Lisa's Lab Book

 

 

Thursday, 30 July 2026 Scientists at the University of Nottingham have received funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) to develop quantum sensing technology that will accurately predict the severity of liver disease in patients. The funding will enable the researchers to develop the new technology that will mean patients will have more personalised care after being diagnosed with liver disease. The team at Nottingham, led by Professor Lisa Chakrabarti in the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, has received the funding through the NIHR Invention for Innovation Funding At Speed of Translation (FAST) opportunity. The project is one of 17 quantum healthcare innovations funded through the programme. The project team also includes Professor Melissa Mather from the School of Engineering, Professor Mark Fromhold from the School of Physics and Dr Aloysious Aravinthan from the School of Medicine. Chronic liver disease (CLD) is a growing cause of serious il...

  Our project is Precise Detection of High-Risk Chronic Liver Disease using Diamond Quantum Sensing  Dr. Chloe Sargent is the post-doctoral research associate we have been fortunate tobe able to engage on this project. The projects have been funded through the NIHR Invention for Innovation (i4i) Funding At the Speed of Translation (FAST) opportunity. This connects leading UK quantum research with clinical expertise and NIHR infrastructure. It will help promising technologies move more quickly towards follow-on development and NHS use.  Professor Mike Lewis, NIHR Scientific Director for Innovation said: "This funding is a major step forward in bringing quantum technology to patients, cementing the UK as Europe’s leader in quantum health innovation. "By investing in these 17 projects, we are fast-tracking tools that can diagnose illness earlier and provide life-changing breakthroughs. These innovations will transform our health system and improve the lives of patients." H...

Congratulations to Nial on achieving his PhD on the Metabolism of the Dairy Cow Nial was a hero in the lab group and everyone enjoyed his presence there. Highlights included our group trip to Innsbruck for the BEC inaugural meeting. Also, we had an extremely good time going upto Hull to visit the aquarium for our field trip. Nial will be missed for his 'terrible' jokes and for his huge experience in the dairy cattle universe amongst many other things. Nial is continuing to do research alongside his work with the advanced management of dairy cattle. We wish him well and hope to see him often.  

  Chasing Icefish can be viewed on You Tube Pedro, the BBC cameraman who was on board as part of your project team was asked to make some videos about the research on board RV Polarstern. Although I don't love to see myself on camera, seeing this footage sends a thrill through me, Antarctica is an extraordinary place to work in. The icefish are stunningly beautiful animals.

  We have been awarded NIHR funding for a diamond quantum-sensing diagnostic approach to identify individuals at a high risk of complications with Chronic liver disease (CLD). CLD is characterised by progressive liver fibrosis, advancing from mild to severe stages and ultimately leading to cirrhosis, liver failure and liver cancer. CLD is estimated to impose an annual economic burden of £3.5 billion in direct care and exceeds £17 billion total burden on the UK economy. 10–30% of individuals with CLD progress to cirrhosis, of these, approximately 5% develop liver failure, liver cancer or other major complications . Currently, there are no reliable tools to predict which patients will develop progressive fibrosis or which individuals with cirrhosis will experience complications.  Our collaboration combines expertise from  Dr. Aloysious Aravinthan (Clinical GI specialist), Prof. Melissa Mather (Quantum Diamonds Engineer), Prof. Mark Fromhold (Physicist -Magnetic fields) and ...

 We had a team come to Nottingham to make a documentary which will include our interest in Icefish. A whole day of filming, an interesting experience and just a very lovely group of people to work with. I will post an update once the documentary is finished.

 The exhibition summarises a number of life drawing sessions held by Janet Shipton ' Painting with Mr. P '. A number of the artists and even the model 'sitters' are affected by Parkinson's disease.  For me it was a chance to see the birthplace museum and have my sketches exhibited for the first time! At 4pm we had a preview with invited important people and this included the lab group and our collaborator Melissa Mather. It was all very inspirational! Alex Bhatti, Jacob Reed, Mel Mather, Me Janet Shipton hanging the paintings.

 

  Congratulations to Nial for his dedication and hard work to publish his research in precisely the field he is most interested in . Nial pursued his PhD to find out more about the metabolism of the dairy cow and this is an important contribution to the collective knowledge on mitochondrial adaptation in response to lactation.

  We had a great meeting about testing the effect of magnetic fields in mitochondria with Adam Bradlaugh (Manchester) and Alex Jones (NPL), Jacob Reed,  Melissa Mather from UoN Engineering (behind the camera!) and Mark Fromhold from UoN Physics (not pictured). Our magnetic shield was the subject of all attention in the lab. We had excellent discussions and now have a plan to start to work together.

EDRC 2025 Alicante   Using a CaFe assay to assess mitochondrial function in olanzapine treated D.melanogaster.  Katherine Mortimer  'The EDRC 2025 brought together researchers from a diverse range of disciplines with a shared interest in using Drosophila melanogaster as a biological model. For that reason, I thoroughly enjoyed the poster session. I had lots of interesting conversations pertaining to all areas of my poster, from specific methodology to a general interest in mitochondria. I found myself chatting to people for the whole 2-hour session and walking away with lots of useful insights and connections. ' Quantum Sensing of Mitochondrial Physiology in Response to a Hypomagnetic Field. Jacob Reed 'It was great to be surrounded by researchers from around the world at the 28th EDRC, all sharing a passion for Drosophila. I especially enjoyed the talks on metabolism and mitochondria, which led to insightful conversations on mito-nuclear DNA mismatch. Presentin...

 

  You can read about the expedition and also past and future campaigns on the AWI Polarstern blog .

 From around 30 minutes into the programme you can hear about our project on board Polarstern expedition#146

  It was a bit chaotic but here you can see inside the ship and find out a bit more about what I was doing in Antarctica.

 The metal boxes are ready to be shipped to Germany

  We visited  The Deep  in Hull A few of us went to visit the aquarium in Jacob's home city of Hull. It was a really beautiful sunny late summer (early autumn?) day. the Humber estuary sparkled in the sunlight! As well as learning about and seeing lots of marine life we had a significant event to celebrate. We marked the finish of Nial's PhD thesis write-up - congratulations!