BU Research Blog

I was inspired to send a proposal to the fusion investment fund on a hint by Prof. Mark Hadfield. I was helping with DEC internationalisation affairs, and in a meeting Mark  mentioned that we would like to have more international visiting professors in DEC. As I have built up an extensive international network,  together with my co-investigator Dr. Paul de Vrieze, we asked a number of distinguished Professors in The Netherlands, Australia and China to apply for visiting professorships. Four full professors with world wide research reputations were willing to accept the offer.

Their visiting can strongly enhance research culture and postgraduate teaching especially in relation to our newly validated MSc. Enterprise Information Systems and PhD research in the area of service computing, e-government, computational intelligence and ubiquitous computing. 

As all four visiting professors hold rich research funding and experience, the project allows face-to-face opportunities to collaborate on project proposals, research papers and other research activities that can kick start discussions for collaboration and joined project proposals.

Based on our new MSc Enterprise Information Systems we have already received inquiries on professional practice. Prof. Keith Phalp, our third co-applicant has been contacted by Welsh Government Chief Information Officer Michael Eaton. We are going to organize public panels or other industrial engagement opportunities by our visiting professors.

To prepare the application I looked at the call for proposals for the FIF and attended one of the workshops about the fund. At the workshop I explained my ideas to Prof. Matthew Bennett, with the question which Fusion Investment Fund strand to follow. Matthew gave very clear direction that the appropriate strand would be to apply for (inward) study leave from the Fusion Investment Fund. In general, we saw that our proposal has a great opportunity to integrate education, research and professional practice. The project will run from Nov 2012 to May 2013, and we hope it will bring many further opportunities to Bournemouth University.