BU Research Blog

Celebrating BU’s impact case studies for REF 2021

An image of AfterGlow (2016) boredomresearch

Enhancing scientific practice & communication and enabling strategic and financial growth through science-art collaboration

Research area: Art & Design

Staff conducting research: Vicky Isley, Paul Smith

Background:

boredomresearch is a collaboration between artists Isley and Smith, who are internationally renowned for their projects combining art, science and technology. Both were research lecturers at BU’s National Centre for Computer Animation from 2005-20. Three interdisciplinary art-science research projects were featured in the impact case study.

Working with Oxford University neuroscientists, Isley and Smith’s Dreams of Mice (2015-2016) captured data displaying the patterns of neuron activity in sleeping laboratory mice. The artwork enabled complex neuroscientific research to be disseminated in a form understood more intuitively by experts and non-experts alike.

AfterGlow (2016) is a real-time digital animation depicting malaria transmission, created in collaboration with Glasgow University. It leads the viewer on a visual journey through a landscape illuminated by glowing spirals, representing mosquito flight paths and infected blood, thereby illustrating the intimate relationship between disease and its environment. AfterGlow won the prestigious moving image Lumen Prize award in 2016 and has been exhibited all over the world.

For Robots in Distress (2016-2019), boredomresearch worked with computer scientists from Austria’s Graz University during the creation of the world’s largest robot swarm – designed to monitor pollution in Venice Lagoon. Isley and Smith created an animation visualising emotional robotics, depicting a murky underwater world populated by small glowing robots seemingly helplessly navigating the hazards of plastic waste.

The impact:

By representing research data in visual, intuitive formats, boredomresearch provided their scientific collaborators with a fresh outlook, encouraging questions and insights into abstract concepts at the frontiers of research. As well as communicating research, all three art-science projects exemplified and promoted the actual practice of communicating science through art.

More than three million engagements from scientists, industry, civil society, policymakers and the public were recorded for the Silent Signal exhibition, which featured AfterGlow. BU research insights also enabled organisations to grow financially and strategically. The Biodesign Institute in Arizona used the BU findings to inform a successful $8.5m bid to establish the Arizona Cancer and Evolution Center. Animate Projects, which established the Silent Signal exhibition, exceeded their target audience of 24,000, thanks to AfterGlow contributing the “largest proportion of viewings of all commissioned projects”. In Berlin alone, 84,000 viewed the film at a single screening, and it also helped Animate Projects extend their reach into Asia.

Restoring consumer trust in the insurance industry

Research areas: Marketing, Strategy & Innovation, Retail Management

Staff conducting the research: Dr Julie Robson, Professor Juliet Memery, Dr Elvira Bolat, Samreen Ashraf, Kok Ho Sit

Background:

In 2016-17 Dr Robson and her team undertook two funded research projects to provide a greater understanding of trust, specifically the measurement of trust, trust erosion and trust repair. One project examined the trust repair process and mechanisms used in traditional and digital media within selected high-profile trust erosion examples.  The second project investigated trust repair in three very different high-profile contexts, including mis-selling in financial services.

This latter study identified the actions that organisations took to repair trust and how these actions influenced consumer attitudes towards, and trust in, the company and wider industry sector, taking into account different causes of trust damage. The outcome of the projects was a new management trust repair tool to help businesses better understand and respond to trust challenges. Specifically, it helps them to understand the conceptual differences between trust and trust repair. This tool is also is the first to initiate a framework offering a choice of mechanisms with which to repair trust. Details of the tool, and the step-by-step process to follow to restore trust, has featured in an online guide for practitioners

The impact:

By 2017, trust in the insurance industry had reached an all-time low, and a range of damaging practices, such as mis-selling, were assumed to be the cause. However, research was needed to identify accurately the specific causes and establish how to repair consumer trust.

Dr Robson worked with the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) to develop a new Public Trust Index – shaped by BU’s own trust repair tool – to measure and track changes in consumer confidence in insurance. The Index identified that the key problem in building consumer trust was the practice of dual pricing – whereby new customers get cheaper insurance than loyal customers. Based on this finding, the CII worked with the industry regulator to produce new guidelines which prevent this practice, therefore protecting customers from overpayment, and repairing industry trust.

