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Yearly Archives / 2016

Influencing public policy – training session

dev_framework

Working with policy-makers can be a really useful way of getting research recognised and used by professionals in the relevant field, resulting in an impact on society.  Not only can attempting to influence policy raise the profile of the research and have profound implications for society, it can also considerably raise the profile of the academic behind the research, creating room for possible new partnerships and future collaboration. However, it isn’t always obvious where to begin.

As part of RKEO’s new development framework BU’s Policy Adviser, Jane Forster, will be running a training session on 27 October about how to influence public policy with research.  Research can be particularly influential in policy making as it can provide the basis for an evidence-based change or amendment to legislation, but knowing how to go about it is key.

Further details and information about how to sign up can be found on the staff intranet.

This workshop forms part of the ‘planning for impact and communicating research‘ pathway, which includes sessions on working with the media, developing a public engagement event and using social media.

BU’s research council success rates

BU has had an unprecedented amount of success in 2016-17 with four successful applications being funded by three research councils (combined value ~£1m). The successful BU awards are:

  • mike-silkAHRC – Re-presenting para-sport bodies: Disability & the cultural legacy of the Paralympics (Prof Michael Silk)
  • ESRC – Sex work in the context of sports mega events: Examining the impacts of Rio 2016 (Prof Michael Silk)
  • NERC – Mechanisms and consequences of tipping points in lowland agricultural landscapes (Prof Adrian Newton)
  • NERC – Freshwater Taxonomy and Field Identification Skills (Prof Genoveva Esteban) (the decision was made at the end of March but I’m presuming that this will be included in the 16-17 figures as it did not appear in 15-16, as shown below)

BU’s success rate in 2014-15 (the coverage is decisions made between April 2015 to March 2016) was a respectable 17% with two bids awarded out of the 12 submitted; and in 2013-14, BU’s success rate was 33%, also based on 12 applications. Although the success rate for 2015-16 decreased to 9% with one bid awarded out of 11, the average awarded across the sector was £56k with BU’s being an impressive £216k.  It is still one of BU’s highest annual success rates with the research councils. The sector average success rate in 2015-16 has continued to decline slightly, from 28% to 26% (it was 30% in 13-14), which means the success rate that BU has already achieved in 2016-17 is likely to be higher than the sector average. The successful BU award for 2015-16 was:

  • jan-wienerESRC – Reducing Spatial Disorientation in Dementia Care Homes (Dr Jan Wiener)

The sector average success rate with ESRC was only 12%, compared to BU’s impressive 50%.  Also, BU has had more grants awarded from the Research Councils over the past year than are reported here, however, the official stats only show results against the lead institution so successful bids where BU is the collaborating institution are not shown against BU in the data above.

dev_frameworkBU is especially keen to increase the quality of bids submitted to Research Councils and RKEO have recently launched the R&KE Development Framework, which offers a range of opportunities for academics at all career stages to develop their skills, knowledge and capabilities in relation to research and knowledge exchange.  The framework offers a number of pathways grouped around key topics.  As well as including many options for an academic career, they also offer opportunities to support you to design, write and structure competitive, fundable research proposals and to maximise your chances of being awarded funding. Anyone considering submitting a bid to a research council should speak with their Research Facilitator as early on in the process as possible. The Research Facilitators have extensive experience of reviewing research proposals and can provide you with expert guidance on how to shape your bid. You can also access guidance documents on the Research Blog here: http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/researcher-toolbox/research-funders-guide/

Read more about the demand management measures that the Research Councils have put in place here: Demand Management. As the councils are still seeing an increase in applications received alongside declining success rates then there is a possibility that demand management requirements will be stepped up in future.

Reminder – Student Research Assistantship – academic applications still open

Funding opportunities, Fusion Investment Fund, student research

The Student Research Assistantship (SRA) scheme is still open for academic applications.

Academics are invited to submit applications for the semester-based round of the SRA programme.

The programme is funded by the Fusion Investment Fund and will still have two programme rounds, semester-based and summer programme.  The scheme has been re-focused to support departments in their co-creation targets whilst supporting students to undertake paid work under the guidance of an experienced academic in a research position that is directly related to their career path and/or academic discipline.

