THE FUTURE OF LEARNING: BSNR CHRISTMAS LECTURE 2023
13th December, 6pm GMT
Dear friends and colleagues,
As you know, Christmas is now a handful of weeks away and if Christmas is not far behind, nor is the BSNR Christmas lecture. This year we are lucky to have internationally renowned educationist Prof Sugata Mitra talking to us about “The Future of Learning”.
As Neuroradiologists, we pride ourselves not only as doctors but also as trainers and educators. In fact, teaching is often one of the most enjoyable aspects of our work. However, the nature of education itself has been changing rapidly. Technology is advancing at an astonishing pace, throwing up both opportunities and challenges to educators around the world. Prof Mitra is one of the world-leading pioneers of innovative learning through his ground-breaking “hole-in-the-wall” experiments. He is therefore ideally placed to take us on a journey through these rapid and sometimes bewildering changes and hold a looking glass into the future of learning. See the Event Page for a brief resume and a synopsis of his talk. If you are interested, please check out Prof Mitra’s page on Wikipedia for more details.
Looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday the 13th of December at 6pm on Zoom to enjoy this year’s BSNR Christmas Lecture.
Best wishes
Dipayan Mitra
BSNR President
We are pleased to announce the BSNR 2023 Award Winners; the standard of posters and presentations was extremely high and we thank everyone who presented their work.
The Burrows Prize for Best Platform Presentation was awarded to Rozanna Meijboom from the University of Edinburgh for her presentation “Neurodegeneration may occur without evidence of clinical or neuroinflammatory relapse in recently diagnosed relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis“.
The Best Poster Prize was awarded to Dr Hannah Holmes from Sheffield Teaching Hospitals for her poster entitled “Evaluation of the presence of punctate white matter lesions in a healthy volunteer neonatal population“.
Our thanks to the Academic Subcommittee for adjudicating the prizes, and our congratulations to the winners!
Joint Statement on Sexual Harassment and Assault
The BSNR and UKNG are committed to being inclusive, supportive organisations for all Members and condemn all forms of sexual discrimination, harassment, and assault. The recent report published by the Working Party on Sexual Misconduct in Surgery highlights the fact that sexual harassment including physical assault in the workplace remains a significant issue in healthcare. These appalling behaviours and experiences are not confined to surgery alone and we recognise that some of our members may have been, or might be affected.
There is no place for harassment in any form at work, or in Specialty Interest Groups (SIGs) and we must all play a role in building an informed, zero-tolerance culture. Every one of us has a duty to maintain personal professional standards, to support our co-workers and to recognise and report incidents when they occur. The BSNR and UKNG will work with the RCR and wider NHS to address the cultural and structural factors which facilitate this unacceptable behaviour, in order to provide a safe environment where everyone is treated with dignity and respect.
To underpin this statement, both SIGs will support the RCR in delivering the commitments outlined in the healthcare charter (https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/sexual-safety-in-healthcare-organisational-charter/).
Rob Lenthall
UKNG Chair
Dipayan Mitra
BSNR President
BSNR.UKNG.Statement On Sexual Assault. DM, RL 4.10.23
We are pleased to announce the next BSNR On Call Neuroradiology Course! Aimed at ST1-3 but open to all, this course received excellent feedback last year and this year will feature fully scrollable cases supported by Collective Minds Radiology. Please visit the Event Page for more details and registration.
We are very pleased to announce our 2023 Prizes and Scholarships. The deadline for applications for all of these is the 30th July 2023.
Please see the individual pages for more details:
Prof Ian Isherwood Pump Priming Grant 2023
Prof Iain Wilkinson Undergraduate Essay Prize
Any queries contact the BSNR Academic committee on bsnracademic@gmail.com
The use of Cerebral CT Angiography as an Ancillary Investigation to support a clinical Diagnosis of Death using Neurological Criteria: A consensus guideline
This guideline has published by the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine and was developed with strong input from the BSNR, as well as multiple other stakeholder groups. The guideline has been endorsed by the Royal College of Radiologists and the Society of Radiographers.
We have written a commentary aimed at radiologists and published this month in Clinical Radiology to provide context and rationale for the guidelines.
Read the full guidelines here.
For all our Standards documents, visit the Standards subsite here.
Message from the President
Dear friends and colleagues
Wishing you all a very Happy New Year! I hope you managed to get a break over the festive period and enjoy some quality time with your friends and families.
Many thanks to those who joined us for the BSNR Christmas lecture by Prof Tim Griffiths. If you were not able to join the live session, a link for the recording is available on the BSNR website. If you have any ideas for next year’s Christmas lecture and/or lecturer (you can never plan too far ahead!) please do let me know.
