• Question: What is your research about?

    Asked by alexandraa040497 to Upul, Phil, Ian, Derek, Daniel on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by christian, lewiscain.
    • Photo: Derek Mann

      Derek Mann answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      I work on liver disease and I am trying to discover how to reverse the damaging effects of alcohol, fatty foods and viruses have on our liver. My hope is that within 5 years we have a new treatment that can save thousands of lives.

    • Photo: Upul Wijayantha

      Upul Wijayantha answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      My research is about renewable solar energy and making hydrogen fuel from water. The solar cells I work on are called photovoltaic cells these turns sun light directly into electrical energy. The generation of hydrogen fuel using electrolysis from solar electricity to split water using special electrodes made from semiconductors.

    • Photo: Ian Sillett

      Ian Sillett answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      There’s a bit more information in my profile, but I don’t really do a lot of research. I do evaluations of software that is designed to automatically detect certain events in cctv footage. The idea is that by using computers to automatically ‘watch’ the cctv, we can detect more crime and make the UK counter terrorism capability more reliable. Lots of companies claim to be able to do these things and it’s my job to test them all and tell the government which ones are good enough.

    • Photo: Daniel Mietchen

      Daniel Mietchen answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      We try to find out how brain structure correlates with brain function (and impairments thereof), and once such a relation is established, the idea is to use brain structure (as determined on the basis of MRI scans) as an indicator of current or possibly even future problems with brain function. This works already fine with conditions like Alzheimer, and we are trying to extend the approach to other disorders, with schizophrenia in the focus. On the way there, we are developing and refining a range of methods for extracting brain structure from brain scans, and we test their robustness by using them also on brains not in the target population, e.g. from other species or from children.

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