Support Network
A collection of organisations and services, locally and nationally, that can support translational research. Network items that include the University of Manchester logo are primarily accessible by members of the University. When logged in with a University of Manchester or guest user account, additional contact details will be available.
Research Networks
This is a directory of the support available across the Greater Manchester health and care ecosystem. Specific contact details will be available after logging in with a University of Manchester IT account.
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Advanced Materials in Medicine (AMM)
AMM builds on the University of Manchester’s international leadership in developing new health innovations with advanced materials, by creating an environment conductive to innovation, building capacity and fostering investment, with the aim to meet currently unmet clinical needs.
How do you support researchers in Manchester?
We create an environment conducive to innovation by:
- Promoting multidisciplinary collaborations to bring new interdisciplinary approaches to further improve understanding, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of diseases and drive the development of innovative healthcare technologies.
- Linking and representing the academic community engaged in the field of bioengineering with advanced materials across the Faculties.
- Identifying missed opportunities for collaborations and providing the bridge between the physical sciences and engineering, and the biomedical research communities.
- Forging cross-sectoral links with industry and clinics.
We build capacity by:
- Identifying and encouraging academic champions in collaborative research to share best practice and enabling a culture change.
We foster investment by:
- Sustaining an Advanced Materials in Medicine brand, raising further UoM bioengineering profile and reputation on an international scale.
- Generating opportunities for investment and growth through increased research income in particular Flagship programmes, and partnership with industry.
At what stage in their research project should a researcher approach you for support?
D1 - basic research
D2 – strategic research
D3 – concept development
D4 – technical feasibility
General contact details
Webpage: amm.manchester.ac.uk
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Autism@Manchester
Bringing together academics, clinicians and members of the autistic community.
How do you support researchers in Manchester?
Autism@Manchester was founded in 2014 and seeks to create an environment that encourages communication and collaboration between researchers and the autism community. As autism affects so many different aspects of life, this approach is particularly important because researchers need to work both across disciplines and with the autistic community to produce effective research with real meaning and impact for autistic people.
Our key aims are to bring academics, clinicians and other practitioners together with members of the autistic community to:
- Share knowledge and understanding around autism research.
- Collaborate on the selection, design and conduct of research.
To achieve these aims, we have developed several initiatives that support autism researchers by:
- Ensuring research addresses community priorities.
- Improving research design and feasibility.
- Strengthening grant impact cases.
- Forming collaborations with researchers and the autistic community.
- Increasing opportunities for supervision of Masters and PhD students.
- Increasing Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) skills.
- Improving science communication skills.
- Facilitating wide dissemination and publicity of research.
- Hosting seminars or events to showcase research.
- Increasing study sample sizes.
- Identifying translational opportunities.
- Increasing awareness of autism research outside your usual field.
- Access to resources.
At what stage in their research project should a researcher approach you for support?
We support researchers at all stages. However, benefit is maximal when researchers link in with Autism@Manchester from the start of their project (i.e. idea generation) and continue throughout the study and beyond.
General contact details
Twitter/X: @AutismAtMCR
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Bionow
Bionow is a not-for-profit membership organisation supporting the growing biomedical, pharma and life sciences sectors across the North of England.
How do you support researchers?
Bionow facilitate the relationships and create the links, initiating opportunities for knowledge exchange and collaboration between Academia and Industry interested in new and developing technologies. Bionow does this by bringing people together at our exciting conferences and events across the North, being an advocate for the North, and providing comprehensive member benefits that strengthen the competitiveness of the North’s innovative life science sector. Bionow conferences and events deliver high quality presentations from thought leaders in the industry, as well as exhibitions and informal networking across Northern England. Researchers can play an active role in Bionow events by attending as a delegate, speaker or presenting a poster. We are also here to make those important introductions and make collaborations happen.
At what stage in their research project should a researcher approach you for support?We can be approached at any time.
General contact details
Email: info@bionow.co.uk
Website: www.bionow.co.uk
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Cancer Research Project Manager Network (Cancer RPMN)
Integrating research management expertise into academic teams to deliver world leading cancer research.
How do you support researchers in Manchester?
This network aims to embrace the ethos of Team Science, to embed project management roles into collaborative research teams and to encourage researchers to recruit into support roles that meet their needs. By utilising existing experience and influence, we encourage and empower individuals to change perceptions and expectations of the project management role in order to enhance cancer research delivery.
