University of Birmingham: against COVID-19 University

Entity: University of Birmingham

Category: University

Description: The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a public research university located in Edgbaston, Birmingham, United Kingdom. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as the Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery) and Mason Science College (established in 1875 by Sir Josiah Mason), making it the first English civic or 'red brick' university to receive its own royal charter. It is a founding member of both the Russell Group of British research universities and the international network of research universities, Universitas 21. The University of Birmingham's medical school is one of the largest in Europe. The school has centres of excellence in cancer, pharmacy, immunology, cardiovascular disease, neuroscience and endocrinology and renowned nationally and internationally for its research and developments in these fields. The medical school has close links with the NHS and works closely with 15 teaching hospitals and 50 primary care training practices in the West Midlands. The University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust is the main teaching hospital in the West Midlands. It has been given three stars for the past four consecutive years. The trust also hosts the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, based at Selly Oak Hospital, which provides medical support to military personnel such as military returned from fighting in the Iraq War. The 2017 U.S. News & World Report ranks Birmingham 118th in the world. In 2019, it ranked 137th among the universities around the world by SCImago Institutions Rankings. In 2019 the Times Higher Education placed Birmingham 14th in the 'Best universities in the UK 2019' rankings.

1. Project: CovidSurg

Summary: CovidSurg will capture real-world international data, to determine 30-day mortality in patients with COVID-19 infection who undergo surgery. This shared international experience will inform the management of this complex group of patients who undergo surgery throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, ultimately improving their clinical care.

2. Project: COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium

Summary: The COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium is a collaboration between the NHS, Public Health England and other UK public health agencies, the Wellcome Sanger Institute, University of Cambridge and other academic institutions. The COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium aims to increase the current capacity for SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequencing in the UK. This sequencing data will be used to understand the epidemiology and spread of the virus, and to monitor and evaluate interventions for COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 genomic data will be integrated with NHS electronic health records and other existing genomic data to generate insights into susceptibility to COVID-19. From within the DPHPC, Professor John Danesh is a member of the COG-UK Steering Group, Dr Ewan Harrison will serve as the Scientific Project Manager and Dr Michael Chapman will lead the health informatics component.

The team will be drawing on ARTIC and CLIMB. The CLIMB project, which recently secured funding for a further five years with the CLIMB-BIG-DATA project, will provide the data analysis pipelines, computing and storage capacity required.

The ARTIC project, funded by a Wellcome Trust Collaborative Award, is a collaborative project to put genomics at the heart of outbreak response.

Contributors:

Professor Nick Loman, Institute of Microbiology and Infection
Dr Josh Quick, UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, Institute of Microbiology and Infection
Dr Claire McMurray, Research Fellow (Molecular Biology)
Dr Sam Nicholls, Research Fellow (Bioinformatics)
Radoslaw Poplawski, CLIMB System Manager
Dr Will Rowe, Research Fellow (Bioinformatics)
Dr Jo Stockton, Research Fellow (Sequencing)

+ Members:

Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Regional Virus Laboratory
Cardiff University
EMBL-EBI (European Bioinformatics Institute)
Genomics England Limited
Genomics Partnership Wales
Advanced Research Computing at Cardiff
Supercomputing Wales
Public Health Wales NHS Trust
Imperial College London
MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research
Public Health Agency
Public Health England
Public Health Scotland
Public Health Wales NHS Trust's Pathogen Genomics Unit
Quadram Institute
Queen's University Belfast
The Centre for Genomic Pathogen Surveillance
University College London
University of Birmingham
Queen's University Belfast, Genomics Core Technology Unit
Francis Crick Institute
University of Edinburgh
University of Exeter
Northumbria University
University of Nottingham
University of Oxford
Big Data Institute
University of Portsmouth
Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust
University of Sheffield
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Wellcome Sanger Institute
West of Scotland Specialist Virology Centre
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde
University of Cambridge:
Department of Veterinary Medicine
Cambridge University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Department of Medicine
Division of Virology, Department of Pathology;
Department of Pathology
Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease

Connections

Technology: COVID Labs/Universities
Industry: COVID R&D
Headquarters: United Kingdom
Founded Date: N/A
Employees Number: N/A
Funding Status: N/A

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