Semester-based programme

This placement is for successful students to work for 15 hours a week for a total of eight weeks between 16th January 2017 and 7th April 2017. This programme will have the capacity for approximately 45 placements.

The SRA programme is coordinated via RKEO and the Faculties.

Academics will apply for the funding via an application form. A Faculty based panel will review all staff applications and decide which applications to continue to the student recruitment stage of the scheme.  The application deadline for this round is 24th October 2016.

Each academic application will be marked against the following criteria:

  • Student-centred
  • Co-creation and co-production
  • Fusion
  • External engagement
  • Impact
  • Cross-Faculty

Approved academic applications will be advertised as SRA positions to students with student applications being received, processed and managed centrally within RKEO and distributed to the relevant academics after the closing date. The academics will be responsible for shortlisting, interviewing and providing interview feedback to their own candidates. Successful students will need to complete monthly timesheets, signed by their supervisor for payment.

These SRA vacancies will be available to taught BU students only, where SRA applicants must be able to work in the UK, be enrolled during the time of their assistantship and also have an average grade of over 70%.  Staff can have multiple SRAs.

If you have any queries, please contact Rachel Clarke, KE Adviser (KTP and Student Projects) –  sra@bournemouth.ac.uk

EU eight years funding for BU disaster robotics research (from FP7 to Horizon 2020)

Urbanisation and changes in modern infrastructure have introduced new challenges to firefighting practices. The entire direct and indirect cost of fire is about 1% GDP losses in the world annually. For example, in 2013, the USA had over 1.2 million fires which resulted in about 3.4 thousand civilian fatalities, 16 thousand injuries and property losses of about $12.4 billion. In addition, about 100 fire fighters lost their lives and over 65 thousand were injured on the fire ground. UK had over 190 thousand fires responses, about 350 civilian fatalities, over 10 thousand injuries.

BU will be leading, under direction of Prof Hongnian Yu and Dr Shuang Cang, an international consortium on a project receiving €0.9 million in funding to address these challenges. SMart rObOTs for fire-figHting (SMOOTH) is a four-year project awarded under the EU Horizon 2020 MSCA program. It is the further expansion and development of the previous four-year RABOT (real-time adaptive networked control of rescue robots) project funded under FP7-IRSES, led by Dr Cang and Prof Yu.

The RABOT consortium consisted of two EU and three Asia Partners, and made numerous tangible results and activities. Examples are: 1) facilitated 77 mobility visits conducted by 46 researchers and trained 22 ESRs directly and over 250 ESRs through the project workshops, seminars, invited sessions etc. where BU hosted 18 international research visitors under the support of the RABOT project; 2) published over 60 journal and conference papers including the best conference paper awards, fired four patents, and won five international awards; 3) organised three invited sessions (another one to be organised along SKIMA 2016(http://fusion-edu.eu/SKIMA2016/special-session/)); 4) organised nine training workshops; 5) produced the workspace and dexterity of the haptic mechanism, deduced the kinematics and kinetics of the haptic device and implemented it with performance evaluation; 6) studied multi-agents’ coordinate control, leader-follower control and consensus control, and based on differential manifold method, simulated the proposed formation control method; 7) investigated and established an interaction model between human and a robot; 8) developed the Damping interface using Dynamic Hybrid Force Position Sensing (DHFPS) methods; 6) developed  the intelligent interface for modelling the platform balance amplitude using DHFPS methods; 7) developed the interface tilt over robot control using DHFPS methods; 8) designed and developed a haptic interface for the rescue walking robots motion in the disaster areas; 9) designed and developed a networked control approach for operating robots remotely; 10) designed and prototyped a wearable robot for supporting a human who works in the disaster areas; 11) designed and prototyped the autonomous legged & wheeled robot; 12) designed and developed a novel hexapod robot.