Next post: identifying the risk of malnutrition in older people & enhancing patient recovery after surgery.

Celebrating BU’s impact case studies for REF 2021

Pinpointing prosopagnosia: the professional and social impact of achieving NHS recognition

Research area: Psychology

Staff conducting research: Professor Sarah Bate, Dr Peter Hills, Dr Nicola Gregory, Dr Rachel Bennetts, Dr Anna Bobak

Background: People with the cognitive disorder prosopagnosia cannot recognise faces, which can severely affect their everyday lives. In 2012, BU launched the Centre for Face Processing Disorders (CFPD), led by Professor Bate, to investigate the condition. Bate began by conducting a large-scale investigation of face recognition difficulties in primary school children, which showed that, despite low awareness of the condition, prosopagnosia is more common than other, better-known developmental disorders such as ASD. BU researchers interviewed adults with the condition and parents of children displaying face recognition difficulties, which enabled them to develop a detailed analysis of the strategies people use to cope, and subsequently to create the first evidence-based list of recommendations for managing prosopagnosia.

The impact: In 2014 – following a House of Commons roundtable discussion where the BU team presented their research findings – the NHS formally recognised the condition. Subsequently, the first ever page on prosopagnosia was launched on the NHS Choices website, under the A-Z of conditions. It links directly to the CFPD, and more than 20,000 people worldwide have used the resources. The vast media interest in Bate’s work increased substantially in the months after NHS recognition, with coverage of prosopagnosia in high-profile outlets such as The One Show, The Times, ITV News and Scientific American leading to raised public awareness and hundreds more people seeking a diagnosis. The NHS webpage also promotes Bate’s behavioural intervention techniques for improving face recognition skills. This unique resource offers the only known opportunity (globally) for prosopagnosic children to access an amelioration programme, and has reached participants from the UK, USA and Australia. Analyses show improvement in face recognition following 10 sessions of training compared with controls, with stronger improvements in children than adults, while parental feedback is very positive, suggesting that improvements transfer to everyday life.

Preserving historically important battle tanks and developing best practice in the heritage vehicle museum sector

Area of research: Design, Engineering & Computing

Staff conducting research: Professor Zulfiqar Khan, Dr Adil Saeed, Dr Hammad Nazir

The Tiger 131, which featured in the 2014 film Fury

Background: BU’s Condition Monitoring, Analysis and Prediction model (CMAP) develops reliable estimates of large engineering structures’ performance and vulnerability, by using improved simulations based on experimental observations and data. In 2009, Khan’s team began a collaboration with the Tank Museum, with the aim of implementing a framework to monitor and, ultimately, slow down structural deterioration. Initial experimental investigations analysed tanks’ corrosion and wear failures and provided valuable data to develop precision-based mathematical models to predict and prognose failures in military vehicles. The first prototype was commissioned by the Tank Museum and installed on two historically important battle tanks. This led to a patented novel sensor design and the development of a framework of remote sensing techniques, which were used to predict failures such as corrosion, deterioration, cracking, chipping, coating and significant wear and erosion. Combined with novel maintenance-scheduling algorithms, this enabled identification of the best time to perform maintenance, in terms of safety and cost.

The impact: The Tank Museum, which attracts 200,000 visitors a year, houses one of the most important collections of its kind in the world. It applied BU’s novel conditioning method – now patented – to significantly increase the lifespan of its vehicles and preserve them for future generations. The Tiger 131 (pictured) is one of only seven Tiger 1 tanks surviving worldwide and, thanks to the BU-Tank Museum collaboration, is currently the only one restored to running order. Following its improved performance, the tank was featured in the 2014 film Fury, which received widespread praise from critics for its realistic depiction of WWII. Increased public interest prompted the museum to hold special ‘Tiger Days’, which have taken place on a biannual basis since 2013. Thousands of spectators come to see the Tiger 131 and other iconic tanks. The increased visitor numbers have brought commercial benefits to the museum, contributing to the annual turnover of more than £20m, while the remote-sensing technology is helping to reduce inspection and maintenance costs. The research data was also critical in securing £2.5m in Heritage Lottery funding to build the museum’s Vehicle Conservation Centre, which established optimal preservation and operating conditions for heritage vehicles, and is defining best practice for museums worldwide.

