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Making the Most of Writing Week: What to do with your Data?

You don’t have to spend Faculty of Health and Social Science Writing Week (3rd to 6th January) working on grant applications. You may already have a dataset and now finally have some time to do something with it. But where to start? It’s often a good idea to go back to your original research questions/aims/objectives… a well thought out research question can help shape your analysis strategy.
Hopefully you will have a record of which variables you were measuring and how data were coded. Were any calculations performed using the raw data to create new variables? How were these done? This is all part of good data management. To find out more visit the information pages created by the Library and Learning Support Team.
Once you are reacquainted with your data, it’s often a good idea (in the case of quantitative data) to start plotting graphs to find out more. Always keep in mind the original aims of the study, it’s easy to wander down a path of distraction. If you are feeling confused by all of this or, have got yourself lost down a data track, the BU Clinical Research Unit team are at hand to help.
Peter Thomas is available on Tuesday and Wednesday while Sharon Docherty is available Thursday and Friday this week. Why not drop us an email or pop by to see us in R505?

Free access to two modules from the BMJ’s Research to Publication tool

PG research, Publishing, writing

res-to-pubThe BMJ have launched a new research tool called Research to Publication, with the aim of getting more authors from submission to publication. It is comprised of a series of self e-learning modules, enabling researchers to hone and improve their research capabilities.

This is not a free product, but they are offering free access to two modules – How to Write and Publish a Study Protocol and Introduction to Randomised Blinded Trials. If anyone is interested in this product, you can access the two free modules here. If you do take a look at the free modules, I’d be very interested in any feedback you have about the product. Please send feedback to cwentzell@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Challenge Project – Home Office

Funding opportunities, innovation, Knowledge Exchange

money and cogs

The Home Office, through the Joint Security and Resilience Centre, invites responses for its call on challenge project. This aims to capture strategical and tactical barriers which inhibit the security sector and develop project work against proposed solutions. Projects must provide demonstrable effort towards at least one of the following:

•deliver a joint response to the UK’s national security challenges;

•drive the delivery of the right solutions;

•growth of the security sector.

Suggestions for future areas of research are welcome.

10 awards, each worth between approximately £25,000 and £50,000, are available.

Click here for more information including how to apply.

Closing deadline is 22 January 2017.

If you are interested in submitting to  this  call 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.

 

EPSRC Sandpit: New Industrial Systems

Funding opportunities

  Opening date: 05 January 2017
  Closing date: 02 March 2017 at 16:00
  Status: Future
  Tag: Expression of interest
  Related themes: All themes

EPSRC logoThe EPSRC’s Manufacturing the Future theme is highlighting a future call for a Sandpit in New Industrial Systems.

In response to future manufacturing challenges EPSRC is running a sandpit with a focus on New Industrial Systems to engender a radical change in the research undertaken in this field in the UK. EPSRC hope that this sandpit will enable UK researchers to identify and undertake research with the potential to have a transformative impact on our manufacturing industries.

It is expected that up to £5 million of EPSRC funding will be made available to fund research projects arising from this sandpit.  Keep an eye on the their website if you wish to express an interest in attending the sandpit (EoI opens 5/1/17).

Making the Most of Writing Week: Research grant applications – not THAT PPI

writing

Remember, there are members of the BU Clinical Research Unit team available during the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences Writing Week to help you (you don’t need to be FHSS to speak to us, we’re here to help anyone doing health research) along the way. Today we’ll focus on Helen Allen.

Once you have decided on a funder, an important (but sometimes overlooked) aspect of working up a grant application is the planning and documenting of the involvement of service users/patients/relevant groups or organisations (Public Patient Involvement or PPI) ie the people most likely to have a vested interest in the research you are intending to do. Indeed, many major national funders, including the NIHR, require detailed evidence of how service users have been involved. But do you know who to approach?  When?  How?  What can service users be involved with? What can they add? Sometimes it’s relatively straightforward to identify appropriate individuals and organisations. Other occasions can call for more creativity. Hot tip: everything takes longer to arrange than you might think. Allow a minimum of 6 weeks to plan, consult service users and feedback from the PPI consultation to your colleagues.

