Institute of Healthy Ageing

The ladies of the IHA who this year will be participating in Cancer Research UK's 'Race for Life' successfully held a bake sale on Wednesday and raised an impressive £290 towards their total goal! A huge variety of delicious cakes, generously baked by the team and their friends from the IHA, were snapped up by hungry staff and students alike. Thanks team and well done! If you would like to make a donation to this worthy cause please visit the team's JustGiving page at: http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org

We are delighted to announce that the 'Green-Darwin' Green Impact Team has won two Bronze Awards which were presented by the Provost at an Awards Ceremony held last week. The IHA's Giovanna Vinti secured the first award for 'Green-Darwin Labs' and the 'Green Darwin' team won a second.

These fantastic achievements form part of the efforts of the wider UCL community in pressing forward the green agenda. Awards went to teams across UCL for work that included putting up awareness-raising notices and posters encouraging people to switch off lights and equipment when not needed, potentially saving 7,038kg CO2 per year; and likewise to print and photocopy double-sided, potentially saving 108,594kg CO2 and £40,220 on resource costs this year across the institution.

Congratulations to Carolina Soto Palma, an MRes student under the supervision of Dr. Gene Schuster, who has been awarded one of only ten UCL Graduate School bursaries to attend The Times Cheltenham Science Festival.

The IHA is pleased to announce that Tosin Taiwo, final year PhD student with Dr Daniel Pearce, recently passed her viva with only minor corrections. Congratulations Tosin!

Chemistry Auditorium, University College London

Friday March 22 at 6.30pm

IOP Institute of Physics present: Why is Life Deadlier for the Male?

Congratulations to Dr. Cassandra Coburn, who was awarded her Ph.D. in December for her thesis entitled “The biology of death in Caenorhabditis elegans”. See Cassie talk about her research here. New members of the lab: Rosina Prior joined the lab in the Autumn as an M.Res. student and, following in Cassie’s footsteps, is investigating the biology of rigor mortis in C. elegans. In April Dr Marina Ezcurra will join the lab. Marina did her Ph.D. with Bill Schafer at the MRC-Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. David Gems is continuing to focus on application of Misha Blagosklonny’s hyperfunction theory of ageing to C. elegans. He recently wrote a review with Linda Partridge on the recent, profound conceptual changes in the ageing field [Genetics of longevity in model organisms: debates and paradigm shifts. Gems D, Partridge L. Annu Rev Physiol. 2013 75: 621-644], and this month presented this work to scientists at Newcastle University’s Institute of Ageing and Health, where he discussed the relative merits of the disposable soma and bloated soma theories with Dr Daryl Shanley and Prof Thomas von Zglinicki, among others.

http://youtu.be/_1WoEg7HLYc

You can now stream Dr Matt Piper's recent Wellcome Trust Packed Lunch podcast on diet and ageing.

6:30 pm – 8:00 pm on Monday, 25 March 2013

On 21st February Dr Matt Piper gave a fascinating talk to a packed Darwin Lecture theatre entitled 'A Diet to Treat Ageing.'

For more information visit: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/iha/mres_course

Congratulations to IHA PhD student Sahar on her bursary to attend the upcoming Biochemical Meeting "Talks about TORCs" on March 14-15 2013.
More information on the meeting can be found here.

The IHA will be joined from 7 January 2013 by a new member of staff.  Michael will be working as the Executive Officer to Professor Linda Partridge (IHA Director) following the departure of Julie Black to pastures new at UCL's Slade School of Fine Art. 

Our congratulations go to Dr Nuria Vergara (Schuster Lab) who has been awarded a Postdoctoral Mobility Award to work at the London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN) in the laboratory of Prof. Gabriel Aeppli.

Title - Meta-analysis of high-throughput sequencing data to identify candidate genes and processes promoting healthy ageing

Congratulations to Dr Cathy Slack (Partridge Laboratory) on the publication of her paper 'Activation of AMPK by the Putative Dietary Restriction Mimetic Metformin is insufficient to Extend Lifespan in Drosophila' in PLoS One.

Following the award of a new Wellcome Trust Strategic Award, Professors Partridge and Gems will shortly be advertising for seven post-doctoral workers and three technicians to join a large interdisciplinary team investigating the mechanisms of ageing in nematode worms and the fruit fly Drosophila.

Congratulations to Professors Linda Partridge and David Gems on their recent award of a £4.7m Wellcome Trust Strategic Award.  The project, a collaboration with Imperial College and the European Bioinformatics Institute, entitled 'Biological determinants of ageing and late life health and their pharmacological manipulation' will build on an earlier WTSA awarded in 2007.

Congratulations go to Dr Ivana Bjedov of the Partridge lab in the IHA who has been awarded 1,453,219 euros as part of an ERC Starting Grant to study cancer in Drosophila. The 5 year project will be conducted at the UCL Cancer Institute. 

The IHA recently took part in the hugely successful Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition with a stand explaining current research on healthy ageing.  As a consequence of this, further invitations were received to participate in other events and the team has therefore already exhibited in Bangkok, Thailand at the invitation of The British Council and are due to take part shortly in the more local Bloomsbury Festival to be held on 20/21 October as well as a Science Exhibition in Brighton in the New Year. 

Dr Matt Piper of the IHA played host to a group of hearing impaired students who visited UCL and met with various scientists who explained the fundamentals of their research.  For more, see the You Tube video produced by Josephine McNally.

The IHA will shortly say goodbye to two of its technicians who are both leaving the Institute this month. 

The congratulations of everyone at the IHA go to David Gems who will officially become Professor of Biogerontology as of October 2012.  

3 - 8 July 2012 was an extremely busy time for the large team of researchers from the IHA and associated Bahler Lab who manned the IHA's stand at the RS Summer Science Exhibition. 

UCL is currently seeking a Senior Research Fellow to develop an independent research programme studying the mechanisms of ageing.  The work will be carried out within the IHA and applicants are invited to apply as per the details to be found on the UCL vacancies website.