The fellowships were awarded following a competitive process, and will contribute to BRC TN objectives and support projects that align with them for an initial one-year period, with the possibility of extension for an additional year.
NIHR UCLH Biomedical Research Centre caught up with Dr Dominic Giles to chat about his Fellowship, during which he will be working to improve clinical outcomes for patients with neurological diseases through use of artificial intelligence-based tools.
What is your research background to date?
"My academic background has focused on mathematical and computational applications to medical research. During medical school, an important part of my research focused on computational modelling of the biophysics of solid tumours.
"For my doctoral studies, made possible by the UCL MBPhD and Centre for Doctoral Training for AI-Enabled Healthcare programmes, I joined the High-Dimensional Neurology group at UCL led by Prof Parashkev Nachev, where I completed my PhD in the area of focal brain injury – which involves damage to a specific part of the brain. As part of this, I applied deep learning tools to neuroimaging data from acute ischaemic stroke patients, with respect to intervention and outcome."
What is the work you will do as part of your BRC Translational Neuroscience Fellowship, and why is this work needed?
"I will work towards improving outcomes for patients across the spectrum of neurological disease by applying generative AI tools with large-scale observational data, to be able to make increasingly personalized treatment recommendations.
"Artificial intelligence has extraordinary capability for highly personalized inference, something that continues to be deployed rapidly across other industries. Its application to healthcare must be developed cautiously, but given how heterogeneous neurological disease is at presentation and in response to treatment, its potential for use in recommending the most individually appropriate treatment is extremely promising.
"To do this work, I will continue to be based in the cross-disciplinary High-Dimensional Neurology research group, as part of the Department of Brain Repair and Rehabilitation at UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, though I am excited to foster collaborations widely across UCL and around the world."
How soon could your work bring benefit to patients?
"Personalized treatment recommendation tools require extremely rigorous development and testing before they could be applied in routine clinical practice, but I anticipate that the work I will carry out as part of this fellowship will constitute an important step towards this goal. Then, a treatment recommendation would be curated specifically to each individual patient, capable of identifying subtle patterns suggestive of increased sensitivity to one treatment over another, even within groups of patients with comparable clinical presentations. The overarching goal is to improve patient outcomes, across the full ranges of unique individuals, both within and across diseases."
Finally, what are some of your interests outside of work?
"I am passionate about music: existing also at the intersection of my interests in neuroscience and mathematics. Especially drawn to Bach, I am preparing the programme for my second piano performance diploma, which also features pieces by Beethoven and Ravel. I also enjoy hiking and learning languages."