Professor Tracey Moore Vice President and Head of the Faculty of Health, University of Sheffield welcomed guests and spoke about Insigneo’s growth and strengths in setting the agenda for transformational medical technology research in Sheffield. She also highlighted the institute’s impact on the NHS and alignment with the newly released NHS 10-year plan with science and technology set to play a key role in the resurrection of the NHS.
Insigneo Co-Directors Professors Jim Wild and Damien Lacroix thanked the Insigneo membership for their strong engagement and contribution to raising the profile of the institute and celebrated the high quality of the research being generated. They gave an overview of achievements over the last year with Jim setting out the institute’s mission to develop fundamental research and technological approaches to transform health in parallel with developing partnerships with NHS and industrial partners. To broaden clinical reach with methodologies developed by working with industry and place Insigneo at the heart of the Yorkshire MedTech ecosystem.
Damien highlighted the strong industrial strategic partnerships and international influence of the institute and the added value the institute’s research theme directors create through their activities which are generating interdisciplinary, cross-faculty collaborations.
He also updated on the work of the Insigneo Early Career Researcher (ECR) group, who have been developing support for ECRs, and plans for an Insigneo Training Academy that will support young investigators and post docs to take part in large proposals and increase their research impact.
Insigneo Commercialisation Manager, Alex Wilkinson, gave an update on his first commercialisation training cohort, who were put through an intensive programme of training designed to support the next generation of entrepreneurs, equipping them to recognise opportunities and balance technical, clinical and commercial considerations. This deeper understanding will, in turn, enhance their research.
The day was filled with fantastic talks showcasing the range of excellent research being carried out across the institute. We’d like to thank our speakers for some fascinating presentations that really demonstrate the potential of our technologies in solving major health challenges and improving lives.
We were also honoured to have a special edition of the South Yorkshire Digital Health Hub's DigitalHealthHubcast podcast episode recorded with some of our speakers during the event. You can listen to the podcast on Spotify here.
Congratulations to our Insigneo Showcase 2025 poster prize winners:
- Malwina Matella, School of Computer Science, 'Computational Methods for Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy-based Diagnosis of Oral Cancer'
- Rachel Furmidge, School of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering 'Tissue-engineered Oral Mucosal Models and Handheld Electric Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) for Rapid Diagnosis of Oral Cancer'
- Jonathan Smith, School of Medicine and Population Health, 'Functional and anatomical imaging using 1H 3D UTE MRI in unsedated, free-breathing infants and comparison with CT'
- Anthony Hughes, School of Computer Science 'How Private are Language Models in Abstractive Summarization?'
- Freddy Forbes, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering 'Soft Robotic Gastrointestinal Organ Simulator for Peristaltic Mechanical Stimulation of Tissue'
And finally, we’d also like to thank our exhibitors for their support not just on the day but working in partnership with Insigneo members and contributing to the Institute’s research:
- AMRC
- NIHR HealthTech Research Centre in Paediatrics and Child Health
- NIHR Sheffield Biomedical Research Centre (BRC)
- The Commercialisation Journey and Research, Partnerships & Innovation at The University of Sheffield
- Panacea Wellbeing & Web Services
- Simplimedica Ltd
