BU Research Blog

The Knowledge Exchange and Impact Team (fondly known to us as KEIT) are a relatively new team within RKEO.  KEIT is made up of an enthusiastic group of people working on exciting institution wide projects aimed at promoting research and engaging everyone from businesses to the general public with the work carried out by our academic community.  As a new team we wanted to take the time to introduce some of our favourite successes from 2014, and let you who you can contact if you have an opportunity you think we should be involved with.

Public Engagement

In 2014 we facilitated circa 15,000 engagements with BU research through activities such as the Festival of Learning, On Tour and Café Scientifique.  In December we headed off to the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement’s annual conference and presented the story of “Professor Puzzles Big Day Out”.  The story followed our colourful mascot as he discovered the Festival of Learning, booked his tickets and came along to sessions such as “A Family Safari”, took part in fringe activities to build on his football skills and gave his feedback on his experience through a focus group.  The story and gave us a chance to convey the unique nature of the Festival of Learning to our public engagement peers from across the UK. One of the highlights for us was hearing was our session pulled out by delegates as one of the highlights of the conference during the plenary.

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships

In 2014, BU received funding offers for three new Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP).  This demonstrates that BU is increasing it’s KTP activity and also our strong links with business.  A KTP is a part-funded innovative project between the University and business which is of mutual benefit.

The approved KTPs are diverse in nature and highlight the range of expertise across the Institution:

• Five Rivers Child Care and the Faculty of Health and Social Science – To develop, implement and validate an innovative model for the evaluation of intervention and treatment for children in a foster care environment, taking into account the complex developmental, emotional and behavioural needs of the children.
• Chantacre and the Faculty of Science and Technology – To develop capability allowing combining cutting edge technologies into a unique solution resulting in internal efficiencies and pioneer new practices in the SME market for mobile convergence.
• Nautilus International Risk Consultants and the Faculty of Science and Technology – To embed innovative capability to automatically generate virtual 3D terrain landscapes. This will enhance situational awareness for training and operational purposes in extremely challenging environments in Military/Other Government Departments.

2015 sees the 40th birthday of the KTP programme.  This year will be used to celebrate successes from KTP over the past 40 years and our very own Rachel Clarke, KE Adviser (KTP) is on the national steering group for the KTP@40 initiative.

Student Engagement

We’ve been working to enthuse students about the exciting research being done at BU.  At the end of last year we took over the atrium on two occasions and ran mini activities for students to have a go at.  Stalls included topics such as marine diving videos, setting secure passwords and live action international server hacking maps, psychological taste tests, and displays of microscopic organisms. Over the 2 days over 300 students stopped to interact with stalls and learn more about BU research.

Who’s who

If you’re feeling inspired by our blog post and would like to get involved with some of our projects then feel free to get in touch:

Rebecca Edwards – Knowledge Exchange and Impact Manager

Rachel Bowen – Research Communications Manager

Rachel Clarke – Knowledge Exchange Adviser (KTP)

Jayne Codling – Knowledge Exchange Adviser

Naomi Kay – Public Engagement Officer

Harry Gibson – Public Engagement Event’s Organiser

Sam Squelch – Student Engagement Coordinator

To find out more about us and what we do, take a look at our team page.