If you’d like some advice about planning PPI and conducting service user consultations for a project Helen Allen will be pleased to advise you. Helen is available on Tuesday 3rd and Thursday 5th January.

Writer’s block? Wondering where to start? Need someone to talk to? BUCRU can help!

writing

Happy New Year! If making more time for writing grant proposals and research articles is one of your New Year’s Resolutions, then make the most of HSS Writing Week (3rd to 6th January). The aim of this week is to help support staff to find time in their busy schedules to work on those all-important grant proposals and research articles that keep getting lost under piles of marking.

We’re not expecting you to do it alone. Did you know that the Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit can provide support for people undertaking healthcare research? As part of Writing Week, members of the unit will be available to help during the week (see below) so why don’t you pop in and see us (5th floor Royal London House) or send us an email.

BUCRU Availability

Who? When? What with?
Peter Thomas

(Professor of Healthcare Statistics & Epidemiology)

 Tuesday and Wednesday research study design and statistics
Helen Allen

(Public and Patient Involvement Lead)

 Tuesday and Thursday involvement of service users in research projects, arranging focus groups and interviews
Sharon Docherty

(Research Fellow: Quantitative Methods)

 Thursday and Friday designing, conducting and analysing quantitative research

Happy New Year from your new Research Facilitator for FHSS & FST

R & KE Operations

img_4095I have recently joined the Research and Knowledge Exchange Office (RKEO) as the Research Facilitator for the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences (FHSS) and the Faculty of Science and Technology (FST), covering Jenny Roddis’ maternity leave.

As Research Facilitator I provide support to researchers from the outset to develop their ideas, including horizon scanning and identifying potential funding opportunities, building research teams and advising on bid content and structure.

Before joining RKEO I was Clinical Research Co-ordinator in the Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit, which entailed working closely with researchers in local NHS Trusts to facilitate collaborations with academics across BU. I have a BSc in Psychology from Cardiff University, and a background in mental health research having previously worked as a Research Assistant in Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust. Whilst there, I co-ordinated NHS grant applications, designed, costed and delivered research projects including the recruitment and assessment for a large MRC funded trial.

I look forward to meeting those I don’t yet know in the near future, but please feel free to contact me should you have any questions or queries. You can contact me by email at lgaleandrews@bournemouth.ac.uk or by phone on 01202 968258.

BU host MRC regional visit

Funding opportunities

logo_mrcEvent Date: Wednesday the 1st March 2017

Time: 13:30pm – 15:30pm

On Wednesday, 1st March 2017, the Medical Research Council (MRC) will be visiting BU between 1.30pm and 3.30pm. The presentation will provide:

  • tips on writing a good application, including such documents as ‘pathways to impact’;
  • an overview of the peer review process for all types of application
  • how to respond to your reviewer comments
  • an overview of MRC fellowship schemes

The presentation is open to the regional university network, known as the M3 group, which includes: AUB, Bournemouth, Brighton, Portsmouth, Reading, Southampton, Southampton Solent, Surrey, Sussex and Winchester. All academics and research offices are welcome to attend.  If you are interested in applying to any of the research councils then this will be useful to you.

BU will host a pre-event networking lunch for all attendees from 12 noon. This is a great opportunity to learn about the inner workings of the research councils and how you can strengthen your applications for funding. If you would like to attend, then please book through Eventbrite.

About the MRC: The Medical Research Council improves human health through world-class medical research. They fund research across the biomedical spectrum, from fundamental lab-based science to clinical trials, and in all major disease areas. Their research has resulted in life-changing discoveries for over a hundred years. They are the largest research council with a budget expenditure of £927.8m in 2015/16.

For further information on this event please contact: RKEDevFramework@bournemouth.ac.uk

Research Professional – all you need to know

Research-Professional-logoEvery BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. To really make the most of your Research Professional account, you should tailor it further by establishing additional alerts based on your specific area of expertise. The Funding Development Team Officers can assist you with this, if required.