In addition, the RABOT consortium has received the following funding for further expanding and sustaining the collaboration and research: 1) VIPRO (2014-2017), financed by the Romanian Scientific Research Agency (ANCS), Partnerships Program in priority fields; 2) Mechanism Design of Rescue Robots for Nuclear power plant emergency relief, China 973 Programme; 3) Urban Fire and Rescue Robots, China Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation programme;  4) Adaptive Learning Control of a Cardiovascular Robot using Expert Surgeon Techniques, China NSF and UK Newton Funds; 5) China – Romania intelligent rehabilitation robot joint laboratory, China Science and Technology Programme; and 6) SMOOTH (Horizon 2020).

Those results and activities have made the positive contributions in achieving the BU top 200 most international universities.

The new SMOOTH project aims to innovate a smart robot-assisted firefighting platform to perform searching and rescuing practice in the fire ground, and to facilitate the efficient decision makings. Concerning harsh environments for the complex fire ground (including chemical plants and other venues), the consortium will investigate, study, and innovate information acquisition (sensing and visioning technology), transmission (ultra-remote signal transmission) and processing (multi-sensor fusion technology), instrumentation (actuating technology, robotics thermal protection technology), control (multi-degree of freedom mobile and operating robot control methods, obstacle avoidance and sweeping, Decision Support Systems (DSS)) and communication (Human-Robot (H2R) interaction systems, Machine-to-Machine (M2M)).

The SMOOTH research programme will provide three EU industrial partners (SMEs), one EU university, one EU research institution, two TC universities and one TC research institution the opportunity to move between sectors and countries in order to provide, absorb, implement, share and disseminate new knowledge in a professional industrial-academic environment at the European and global levels. It will be implemented via functional secondments and the organisation of/participation in training courses, workshops, summer schools, seminars, industrial forums, and conferences for sharing knowledge, acquiring new skills and developing careers for Consortium staff members and early stage researchers.  SMOOTH will foster a shared culture, and reward creativity and entrepreneurship.  A distinctive feature of this international consortium is its multidisciplinary nature (combining computer sciences, engineering, technology and business expertise) and its designed interaction between academic researchers and industrial practitioners in order to create an internationally excellent hub centred on advancing firefighting robotics utilisation as part of search and rescue tasks for the benefit of humanity.

Czech midwifery lecturer on EU-funded visit to CMMPH

international

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Eva Hendrych Lorenzová, midwife and midwifery lecturer from the Czech Republic, visited the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) this passed week.  Eva was awarded a travel grant as part of the EU-funded COST Action IS1405 Short Term Scientific Mission (STSM).  Eva spoke to colleagues and students at Bournemouth University as well as midwifery colleagues in Weymouth, Bournemouth, Poole and the New Forrest Birth Centre.eu-flag

 

Over the past five year, four different midwives from Continental Europe have been to Bournemouth University on an STSM exchange. Eva is the fourth one, and with Brexit most likely to be the last on this EU scheme!  Each of these four midwives had a different aim for their STSM project. The first STSM midwifery visitor five years ago was Susanne Grylka-Baeschlin. She did a methodological piece of research which resulted in the translation of the Mother-Generated Index into German to be used in Switzerland and Germany. The STSM was part of her MSc project supervised by Prof. Mechthild Gross and supported by Dr. Kathrin Stoll, both based at the Hannover Medical School in Germany.

In 2013 Dr. Ans Luyben, a Dutch midwife working in Switzerland, came over to BU for ten days. She came to develop the survey content on organisational system design and culture as part of the international survey, taking place during the COST Action. The work focused on organisational system design and culture in regard to antenatal care, including prenatal screening.

Eva & Jillian 2016

Eva and Jillian 2016

The third STSM midwifery visitor in 2014 was Dr. Fátima León Larios from Spain. Her STSM was much more practical, Fátima was keen to find out more about how small midwifery-led maternity units were being run in England. BU’s Visiting Faculty and Poole Community Midwife Jillian Ireland took her to visit four different maternity units in the south of England.  Jillian also organised Eva’s meeting with community midwives and midwives in various birthing centres in Dorset and the New Forrest in October 2016.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

14:Live with Dinusha Mendis

Student Engagement

It’s less than a week until 14:Live returns on Thursday 20 October, at 14:00-15:00! Join Dr Dinusha Mendis on the 5th Floor of the Student Centre, for an exciting talk around her research.

