Children with speech difficulties form the largest group of those referred to children?s speech and language therapy departments. Though some children grow out of their difficulties, others have persistent problems that can affect their educational progress and social development. Previous research into children?s speech impairments has been unable to agree on the percentage of the population who are affected by this. In addition, a number of factors such as intelligence and family factors have been found to be associated with speech impairment though there is no conclusive agreement on which factors are most important. Similarly, the degree to which educational and social development is affected is in dispute. Some speech impairments are associated with anatomical or neurological impairments such as cleft palate or cerebral palsy, but for a large number of children, there is no identifiable cause. Research has suggested many possibilities and it is also thought that different subgroups may exist. Some of the research on speech impairments is now outdated and uses definitions of speech impairment that are no longer accepted. With the more recent studies, there has been a tendency to use small samples of children, in some instances just one or two cases. There is therefore an urgent need for population-based research. The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) is a large scale study of children?s development which has collected information on children?s speech development at ages 2, 5 and 8. This provides a unique opportunity to investigate some of the questions surrounding speech impairment. The proposed study will identify the percentage of children aged 5 and 8 years who have speech impairments, what factors predict persistent problems and what factors are associated with a good prognosis . It will identify outcomes for children with speech impairments and investigate the existence of any subgroups. The researcher team have considerable expertise in the field of children?s speech impairment as well as being familiar with the data collected in the ALSPAC study. Findings from this study will support the early identification of children at risk of persisting speech impairments and help to identify interventions which may prevent long term negative outcomes. In addition, a clear understanding of the numbers affected by these difficulty together with information on the factors which are associated with it, will enable services to be planned more effectively and resources targeted where they are most needed.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a disease that can be disabling as a result of painful, swollen joints, joint deformity, fatigue, and unpredictable inflammation. The condition is commonly diagnosed between 30 and 50 years, and can impact severely on home and work life. Assessment of the effectiveness of treatments for RA is dominated by doctors‘ and nurses‘ opinions, and the patients‘ perspective is minimal. The research aims to ensure that changes which are important to patients are routinely assessed in research and clinical settings. In rheumatology, there is limited research on the effect of cultural issues on health care for RA. The new study will begin to address this by examining the different socio-cultural perceptions of RA in Punjabi speaking patients, and how these may impact on their health care, with a long-term view of conducting a large cross-cultural study with different ethnic minority groups. The researcher was trained in the social sciences and uses both qualitative and quantitative methods. Two patients will collaborate in the research team meetings. Through engagement with the media and policy makers, the research outcomes will lead to an improvement in health professionals‘ understanding of patients‘ priorities in RA, and in patients‘ decisions about treatment options.

This project will make an innovative contribution to patient and public involvement (PPI) in health through the application of an innovative peer ethnographic method, which offers the potential for new knowledge unobtainable through other qualitative research methods. A group of young people will be trained to conduct ethnographic research amongest their peers on gender relations, sexual initiation and behaviour, perceptions of sexual health services, and priorities for support. The team of peer researchers will be trained and supported in communicating the findings of their research with key stakeholders working in YP’s sexual health service provision in one region of the UK. The project will have several lasting impacts: it will provide important insight into the value of peer ethnography as a methodology to be used within PPI, contribute to new knowledge for evidence-based policy-making and service provision in the field of YP’s sexual health, and will equip a group of young people (YP) with important research, communication and advocacy skills. The project will enable the beneficiary to develop critical new skills and experience in the implementation and analysis of PPI in health, while at the same time broadening her interdisciplinary experience and expertise in applied anthropological research methods. She will also gain new skills in training and conducting research with YP. Dr White’s employability will be significantly enhanced through the tailored mentoring provided by her supervisor and other experts at the University of West of England (UWE) and the practical skills she acquires working on the proposed project. By the end of the Fellowship she will be equipped with the expertise and experience necessary to pursue an independent research position, enabling her to progress from the position of Research Fellow to Senior Lecturer, setting her firmly on the path of a professional academic career, towards an Associate Professorship and beyond.

There is an increasing tendency for young children to develop a medical condition (known a Plagiocephaly), which can result in deformity of their heads and distortions of the faces. It is possible to help remove the condition by having the child wear a carefully designed helmet that encourages the skull to grow in a direction that will tend to minimize the deformity. In order to manufacture such a helmet, the doctors involved need to have an accurate model of the shape of the child?s head. At the moment this model is made by making a plaster cast of the head; which is a procedure that that can be quite upsetting for the child, or which necessitates the use of a general anesthetic, with all the associated risks which that entails. The proposed project aims to overcome this problem by using cameras and lights in order to quickly and accurately measure the child?s head and face. As well as enabling manufacture of the helmet, this data will help with finding a link between the deformity of the head and the distortions of the face. This will help to show whether looking closely at the face could be way to diagnose Plagiocephaly. It will also provide a method for monitoring and evaluating the success of the helmet treatment.

Learning from demonstration (LfD) is a paradigm for enabling robots to autonomously learn from demos to perform new tasks. But, environmental changes, expensive demonstration cost, and potential uncertainties caused by data-based learning make it hard to be applied in actual. The project aims to propose a robot skill learning framework from human learning process via a teleoperation interface to achieve human-like skill learning characteristics such as few-shot learning, learning from failed attempts and tentative actions, and strong skill transfer and generalization ability. Five work packages will be taken to realize the objectives. First, a teleoperated interface will be equipped with multi-sensors and special exoskeleton to minimize information difference between humans and robots. After building a scalable primitive skill (PS) library based on task segmentation with multimodal information, new theories of PS learning and PS-based task graph learning are explored. PS will be learned and generalized based on improved meta-learning that is associated and explained by physical laws and neural motor disciplines. The PS-based task graph will be learned from the human learning process, achieving failure reasoning and adaptation to zero/few-shot tasks. Some practical problems e.g. incomplete data set and difference of sim-to-real applications will also be addressed. Finally, the previous theories will be certified by medical robot tasks. The applicant will acquire a solid state-of-the-art interdisciplinary scientific training in the multidisciplinary research fields, such as artificial intelligence, robotics technologies and mechanical design, and that will enable him to generate new scientific knowledge and quickly develop his research career and leadership. The final aim is to consolidate Europe as the world leader in robot and AI areas and to benefit European robotics applications in industry, surgery, and nuclear waste disposition.