DCU Research header
Research
Glasnevin Campus

DCU researchers awarded just over €1.75 million in Research Ireland funding

Glasnevin Campus
Dublin City University’s Dr Jainghui Meng and Dr Jiafu Wang will continue their work on therapeutics for chronic itching, while Dr Allesandra Mileo’s ongoing work in explainable AI in diagnostics has also been awarded funding. The funding comes as part of the Frontier for the Future programme.

The Dublin City University awards are among 23 projects to receive €23.6 million in funding announced by Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science James Lawless TD today.

Dr Jianghui Meng and Dr Jiafu Wang’s project focuses on discovering the cause behind a debilitating condition called chronic itch, and the development of targeted treatments.

Chronic itch is a blanket term for a variety of conditions which cause skin to be irritated to the point where it can’t be relieved. Between 10pc and 20pc of the world’s population live with some form of chronic itch, with the most common being atopical dermatitis, commonly referred to as eczema.

 

Shows Dr Jaifu Wang and Dr Jianghui Meng on DCU's Glasnevin campus
Dr Jainghui Meng (right) and Dr Jiafu Wang (left). Credit: Kyran O'Brien

While different forms vary in severity, living with chronic itch can be seriously debilitating. With a lack of knowledge of factors that can trigger it, patients presenting to doctors can often be affected seriously from a psychological perspective in addition to unpleasant physical symptoms.

As part of her work, Meng and Wang have been able to show how the itch mechanism has its own immune-sensory as well as skin-signalling pathways and networks, providing the first ever evidence of the link between the itch and brain-signalling in eczema.

 

Associate Professor
Dr Alessandra Mileo. Credit: Kyran O'Brien

Dr Alessandra Mileo’s research concerns the use of artificial intelligence in medical diagnostics, the use of machine learning to categorise scans for instance. However, rather than simply looking at whether this use of AI is possible, Dr Mileo goes a step further in ensuring that diagnoses made using this technology are explainable to clinicians.

Doctors and medical professionals have a responsibility to explain diagnoses and medical outcomes to patients. If diagnoses are supported by artificial intelligence which medical professionals themselves have trouble understanding then this is a big issue as it can raise serious ethical concerns along with accountability issues.

The ensuing phenomenon whereby the process and steps followed by the system to go from input to output aren’t distinguishable or comprehensible even to the user is known as a “blackbox.” Dr Mileo’s research seeks to break open the blackbox in instances where AI is used to aid diagnostic processes.