What’s it about you ask? Going for Gold! 3D Scanning and 3D Printing of Jewellery and Implications for Intellectual Property Law.

Have you ever seen 3D printing and 3D scanning happen in reality? By allowing physical objects to be replicated, 3D printing is increasing in popularity. However, this can raise questions about intellectual property (IP) laws.

Unfortunately, there can be implications to modifying and replicating someone else’s existing design or Computer Aided Design (CAD) file. Does it infringe the IP rights of the creator? How much ‘modification’ is needed to create a new and non-infringing product? Are we about to see a new wave of file sharing in 3D designs? While the technology has significant potential to expand into various sectors, including jewellery, it raises many issues in relation to ownership and authorship. Can IP law deal with this growing technology or will we see a new wave of piracy and counterfeiting which will be hard to control?

All staff and students are welcome to attend so come down and join us for what is going to be an exciting and engaging session, over lots of free snacks and drinks! So pop it in your calendars and we can’t wait to see you.

If you have any questions about 14:Live or other student engagements events, then send over an email to Hannah Jones.

14:LIve

Latest Funding Opportunities

Funding opportunities

money

The following is a snap-shot of funding opportunities that have been announced. Please follow the links for more information:

British Academy

Tackling the UK international challenges

The purpose of each project will be to bring new research ideas and methods to bear on existing international challenges and to deliver specific policy-relevant outputs.

Maximum Award: £50000 for 1 year Deadline: 2 November 2016

Agriculture & Horticulture Development Board

Soft fruits crop sector panel funding

The objectives of the soft fruit sector strategy link are:

  • To improve productivity and cost management (resource management, climate change, soils and water, managing market volatility);
  • To prevent and manage disease (NB: in this context disease covers all crop protection).

Maximum Award: Unknown Deadline: 6 November 2016

EPSRC

Healthcare technologies challenge awards

A future call, planned for mid-late October, designed to create a cohort of the most promising future leaders in Computational, Engineering, Mathematical and Physical Sciences research who will develop new research capabilities across the EPSRC portfolio to address unmet healthcare needs.

Maximum Award: Total budget for call is £10million for 7 – 10 awards Deadline: 31 January 2017

Alzheimer’s Research UK

Dementia consortium

The Dementia Consortium will provide funding, resources and expertise to both increase the number of, and capitalise upon, new drug targets emerging from across the academic sector that hold promise of bringing patient benefit.

Maximum Award: £100000 – £250000 over 2 years Deadline: 15 November 2016

Department of Health, including NIHR

Programme grants for applied research

These support projects that aim to provide evidence to improve health outcomes in England through promotion of health, prevention of ill health and optimal disease management, with particular emphasis on conditions causing significant disease burden.

Maximum Award: Unknown Deadline: 29 November 2016

Wellcome Trust

Seed Awards in Science

Seed Awards in Science help researchers develop new ideas to make them competitive for larger awards (from us or other organisations).

Maximum Award: £100000 over 2 years Deadline: 13 March 2017

AHRC

Leadership Fellow Scheme – Standard route

The AHRC’s Leadership Fellows scheme provides time for research leaders, or potential future research leaders, to undertake focused individual research alongside collaborative activities which have the potential to generate a transformative impact on their subject area and beyond.

Maximum Award: £50000 – £250000 Deadline: Open

If you are interested in submitting to any of the above calls you must contact your  RKEO Funding Development Officer with adequate notice before the deadline.

For more funding opportunities that are most relevant to you, you can set up your own personalised alerts on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in  RKEO or view the recent blog post here.

If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on Research Professional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.

EHRC Focus groups for Research Staff and Research Staff line managers

As part of BU’s HR Excellence in Research Award process, we are currently evaluating our progress and achievements over the last four years and looking to set our targets and priorities for the next four years. Your feedback on both aspects is essential.

