皇家华人

In the funding allocation, UCL has been awarded more than 拢2.2m for four AI driven research projects, that are all designed to find more efficient and effective solutions to current health challenges.

As part of the visit to talk with UCL scientists, Michelle Donelan, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, was given a tour of the cutting-edge facilities at 皇家华人鈥檚 Wellcome / EPSRC Centre for Interventional and Surgical Sciences (WEISS).听

On her arrival she was welcomed by Professor Alan Thompson, Dean of UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences, Professor Dan Stoyanov, Director of UCL WEISS, Dr Su-Lin Lee, Head of UCL WEISS Operations, and Dr Kedar Pandya (Executive Director for Cross Council Programmes, UKRI).

In a mock operating room, Dr Sophia Bano, Assistant Professor in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence at 皇家华人,听explained how her research is using AI to help advance endoscopy technology in pituitary surgery, assisting surgeons as they perform delicate keyhole surgery to remove small tumours from inside the skull.

The SoS was then given a hands-on demonstration of the technology by Consultant Surgeon, Mr Hani Marcus, Honorary Associate Professor (UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology), who assisted the Minister as she guided the endoscope and surgery tool inside a 鈥榩hantom head鈥�, which is used for research and training.

Technology Secretary, Michelle Donelan, said: 鈥淎I will revolutionise the way we live, including our healthcare system. That鈥檚 why we鈥檙e backing the UK鈥檚 fantastic innovators to save lives by boosting the frontline of our NHS and tackling the major health challenges of our time.鈥�

Dr Michael Spence, UCL President & Provost, said: 鈥淲e are delighted to welcome Michelle Donelan, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, to UCL on the day UK Government announces a significant new investment in artificial intelligence and its application to health innovation.

鈥淎pplying artificial intelligence approaches and capabilities to healthcare has huge potential. UCL is a world leader in developing and utilising AI, bringing together scientists, engineers and clinicians, to work on game-changing research and innovation, that has the ability to truly improve people鈥檚 lives.听

鈥淭his funding will help UCL to accelerate four pioneering AI driven research projects, that aim to find new and effective solutions to some very challenging health problems, in the fields of brain surgery, cancer classification, electronic health recording and in applying machine learning to detect eye and other diseases with greater accuracy and efficiency.鈥�

UCL recipients of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) innovation to accelerate health innovation award:

• Dr Sophia Bano (UCL Computer Science & WEISS): AID-PitSurg: AI-enabled decision support in pituitary surgery听
• Dr Charles-Antoine Collins-Fekete (UCL Medical Physics & Biomedical Engineering): AI-based diagnosis for improving classification of bone and soft tissue tumours across the UK.听
• Dr Anoop Shah (UCL Institute of Health Informatics): Optimisation of natural language processing for real-time structured clinical data capture in electronic health records
• Professor Pearse Keane (UCL Institute of Ophthalmology):听From 2 million to 20 million: scaling and validating a foundation model for ophthalmology, including the detection of eye and other diseases

The AI funding commitment was made as the UK continues its preparations to host the first international AI Safety Summit. UK Government announced that Matt Clifford, CEO of Entrepreneur First and Chair of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, and Jonathan Black, Heywood Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, will lead the Summit preparations.

Links

• Professor Dan Stoyanov's academic profile
• UCL Brain Sciences
• UCL Computer Science
• UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology
• UCL Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering
• UCL Institute of Health Informatics
• UCL Population Health Sciences
• UCL Institute of Opthamology

Image

• Secretary of State for Science Michelle Donelan (centre) participates in a mock endoscopic听pituitary surgery guided by听Honorary Associate Professor Hani Marcus (UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology) (left) and听Dr Sophia Bano (UCL Computer Science) (right).
• Credit: Rebecca Wilson, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology

Media contact听

Henry Killworth听

Tel: +44 7881833274

E: h.killworth [at] ucl.ac.uk听