Next post: restoring consumer trust in the insurance industry & a collaboration between art and science

A series of posts highlighting BU’s impact case studies for REF 2021. (The full impact case studies will be published on the REF website summer 2022.)

KIMA: Improved wellbeing through participatory visual sound art

KIMA: Noise by Analema Group. Tate Modern 2019. www.analemagroup.com Image by Sophie le Roux. www.sophielerouxdocu.com

Research areas: Media & Arts Practice

Staff conducting research: Dr Oliver Gingrich, Dr Alain Renaud

Background: BU’s Gingrich and Renaud are practice-based researchers and members of the Analema Group, an arts collective which creates participatory experiences that explore the relationships between sound, colour, light, movement and form. They created three multi-sensory experiences which focused on audience participation through KIMA, an art and research project investigating the visual properties of sound. KIMA: Voice represents participants’ vocal harmonies in 3D form. BU worked with researchers from the Centre for Performance Science – a partnership between the Royal College of Music and Imperial College London – to explore how such harmonies can measure social connectedness, happiness and loneliness. KIMA: Noise is an interactive sound art piece, developed with an urban noise and health expert from Queen Mary University London, which examines the negative effect of urban noise on social behaviour, health and wellbeing. KIMA: Colour, created with scientists and curators from the National Gallery and data and algorithm experts from King’s College, allowed audiences to experience a deeper understanding of the art and science of colour in its paintings by transforming the colour data into light and sound installations.

The impact: Engagement with the KIMA installations improved wellbeing by increasing feelings of social connectedness, particularly during the first Covid-19 lockdown. The projects raised awareness among clinicians and decision makers of the benefits of participatory art. KIMA: Colour, in particular, provided evidence of the way in which digital platforms can enable art collections and museums to stay relevant in the 21st century. The work also increased the public discourse on the relationship between art and health, including the detrimental effects of urban noise on wellbeing in KIMA: Noise.

Avoiding extinction: conservation initiatives to save a critically
endangered giant freshwater fish in India

Research area: Fish Ecology

Staff conducting research: Dr Adrian Pinder,
Professor Robert Britton

Background: The hump-backed, orange-finned mahseer is one of the world’s largest freshwater fish and unique to the Cauvery River basin in southern India. Of high global angling significance due to its size (>50kg), its spawning migrations have been threatened by dam building since the early 1900s, leading to decreasing fish numbers. This has since been compounded by unsustainable harvesting, which created local food security problems as the fish was an important protein source.  In 2010 Pinder was fishing in the Western Ghats of southern India, where the Cauvery river originates, and realised that the number and types of mahseer fish being captured did not reflect historical angling records for the region. Together with Britton, he initiated a mahseer research programme, which led to the identification and conservation of a fish now known to be at imminent risk from extinction.

The impact: BU’s research clarified the taxonomy of the orange-finned mahseer as Tor remedavii, which was vital in getting it classified as ‘Critically Endangered’ on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. As IUCN noted: “Without… [BU’s] research, there is a very real possibility that this megafauna could have gone extinct without ever formally being recognised as a species.” By spotlighting the orange-finned mahseer as a conservation priority, BU researchers influenced responsible stocking policies across the mahseer genus, throughout India and southern Asia. Indian-based multinational utility company Tata Power amended its Mahseer Conservation Programme and specific guidance on protecting the fish was included in India’s Wildlife Action Plan. The research insights contributed to new conservation, outreach and education awareness programmes for local schoolchildren and anglers. Working with Tata, India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and the World Wide Fund for Nature India, the researchers helped develop a robust monitoring programme, which was initially due to be implemented last year, but is currently on hold due to Covid-19.