Project Managers (PMs) use their professional skills and experience to support the whole project lifecycle, from contributing to clinical study design and grant writing, through assisting with literature reviews and paper writing, to delivering on reports for funders & ethics. PMs also perform ‘traditional’ project management tasks to ensure delivery against targets, budgets and timelines. The exact role of a PM will depend on the needs of the academic or research group and the strengths and interests of the PM, and they are increasingly regarded as being integral to the research team.
The network offers peer support, mentoring, training and development to PMs working in the field of oncology as well as offering advice to researchers who are interested in recruiting a PM to their team.
At what stage in their research project should a researcher approach you for support?
Project Managers support research across the translational pipeline.
We encourage researchers who think they would benefit from a PM in their team to contact us to discuss what these roles can offer. We can assist with job descriptions and will offer training and ongoing support to all new PMs working in cancer research.
General contact details
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Digital Futures
Digital Futures connects 1400+ researchers from different disciplines across all three of the University’s faculties into multidisciplinary communities, with the aim to tackle important research problems.
How do you support researchers in Manchester?
Digital Futures is a highly interdisciplinary network which operates across the whole range of the University’s digital research.
The aim of Digital Futures is to present a coherent overview of our digital research activity to external stakeholders and bring together our research communities to explore new research areas and address strategic opportunities.
We group our activity around themes that encapsulate our broad research capabilities and the challenges to which these can be applied. These themes do not operate as self-contained entities; however, there is considerable synergy and overlap between them, and many of our academics are involved in a number of capability and challenge themes.
General contact details
Email: digitalfutures@manchester.ac.uk
Twitter/X: @DigitalUoM
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iMATCH (Innovate Manchester Advanced Therapy Centre Hub)
iMATCH is transforming the delivery of Advanced Therapeutic Medicinal Products (ATMP) to make them as routine to deliver as non-ATMP drugs.
How do you support researchers?
iMATCH is an IUK funded programme that has several work packages stemming from an end to end approach to ATMP delivery. The University of Manchester is one of our 12 partners. The funding currently supports researchers to enable them to:
- Explore ways of maximizing patient access to ATMPs.
- Integrate sample collection for ATMPs within existing infrastructure.
- Optimise the extraction of cellular components which are suitable for scaled-up processing.
- Ensure safe delivery of ATMPs through education, communication and dissemination.
Along with our coordinating body, The Cell and Gene Catapult, we have hosted events at The University of Manchester to bring together and engage researchers across several disciplines under the ATMP umbrella, with the key aim to raise awareness of activity and researchers discuss relevant bottlenecks and provide support to engage and link up expertise to drive further innovative approaches.
At what stage in their research project should a researcher approach you for support?
iMATCH has a direct focus on the clinical delivery of ATMPs and thus can provide support across patient focussed research. Researchers can also get in touch at the bench to clinical transition stage (D4) to access guidance and direction, both from within iMATCH and the surrounding ATTC network and the interconnected landscape within the Advanced Therapies field.
General contact details
Email: the-christie.imatch.trial@nhs.net
Webpage: https://www.theattcnetwork.co.uk/centres/imatch
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Integrated Diagnostics for Early Detection of Liver Disease (ID LIVER)
Led by The University of Manchester and Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, ID LIVER is a research and innovation project looking at how we can identify liver disease in patients much earlier than is currently the case.
How do you support researchers in Manchester?
ID LIVER is an Innovate UK-funded consortium which brings together university researchers, NHS experts and industry partners to help patients with liver disease receive earlier, more accurate, and potentially life-saving diagnoses.
We will use artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches to see if we can spot patterns that indicate early liver disease and patients destined for progressive liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer). By integrating clinical data with artificial intelligence and data science, people at risk of progressive liver disease who would previously attend hospital for diagnosis, often too late for preventative or curative treatment, will now be identified earlier by hospital-led screening in their local community.
At what stage in their research project should a researcher approach you for support?
We are happy discuss the project with anyone who would like to know more about ID LIVER and explore any potential opportunities for collaboration.
General contact details
Email: ID-LIVER@manchester.ac.uk
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Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing (MICRA)
Multidisciplinary and collaborative research into fundamental questions about ageing.
How do you support researchers in Manchester?
