As the country continues to navigate the Covid-19 pandemic, the Churchill community is working as hard as ever. Whilst many members are focussed on the pandemic itself, others are continuing to be recognised for their work in other arenas. With this in mind, we’re aiming to bring you a weekly “good news” update. Here’s what has been happening in the last few days.
COVID-19
Fellow and Statistician Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter continued to comment on the statistics surrounding Covid-19, including the risks Covid-19 poses to children as they begin to head back to school,
Social psychologist Dr Sander van der Linden commented on the emergence of conspiracy theories during times of uncertainty in an article on vaccine scepticism.
Fellow and Preclinical Director of Studies for Medicine at Churchill, Dr Liz Soilleux, has spent the last year with her research group developing a technology that is a novel way of measuring what the immune system is up to, mainly for the diagnosis of both coeliac disease, but applicable to many other immunologically mediated diseases and to lymphoma. This work has been paused so that the group can apply the same technology to try and develop a test for immunity to Coronavirus.
In autopsy practice, Dr Soilleux has also seen some strange lung pathology and consequences of clotting system abnormalities, and as a consequence, has been in a position to submit a number of anonymised postmortem reports to the Royal College of Pathologists COVID-19 postmortem portal, in the hope that it will improve both clinical diagnosis and understanding of the condition.
Junior Research Fellow Dr Leor Zmigrod chaired a virtual panel on “Mental Health and COVID-19”, including Cambridge experts from psychiatry, psychology, and neuroscience, with invited policymakers and researchers from the NHS, World Health Organization, government agencies, as well as behavioural insights policy think tanks.
IN OTHER NEWS
By-Fellow and College Records Officer, Paula Laycock, gave a talk to the Friends of the Landscape Archive which premiered on YouTube this week as part of their online Landscape Hour series.
The first issue of the Møller Institute’s new leadership insights magazine – Inspire – is out now.
We will continue to keep you informed of all of the work being done by the Churchill College Community. If you have any news you would like to share, please get in touch by emailing comms.manager@chu.cam.ac.uk.