Research Professional have created several guides to help introduce users to ResearchProfessional. These can be downloaded here.

Quick Start Guide: Explains to users their first steps with the website, from creating an account to searching for content and setting up email alerts, all in the space of a single page.

User Guide: More detailed information covering all the key aspects of using ResearchProfessional.

Administrator Guide: A detailed description of the administrator functionality.

In addition to the above, there are a set of 2-3 minute videos online, designed to take a user through all the key features of ResearchProfessional. To access the videos, please use the following link: http://www.youtube.com/researchprofessional

Research Professional are running a series of online training broadcasts aimed at introducing users to the basics of creating and configuring their accounts on ResearchProfessional. They are holding monthly sessions, covering everything you need to get started with ResearchProfessional. The broadcast sessions will run for no more than 60 minutes, with the opportunity to ask questions via text chat. Each session will cover:

  • Self registration and logging in
  • Building searches
  • Setting personalised alerts
  • Saving and bookmarking items
  • Subscribing to news alerts
  • Configuring your personal profile

Each session will run between 10.00am and 11.00am (UK) on the fourth Tuesday of each month. You can register here for your preferred date:

24th January 2017

28th February 2017

28th March 2017

25th April 2017

23rd May 2017

27th June 2017

25th July 2017

22nd August 2017

26th September 2017

24th October 2017

These are free and comprehensive training sessions and so this is a good opportunity to get to grips with how Research Professional can work for you.

SKIMA 2016

The 10th International Conference on Software, Knowledge, Information Management and Application (SKIMA 2016) was held from 15 to 17 December 2016 in Chengdu, China. The Conference was organised by the EU Erasmus Mundus FUSION project consortium and was hosted by Chengdu University of Informatics Technology, supported by Chengdu University, Zhongyuan University of Technology and Bourmouth University. The SKIMA organisation committee members, Prof Hongnian Yu (General Chair), Prof Jiliu Zhou (General Co-chair, President of Chengdu University of Informatics Technology), Prof Dongyun Wang (General Co-chair, Vice President of Huanghuai University), Dr Shuang Cang (Programme Chair), Prof Keshav Dahal (UK), Prof Alamgir Hossain (UK), Prof Yun Li (UK), Prof Yacine Ouzrout (France), Prof Rameshwar Rijal (Nepal), Prof Yuson Ou (China), Prof He Jia (China), Prof Luigi Vladareanu (Romania), Dr Shengjun Wen (China), Prof John Mo (Australia), Dr Zoltán Szabó (Hungary), Dr Aihui Wang (China), Dr. Ingrid Rügge (Germany), Dr Leo Chen (China), Prof Teresa Goncalves (Portugal), and about 200 scholars from 14 countries participated the conference.

image001

 

The conference general chair, Prof Hongnian Yu thanked the local team from Chengdu University of Informatics Technology for their great efforts and supports in making this conference successful. He expressed his sincere appreciate for the support from the EU Erasmus Mundus Programme, IEEE Chengdu Section, Chengdu University, Zhongyuan University of Technology, and Bournemouth University. Prof Yu also introduced the SKIMA 10 years history and wished the SKIMA enhancing the collaboration and exchange between EU and Asia.

image005

 

The SKIMA 2016 General Co-chair, President of Chengdu University of Informatics Technology, Prof Jiliu Zhou made the welcome speech. Prof Zhou welcomed all the participants to Chengdu, introduced the audiences the developing history of Chengdu University of Informatics Technology, and congratulated the conference achievements.
image003

 

The SKIMA series was started in an international collaboration context between research professionals in Western and Asian countries in Chiang Mai, Thailand 2006. Subsequently, the next SKIMA conferences were organized in Kathmandu, Nepal in 2008; Fez, Morocco in 2009; Paro, Bhutan in 2010; Benevento, Italy in 2011, Chengdu, China in 2012, Chiang Mai, Thailand in 2013, Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2014, Kathmandu, Nepal 2015. With the technical co-sponsorship of IEEE  Chengdu Section, all the accepted conference papers will be submitted for acceptance into IEEE Xplore so EI indexed.

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