers. The results suggest minimum pricing can bring considerable

health and social benefits and lead to significant savings in the NHS and criminal justice system. Evidence from the reports was used by the Scottish Government when proposing the Alcohol Minimum Pricing Bill, which was passed in May 2012 and paves the way for the introduction of an initial minimum price of 50 pence per unit.

The Sheffield Alcohol Research Group’s reputation for excellence has led to a growing interest in their work from around the world. The Sheffield researchers have worked with the World Health Organization and policymakers in Australia and New Zealand. They are now collaborating with researchers in Europe and Canada to address the challenge of excessive alcohol consumption.

Leading the Way

Sources are the raw material of history. However, as a staple of historical training, material culture has generally been absent from most university history programmes. The written word has traditionally been seen as the principal form of evidence but today’s historians are increasingly recognising the value of sources beyond text. Dr Karen Harvey, of the University of Sheffield’s Department of History, is leading the debate about how historians approach material culture – considering objects as sources and opening up the discipline of history to new approaches.

The inclusion of material culture in the history curriculum demands new research practices and skills. Dr Harvey received a Senate Award for Excellence in Learning and Teaching from the University in recognition of her dynamic approach to introducing material culture into her teaching. As a cultural historian of 18th-century Britain, with a special interest in

gender, identity and power, she uses a wide range of written, visual and material sources in her work. She investigates how people have engaged with, used and made material culture. As Academic in Residence at Bank Street Arts, an innovative cross-disciplinary arts centre in Sheffield, she is exploring her research in the context of a Georgian domestic space and with artists.

Teapots, candlesticks, floor plans, portraits, advertisements, conduct books, diaries and novels are the sources used by students taking the third-year history module, The Making of the Modern Home: Gender and Domesticity, England 1650-1800. The teaching and learning methods used here by Dr Harvey are various and are designed to suit the range of sources. Students have given individual presentations on aspects of the home, group presentations on single rooms, and dramatic performances of 18th-century autobiographies.

A grant from the University’s Knowledge Transfer Opportunities Fund, supported by the Higher Education Innovation Fund, enabled Dr Harvey to develop the project Displaying Drink: Ritual at the Eighteenth-Century Table, in collaboration with curators from Museums Sheffield. Drawing on her work on ritual and drinking in 18th-century England, the resulting display in Museums Sheffield’s Metalwork Gallery helped place objects from the decorative art collection more firmly in their wider historical, cultural, social and political contexts. Dr Harvey said, “The display brought academic research out of the University into a broader public domain, encouraging visitors to reflect on the cultural significance of mundane practices of drinking. This was an exciting collaboration between two of the major cultural and educational institutions in the city.”

History and material culture

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Leading the Way

The creation of patient-specific computer models of human cells, organs and systems will bring new understanding of disease, support discovery of new drugs and help visualisation of the effects of different choices of treatments. The University of Sheffield is a core member of the Virtual Physiological Human Network of Excellence – a European initiative, which is itself part of a worldwide community of researchers, engineers, clinicians and industrial partners. This collective framework enables experts to share their observations and conclusions across multiple scientific disciplines. Success in pursuing their translational research agenda will have a dramatic impact on the future of healthcare, and the pharmaceutical and medical device industries.

A collaboration between the Faculties of Engineering, and Medicine, Dentistry and Health, and the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals (STH)

NHS Foundation Trust, the INSIGNEO Institute for in silico Medicine is focusing extensive expertise on the creation of robust, reliable, virtual models of human physiology – the biochemical, bioelectrical and biomechanical systems that drive the functions of the body. These are known as in silico models, in reference to the powerful computers used to create them. The ultimate aim of biomedical modelling is a 3D digital replica of a patient. Medical information, from details as simple as age and weight, to more complex data taken from scans and X-rays, will be fed into the models to provide an overall picture of an individual patient’s condition, against which different treatments can then be tested. For example, a model of the cardiovascular system will help clinicians predict whether a visible narrowing in a coronary artery is significant enough to cause restriction of the blood supply, and whether the patient would benefit from the insertion of a stent to ease blood flow.

The link between research staff from the University and clinicians from the STH NHS Foundation Trust is crucial to INSIGNEO’s success. The collaboration ensures that all developments are clinically relevant and can easily transfer into clinical practice. The institute also embraces statisticians and applied mathematicians, who are informing study designs and analyses; legal and ethical specialists, who are advising on appropriate use of patient data; and health economists and health technology assessment experts. The involvement of external clinical and industrial partners ensures that the research translates into real-world applications. Scientific Director Professor Marco Viceconti said, “INSIGNEO is at the heart of the worldwide collaboration to ensure that the finest minds and richest resources are brought together to investigate the human body as a single complex system.”

Testing treatments in a virtual world

17

This booklet is set in the University’s own fonts, Stephenson and Blake.

The Stephenson serif font (this one) is a modified version of a design by Sheffield company Stephenson & Blake Co. Typefounders, established in 1818. At the height of Sheffield’s power as a producer of steel, Stephenson & Blake was the world’s largest manufacturer of metal type.

Sir Henry Stephenson, co-owner, was one of the University’s founding fathers. In 1895, he became part of a hugely important movement that saw the wealthy and the powerful join forces with the ordinary working people of the city to create a university for the good of everyone.

Stephenson and its sans serif companion Blake (this one), were chosen with the assistance of the National Type Museum in London and redrawn for us by renowned type experts House Style Graphics. In their modernised, digitised form, they are the copyright property of the University of Sheffield – our unique signature, our hallmark, our stamp.

Keep up to date with our latest work at www.sheffield.ac.uk/ourplan

© The University of Sheffield 2013 0190Mktg