Research Staff

Following the BU Research Staff Survey which took place earlier this year, we invite you to take part in a focus group to capture feedback from you on your experiences as a member of Research Staff at Bournemouth University. We will be holding two events:

Monday 17th October – Talbot Campus 10-11:30 in CREATE LT (Research Staff only)

Wednesday 2nd November – Lansdowne Campus 10-11:30 in EB203 (Research Staff only)

 

Line Manager of Research Staff

Following the BU Research Staff Survey which took place earlier this year, we invite you to take part in a focus group to capture feedback from you on your experiences as a line manager of a Research Staff member at Bournemouth University. We will be holding an event on:

Monday 17th October – Talbot Campus 12:30-2pm in F110, Fusion Building (Research Staff line managers only)

Please could you confirm if you are able to attend by emailing Rhyannan Hurst.  Tea, Coffee and light refreshments wil be provided!

With best wishes,

Rhyannan Hurst (Finance & Resources Administrator for RKEO)

Tel  : 01202 961511 E-mail : rhurst@bournemouth.ac.uk

 

 

The Student Project Bank has launched!

student research

We are delighted to announce that the Student Project Bank has launched and is accepting project proposals. If you have an idea that has the potential to benefit community and society, or work with an organisation that does, please contact us.

The Student Project Bank is looking for community organisations, charities, not-for-profit organisations and corporate partners that would like help implementing a project that benefits society. It can be anything that benefits an individual, a community or society such as a piece of research, service improvement or a creative project.

The Student Project Bank is a mutually beneficial collaboration between external organisations and our students. As part of their studies, our students get to work on a live project with the potential for real-world impact. Each project will give students the opportunity to put theory into practice, develop transferrable skills and gain real-world project experience. External organisations get the opportunity to benefit from their knowledge, skills and creativity whilst gaining valuable insights into their project area.

Projects are available to all students studying at undergraduate or Master’s level and can be used for their dissertation, final project, an assignment or group work. There are also opportunities for projects to be carried out for extra-curricular experience. Projects are available for academic members of staff to select to set to their students.

A list of projects will be available on the Student Project Bank webpage shortly.

Find out more by visiting our webpage or send us an email.

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EPSRC Science Photo Competition 2016

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council have launched its fourth  EPSRC Science Photo Competition.  Open to all EPSRC supported researchers and EPSRC supported doctoral students, the Science Photo Competition gives both researchers and students the chance to showcase their research through pictures. Previous prizes have included equipment to the value of £500. Winners will also feature in EPSRC’s Pioneer Magazine and other EPSRC publications. There have been some fantastic images of research over the last three years and some winners have recieved great national coverage for their images.

Images should feature in one of five categories:

  • Equipment and Facilities
  • Eureka and Discovery
  • Innovation
  • People and Skills
  • Weird and Wonderful

Deadline for entries is Friday 16 December 2016. Could BU have a new winner?

To read more about the competiton take a look here.

Or if you have any questions email photocomp@epsrc.ac.uk

 

FHSS Dr. Vanessa Heaslip awarded Florence Nightingale Travel Scholarship

Awarded & submitted bids, international

florence-nightingale-foundation-2016Dr. Vanessa Heaslip in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences (FHSS) has been awarded a Florence Nightingale Travel Scholarship. She will be using this prestigious award to travel to New Zealand and various locations in the United Kingdom. She is hoping to learn from New Zealand, which is decades ahead in tackling these issues, to establish, adapt and develop principles for implementation in the UK.  Vanessa’s study funded by the Florence Nightingale Foudation is called: “Towards addressing health inequalities of marginalised communities; using Gypsy Roma Travellers (GRT) as the model.”

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

AHRC & BBC Radio 3 – applications for New Generation Thinkers 2017

Funding opportunities

Are you an Early Career Researcher? Would you like the opportunity to develop the skills to tell the story of your research to new audiences?

Apply now for the AHRC and BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers 2017 Programme.

Sam GoodmanBU’s Dr Sam Goodman is one of AHRC’s New Generation Thinkers, having won the award last year. He features in this film from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), which shines a light on the AHRC/ BBC Radio 3, New Generation Thinkers scheme.

