Knowledge Transfer
As the core of SIMBIOS research is to understand the most complex biomaterial on Earth – soil – we are able to approach a wide range of other challenges outwith the soil environment. Using the same general questions with our combined theoretical and experimental approaches have proven to be a very powerful way to interact with industry and allowed us to develop research and applications directly relevant to a wide range of commercial activities. As soil is complex, exists in 3D and is home to the greatest amount and most diverse organisms in the world, working with any other material, whilst still having major and interesting challenges, is perhaps somewhat less complex. Examples are provided below:
1. Medical / Industrial Imaging
X-Ray Tomography Equipment
Linking with the μSIMCT lab we have two of the best X-ray tomography scanners in the world. With a strong gaming industry within Abertay we have been able to develop unique and powerful software that manipulates and interrogates complex 3D datasets that have evolved from the CT imaging. With companies we are further developing these software platforms to provide a complex analysis package that will, for 3D image provide a comprehensive quantification for pore geometry and function (gas flow permeability etc).
The award of many large contracts with industry and recent awards of KTPs in the general area of imaging (metallic foams, teeth, lungs, bones etc), provide the funds for the development of these areas, which already have had a significant impact on our ability to quantify our environmental samples. We have strong and developing inks with major industrial partners, and have a wide portfolio of materials we have analysed.
2. Hospital acquired infections
Hospital acquired infection: MRSA
There are an increasing number of infective agents in hospital environments that are resistant to normal measures of control. Some of the most important of these are contact-communicable diseases involving microbes that are resistant to antibiotics. Whilst the human consequences of outbreaks are immeasurable, the financial consequences have been estimated at around £180M per annum in Scotland alone. No single management option has been shown to solve the problem and the number of possible ways of intervening to reduce the incidence and spread of infections is too large for intuition on its own to be helpful.
In collaboration with the Tayside Health Board we have been awarded a KTP to develop models for the spread of hospital acquired infections (HAIs). These models develop from our individual-based approaches to modelling the spread of genes in the environment and will be used to seek optimal management options that will minimise the magnitude and number of outbreaks. Uniquely, we will account for the role of variation in individual behaviour in the spread of infections and use this as a means of informing training and education material.