Van der Veer News

News and Events – October 2010

PUBLICATIONS

MacAskill, M. R., Koga, K., & Anderson, T. J. (in press). Japanese street performer mimes violation of Hering’s Law. Neurology.

CONFERENCES

Tim Anderson and Charlotte Graham attended the 2nd World Parkinson Congress in Glasgow, Scotland, 28 Sept – 1 Oct. Charlotte presented the following paper:

Graham C, MacAskill MR, Dalrymple-Alford J, Livingston L, Pitcher T, Anderson TJ (2010). Memory-guided saccades, cognitive status, and dementia in Parkinson’s Disease. Movement Disorders, 25, S3: S691.

AWARDS

Hannah Farr won the Templin Prize for the best written technical report awarded by the Canterbury Branch of the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand (IPENZ) for her entry ‘Creative Writing in Engineering – A Pilot Study’.

PEOPLE AT VDVI

Ben Han (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering) will be undertaking a 10 week University of Canterbury Summer Studentship project based at the Institute and supervised by Maggie-Lee Huckabee, Richard Jones, and Paul Gaynor. The project is titled ‘An electrical-impedance biofeedback instrument for swallowing rehabilitation’.

Shuang-Xiu Chuang (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering) will be undertaking a 10 week University of Canterbury Summer Studentship project based at the Institute and supervised by Richard Jones, Govinda Poudel, Carrie Innes, and Phil Bones. The project is titled ‘Measurement and characteristics of video-based eye- closure: A critical marker in the detection of microsleeps’.

Alzheimer’s Awareness

The annual ‘Forget Me Not‘ appeal by Alzheimer’s New Zealand ran from 26 July to 1 Aug, 2009. To coincide with this, the Institute highlighted its current research into functional, structural, and cerebral bloodflow MR imaging in Alzheimer’s.

Sarah Wright’s PhD project was covered in local station CTV’s ‘Today in Canterbury’ News on 30th July:

The project was also covered in the Christchurch ‘Press’ here; in brief in the New Zealand Herald, Dominion Post, Otago Daily Times, and Gisborne Herald; and in a national radio interview with Larry Williams on NewsTalkZB.

Open Day, Sunday 17 Aug 2008

The University of Otago and the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation combine annually for a Health Research Open Day

The public is welcome to come along to the medical school building (on the corner of Riccarton Ave/Oxford Tce, parking available in the blue Christchurch Hospital parking building on Antigua St). There are research displays in the foyer, public lectures and a chance to see inside Mobile Medical Technology’s large surgical bus, the only mobile surgery in NZ.

There are also tours tours to laboratories and research facilities. This includes the fascinating (and at times, gruesome) Pathology Museum and a chance to see the world-leading Cardioendocrine lab.

The Van der Veer Institute is also taking part, and people can tour our eye movement and swallowing labs and the MR brain imaging facilities.