We support researchers by providing:
- Assistance with finding potential collaborators within the University
- Assistance finding and accessing potential non-academic stakeholders, including support to secure statements of support, identifying potential dissemination and impact avenues, and support for recruitment of older people and older people’s groups for research projects
- Assistance with text for grant applications regarding culture, impact and dissemination
- Assistance with finding peer reviewers and non-academic reviewers for grant proposals
- MICRA seminars or events to showcase your research
- Collaborate with researchers to produce materials such as information sheets or key findings sheets, project pages on the web, news stories, tweets, and dissemination via our regular newsletter to 2,000+ stakeholders
- Support for research groups in ageing research through assistance with connecting researchers together and providing some administrative support such as room bookings
- MICRA can be formally costed into research bids for administration, dissemination and impact work
We also offer an annual seedcorn funding programme for cross-disciplinary ageing research, which has had notable success in follow-on research programmes and outputs.
At what stage in their research project should a researcher approach you for support?
Researchers can approach MICRA at any point in their project (before, during and after).
We invite all involved in ageing research at the University of Manchester (current, past, or potentially in the future) to become Affiliate Members of MICRA (see website for more details).
General contact details
For further information about the team, the Institute’s aims as well as details of current and past research projects, visit our website:
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National Cancer Imaging Translational Accelerator (NCITA)
NCITA is a CRUK-funded national imaging network, aiming to accelerate the standardisation and clinical translation of cancer imaging biomarkers to improve diagnosis and healthcare outcomes for patients.
How do you support researchers?
NCITA is a multi-institutional consortium of imaging centres of excellence across the UK, of which The University of Manchester is a member. NCITA is composed of three cross-institutional units which work in synergy to provide an integrated pipeline for the development of quality assured cancer imaging biomarkers for clinical use.
The Imaging Clinical Trials Unit supports and coordinates studies, where the research question focuses on imaging, or imaging is required to determine the primary end point. The QA/QC Unit aims to provide robust validation, standardisation, quality assurance and quality control methods for the development of imaging biomarkers from first-in-human studies to achieving multi-site reproducibility assessment. The Image Repository Unit is building an image repository for secure storage and sharing of imaging biomarker trial data between trial sites in multicentre clinical trials, as well as data processing and analysis using novel machine learning and AI tools.
Researchers at The University of Manchester are members of all three units and will be involved in one of NCITA’s exemplar projects, investigating the feasibility of multi-centre oxygen-enhanced MRI for adaptive radiotherapy planning. This project will be directly supported by NCITA’s infrastructure.
At what stage in their research project should a researcher approach you for support?
Please submit an expression of interest as early as possible in the study development, preferably before the funding is sought.
General contact details
Email: ncita.general@ucl.ac.uk
Webpage: https://ncita.org.uk
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Research Project Managers’ Network
Supporting and building capacity and capability of Research Project Managers in Greater Manchester.
How do you support researchers?
The Research Project Managers’ Network (RPMN) was set up in 2013 to provide peer support to research programme and project managers working in health and social care in both NHS and university settings. The network meets twice a year and offers training sessions to its members which enable us to build capacity and capability by developing existing staff within Manchester. Researchers are able to benefit from the wealth of experience our network members have and we offer advice, training and support often within their respective organisations. The RPMN forum can also be used to troubleshoot any questions that arise.
At what stage in their research project should a researcher approach you for support?
The RPMN offers peer support and shares a wealth of experience with its members. Network members can contact one of the cochairs and ask questions or seek advice from the whole network – this has been very successful in the past and we ensure the learning generated is shared across the network so others can benefit. RPMN members and researchers can approach us for support at any time before, during or after their project.
General contact details
Introductory video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikN4OS6MuHITwitter/X: @ResearchPMN_NW
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Sustainable Futures
Sustainable Futures brings together internationally leading research at UoM and facilitates interdisciplinary working, to produce sustainable solutions to urgent environmental challenges.
How do you support researchers in Manchester?
Realising sustainable futures requires new and integrative solutions to address the interacting global environmental challenges. Sustainable Futures brings together the unique depth and breadth of internationally leading research at The University of Manchester and builds on the University’s track record of successful interdisciplinary working, to produce integrated and truly sustainable solutions to urgent environmental challenges.
Sustainable Futures will develop more complete understandings of the environmental systems on which we depend and human interactions with them. It will spur scientific innovation and facilitate societal change at scale and pace to address urgent environmental crises. Sustainable Futures is unique in connecting core environmental expertise and broader societal agendas to develop systemic, innovative and actionable solutions.
Sustainable Futures will:
- integrate an unprecedented range of environmental expertise from across The University of Manchester to facilitate highly interdisciplinary research and impact
- connect a wider range of research institutes at the University to extend the scope of our environmental expertise and impact of the Platform.
- deliver solutions into practice rapidly through unique established capabilities at the University.
General contact details
Email: SustainableFutures@manchester.ac.uk
Twitter/X: @SustainableUoM
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