Metabolight team at Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2019

The free, week-long festival will run from 1-7 July exploring the biggest questions in UK science and technology.

The Metabolight exhibit, ‘Lighting the Way to a Healthier Brain after Birth’, will feature alongside 20 other stands, including an exhibit looking at ‘The Mathematics of Cancer’ which is being led by colleagues from UCL Mechanical Engineering and the UCL Centre for Advanced Biomedical Engineering.

The MetaboLight team, which brings together UCL and UCLH engineers, physicists and doctors, has developed a light-based technique to help diagnose and monitor brain injury when blood supply is cut off to parts of a baby’s brain during birth and stop it working properly. Detecting and monitoring damaged brain areas is vital to help doctors treat these babies in the best way. The team has developed a safe, non-invasive way of shining light through the baby’s brain and detecting it with a sensitive digital camera. Unlike current clinical brain monitoring methods, this can be done at the cotside in the neonatal intensive care unit and can reveal detailed information about oxygen and metabolism levels, providing vital and potentially life-saving information for doctors.

Visitors to the stand can try out our optical hand scanner to see how light can go through their fingers and use our optical brain scanner to image their brain function as they are doing maths.  They will also be able to walk through a recreation of a baby intensive care unit and listen to our team doctors talking about their experiences treating brain-injured newborn. To find out more about Metabolight, you can watch this short video.

Stay updated by following our teams’ progress on Twitter at @metabolight and @reanimatecancer. As it gets nearer to the Royal Society Summer Science festival we’ll be releasing more details about both exhibits and where exactly you can find us. We look forward to seeing you there!

If you are a student or staff member at UCL and are interested in volunteering at either exhibit (or just want to find out more!) then start the conversation by emailing us with the subject heading ‘Royal Society Summer Science exhibition’. We will need people to help with setting up and dismantling exhibition stands, and talking to visitors about the science we’re showcasing. Full training and support is available.