This pioneering scheme aims to develop a new generation of academics who can bring the best of university research and scholarly ideas to a broad audience – through BBC broadcasting. Each year, up to sixty successful applicants have a chance to develop their programme-making ideas with experienced BBC producers at a series of dedicated workshops and, of these up to ten will become Radio 3’s resident New Generation Thinkers. They will benefit from a unique opportunity to develop their own programmes for BBC Radio 3, the chance to regularly appear on air and work closely with the AHRC communications team.

ahrc-ngtBBC Radio 3 and its programmes Free Thinking, the Verb, the Essay and the Sunday Feature have provided a platform for debate and commentary from scholars across the world. You could now join them on air.

Applicants do not have to be funded by the AHRC to apply; the scheme is open to all early career researchers based in a UK Research Organisation (either Higher Education Institution or Independent Research Organisation [IRO]).

They welcome applications from researchers working in all areas of the arts and humanities. This year they are again extending the call for researchers who work in areas of social sciences and medical science whose work intersects with the arts and humanities. Do you know a researcher who could benefit from this opportunity? Why not forward them this email and encourage them to apply or share a link on social media using the hashtag #newgenerationthinkers.

Closing Date: 26/10/2016

Applicants should be available to attend workshops:

  • Wednesday 11th January 2017, Salford
  • Monday 16th January 2017, London
  • Wednesday 18th January 2017, London

If invited to attend the workshops you will be offered a date at one of the three locations. Candidates will be invited to the workshops the week commencing the 12th December 2016.

Applicants that are successful at the workshops should be free to attend:

  • Wednesday 8th March 2017, for media training in London
  • The dates of the Gateshead Free Thinking Festival between Friday 17th March to Sunday 19th March as the winners will be announced during this period.

How to apply

Applications should be submitted using the Research Councils’ Joint electronic Submission (Je-S) System at the latest by 4.00pm Wednesday 26th October 2016, and must go through the host organisation approval process prior to this closing date. Therefore, please contact your RKEO Funding Development Officer at least three weeks before applying.

Full details of the call can be found in the New Generation Thinkers 2017 Call Document (PDF, 265KB)

For complete terms and conditions please see the Conditions of Entry for New Generation Thinkers

FP9: what is on the horizon?

Science|Business hosted a full day webcast of their event Research Strategies: Europe 2030 and the next Framework Programme.

There are a number of consulations forthcoming, where you will be able to contribute:

> Horizon 2020 interim evaluation (due to launch w/c 17/10/16)

> FP9 consulations (expected early 2017)

Please take a look at Policy directions – a synthesis, which drew together the discussions from the strategy and policy workshops:

> Connected health: Can big data help us live healthier, longer?

> Energy and resources: Can innovation really help us manage the planet better?

> Security and defence R&D: How can we make Europe safer?

> Connected cars: Can autos, ICT and regulation work together?

> Open Innovation: How public labs and private investment can work together

> Scaling up: How can Europe grow its companies faster?

> Enabling technologies: How can R&I re-power Europe’s industries?

Key features for possible inclusion in the next Framework Programme (FP9), the successor to Horizon 2020, include:

> A greater role for Social Sciences and Humanities much earlier in the innovation process, rather than being brought in to make new technology acceptable to the end user, late in the day

> Making innovation inclusive by engaging with all stakeholders, linked to a drive towards a shared vocabulary and cultural understanding, especially between industry and academia

> Demand-driven research

> Open data and the implications for security and privacy

> Impact, with the ability to measure, monitor, demonstrate and communicate impact being specifically mentioned – there needs to be a credible    promise of impact / added value for society and growth

> Excellence is still paramount

> FP9 activity needs to be part of society, part of the solution and perceived as such.

Further hints of what may be to come can be found in Commissioner Moedas’ speech Embracing an ERA of Change, Berlin, 10/10/16.

The inherent dilemmas presented by Kurt Vandenburghe (Director Policy Development and Coordination at European Commission’s DG Research and Innovation) are:

> Prioritisation may exclude some stakeholders

> The need for a careful balance between ensuring continuity yet embracing change, as we move from Horizon 2020 (FP8) to FP9

Want to know more? Watch out for further announcements made on this blog. As well as Science|Business being an excellent source of EU information, BU also has a subscription to UKRO, to which BU staff can subscribe with their BU email.