Prince Harry Visits Imperial
Royal visits the Royal British Legion Centre for Blast Injury Studies on the South Kensington Campus
The Royal British Legion Centre for Blast Injury Studies (CBIS) officially opened at Imperial College today (Oct 17). The CBIS held its second networking event in the Royal School of Mines and invited HRH Prince Harry to unveil the centre.
The CBIS is a charitably funded research centre between the Royal British Legion, Imperial College and the Ministry of Defence and was established in 2008 under the name ‘Imperial Blast’.
The aim of the centre is “to improve the mitigation of injury, develop and advance treatment, rehabilitation and recovery in order to increase lifelong health and quality of life after blast injury”. as quoted by Professor Anthony Bull, the Director of CBIS.
The networking event also included lectures about blast injuries and different aspects of the research taking place at the centre.
Professor Anthony Bull opened the event with an introductory talk discussing the aim of the centre. The morning half had lecturers such as Professor Sir Simon Wessely, Dr Mazdak Ghajari and Major James Singleton. The talks ranged from myths of military mental health and traumatic brain injury to battlefield injury clinical research at CBIS.
During the intermission, HRH came to unveil the centre and said a short speech addressing how important the research is at the centre. He was also given a tour of the Imperial Labs in the Royal School of Mines building.
There was also a poster competition for research for PhD students and post-docs with a £100 first prize and 2 runner-up prizes of £75.
The second half of the event included lectures given by Surgeon Captain Mark Midwinter CBE, Wing Commander Alex Bennett, Dr Tobias Reichenbach and Dr Spyros Masouros. Topics included defence rehabilitation research, lower extremity blast injuries, the effect of blast induced traumatic brain injury on hearing and measuring injury burden and outcome parameters in combat trauma.
The event was open to all students and staff who expressed an interest to attend and that registered for the event.
One famous attendee was Bobby Charlton, the former England football player and former Manchester United player.