Hopefully many of you have already filled in the BSNR survey, the link for which was sent out recently. If you have not got round to it yet, please spare a few minutes to complete this. I know I sound like a broken record, but the importance of hearing your comments and suggestions cannot be over-emphasized.
I am sure, like me, you are proud of the BSNR for being an open and welcoming place, irrespective of individual backgrounds. However, there can be no room for complacency. I am sure you would agree that our commitment to promote equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in our Society should be one that is serious and consistent. To that end, we are seeking applications from members for the role of EDI representative, who will be a voting member of the Executive Committee. The job description and call for applications will go out shortly. If you are interested and/or have any query or comment about this role, please feel free to contact me.
Many of you will have attended the BSNR Grand Rounds over the last couple of years with presentations from leading centres in UK, Europe, USA and beyond. There have also been a number of other excellent collaborations with societies around the world, led by our highly active Training and Education Subcommittee. Given these developments, we would like to appoint a Global Representative to promote collaboration with international societies and increase BSNR’s profile globally. The call for applications for this role will go out in the next few weeks, please do look out for it.
So, there is lots happening in our Society, but given how busy January is for everyone, I will stop here for now.
Till the next time, wishing you all the very best.
Dipayan Mitra
BSNR President
bsnr.pres@gmail.com
January 2023
BSNR Christmas lecture 2022
Thursday 15th December, 6pm
‘The mind’s ear: speech, music and the brain’
Professor Tim Griffiths
Dear friends and colleagues,
As the days get shorter and the mercury starts to drop, there must be one thing in everybody’s mind – Christmas is coming. I am therefore delighted to announce that this year
we have a BSNR Christmas lecture that is in tune with the mood of the festive season. The 2022 Christmas lecture will be delivered by Prof. Tim Griffiths, Professor of Cognitive
Neurology in Newcastle University and Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellow. He is a Fellow of Academy of Medical Sciences and an Adjunct Chair in University of Iowa. Prof Griffiths
graduated from University of Oxford and from where he also holds a DM in Neurology. He is an international authority on auditory cognition including musical perception. He has made
many key contributions to both fundamental and applied neuroscience including identification of specific pitch and pitch-sequence systems in auditory cortex using functional imaging.
Prof Griffiths will talk about how the brain constructs a picture of the acoustic world to allow us to understand natural scenes containing speech and music. He will also consider
how this process might go wrong in brain disorders and be relevant to established links between hearing loss and dementia.
Therefore, please put this date in your diaries and join us online on Thursday 15th December at 6pm to enjoy this special BSNR event. You can register for the event here.
Look forward to seeing you there!
Dipayan Mitra
BSNR President
October 2022
Message from the President
Dear friends and colleagues,
It was wonderful to see many of you recently in Liverpool at our Annual Scientific Meeting.
Despite many challenges, which included a rail strike the day before the meeting, Sam Mills
and her team put together a superb programme both in terms of organisation and scientific
content. For many, the highlight of the meeting might have been the talk on pandemics and
infectious diseases by the “Running Mad” Professor Tom Solomon, but what about the run-
through of half a century of evolution of interventional neuroradiology by the Brian Kendall
lecturer Prof Alex Berenstein! The other invited talks and scientific papers were also of very
high quality. This year saw the inaugural parallel Neuroradiographers’ conference, which by
initial feedback, has also been a great success. My thanks to Shubh Biswas for organising the
two-day trainee meeting before the ASM, which continues to go from strength to strength.
So, three cheers to the Liverpool team for making all this happen!
While the ASM remains the highlight of our calendar, many other important activities are
happening throughout the year, thanks to the dedication and hard work of our colleagues in
the various subcommittees and groups. Several of these initiatives have started relatively
recently following a survey done a couple of years ago. This highly successful listening
exercise, conceived and undertaken by my predecessor, Danny Birchall, provided numerous
excellent comments and ideas, and became a springboard to many of the innovations that
followed. As I start my two-year term as President, I would like to ask many of the same
questions to you again, so that we can gauge how far we have come and how we can make
our society even more successful in the future. Harriet Joy, our Hon. Secretary, will be
sending out the link to the survey – please look out for it and make your voice heard. Every
opinion counts!
Last but not least, Christmas is only 7 weeks away and I am delighted to say that we have an
excellent BSNR Christmas lecture lined up for you. The lecture titled ‘The mind’s ear:
speech, music and the brain’ will be given online by Professor Tim Griffiths, Professor of
Cognitive Neurology at Newcastle University on Thursday 15th December at 6pm. I am sure
it will be a fascinating listen, so please tune in.
Till the next update – Cheerio!
Dipayan Mitra
BSNR President
bsnr.pres@gmail.com
November 2022