We are delighted to announce the awards that have been funded under the most recent round of our Multiple PhD studentship scheme. The scheme offers institutions the opportunity to co-fund, with the Trust, cohorts of PhD studentships focussed on one or more of our priority themes as set out in our strategic framework:
- Improving our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of ageing and age-related disease;
- Targeting the social determinants of healthy life expectancy;
- Improving the quality of life for older people, in particular;
- in developing and delivering suitable living environments;
- addressing issues of age-related vision, hearing and oral health;
- Preventing, delaying or reducing future health and social care requirements, in particular, improving the ability to maintain functional independence for older adults.
One of the key principles of this scheme is that institutions demonstrate a strategic commitment to ageing-related research, and it has been very encouraging to see the breadth of Centres/Departments which have been involved in the application process.
The deadline for applications to the scheme was in July 2023, with applications reviewed by the Trust’s staff and members of the Research Grants Committee, and decisions ratified by the Research Grants Committee later that year. 15 applications were received, and 7 awards made totalling £1,386,236.53 of funding from the Trust (equating to a success rate of 47%). Together with the institutional co-funding, this is supporting up to 26 students to pursue their PhDs in ageing-related fields.
Please expand the list of awards below to read more information about the centres and studentships that were funded:
FY2023/24 Awards:
Award amount: £197,579.50
Students and Project titles: TBC
Award amount: £197,476.00
Students and Project titles:
- Jay Rothery – Blood pressure and rehabilitation in ageing
- Keira Evans – Exploring interactions between perceptions of fall-risk and cognitive decline in older adults and the relationship to postural stability during adaptive gait
- Student 3 – TBC
Award amount: £199,997.07
Students and Project titles:
- Ruth Tebo – I-Breathe: Development of a personalised and responsive telehealth prototype promoting Independence and self-efficacy for breathless patients at home
- Winnie Collate – Economic evaluation of interventions to improve functional independence for older adults
- Sandra Dyer – A partnership approach to strengthen integration of palliative care in community settings for adults with severe frailty and multimorbidity
Award amount: £193,296.00
Students and Project titles:
- Pamela Borland – Developing a human rights approach to medication management in residential care for older people
- Martin Duffy – Age-friendly accessibility strategies for community pharmacies
- Aoife Healy – Polypharmacy within the NICOLA (Northern Ireland COhort for the Longitudinal study of Ageing) and impact on quality of life
- Holly Mulhern – Taking medicines at home: exploring medication use as a socially embedded phenomenon
Award amount: £199,999.96
Students and Project titles:
- Omar Khalil – Exploring mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibition as a strategy to improve the muscle mass and function of older adults
- Alena Ponitzova – Determining the role of increased physical activity on the multi-organ health status of older adults
- Tyler Daubrah-Scott – Exploring the mechanistic basis of responses to exercise pre-habilitation in older surgical patients
Award amount: £199,546.00
Students and Project titles:
- Caitlin Adams – Improving early diagnosis of dementia: Self-administered, repeatable cognitive measures and relationship with chronological age and biomarkers
- Waheeda Hawa – Estimating Brain Age using a motion judgement task and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
- Cerys Charles – Haemostatic dysregulation as a marker of blood-brain barrier malfunction – a novel predictor of brain age
- Mayur Shetty – Role of extracellular vesicles (EV) in neuron-astrocyte intercellular communication in neuronal death
- Joe Rodgers – Developing theoretically informed cognitive markers for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD)
Award amount: £198,342.00
Students and Project titles:
- TBC
We will update this news post once all of the students and their projects are confirmed.