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CMMPH PhD students steal the show at the GLOW maternal health conference

PG research

The second Global Women’s Health Conference, held in Birmingham on November 1st, highlighted the work that still needs to be done to reduce maternal mortality. Prof Wendy Graham from the University of Aberdeen opened the conference outlining the progress to date but reminding us that there was much still to do. Her hard hitting presentation showed the unacceptable conditions of birthing rooms in many countries. She urged the audience to remember that “we do not want universal health care of poor quality.”

Rachel Arnold

This was followed by a short film produced by BU Visiting Professor Gwyneth Lewis, which tells the story of Mrs X and why she died in childbirth.

A number of presenters highlighted hospital conditions and disrespectful staff as a disincentive for women in seeking facility birth. However, Rachel Arnold, PhD student in CMMPH,  reminded the audience that the carers were women too. She noted that it is all too easy to blame health care professionals, forgetting the challenging conditions that they have to work in. In her excellent and moving presentation Rachel presented quotes from midwives and doctors in Afghanistan that brought a number of audience members to tears.

BU Prof Vanora Hundley presented work from Pakistan evaluating a decision tool to support policy makers and programme managers who are considering the potential role of clean birth kits in their strategy for care at birth.

Sheeta;

Sheetal Sharma

While PhD student Sheetal Sharma’s poster presentation Getting women to care in Nepal: A Difference in Difference analysis of a health promotion intervention stole the day winning best poster prize.   Sheetal has a unique international supervisory team led by BU and her PhD is supported by Bournemouth University with a studentship and a Santander grant.

The event was also an opportunity to publicise next year’s international conference on Midwifery and the post-MDG agenda, which will be held at Bournemouth University.

EC Info Days – Interested in EC Climate and Environment Work Programme for 2014?

Info Days, Training

 

Interested in EC Climate and Environment Work Programme for 2014?

An InfoDay for those interested in the Horizon 2020 Societal Challenge 5: Climate Action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials is happening on 12th November 2013.  The event aims to highlight the novelties of the 2014-2015 Work Programme and will provide guidance on the preparation and submission of proposals.  This InfoDay covers only 2014 topics. A seperate InfoDay for 2015 topics will be organised at a later stage.

Although registration to attend the event is closed you can still watch this event online.  Please see the agenda at the link below as there are various sessions addressing specific elements of the forthcoming Work Programme.

Further details:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/environment/index_en.cfm?pg=events&eventcode=82B9816A-F1DB-AF81-2607E2CCFD22F439

 

Prof. Ben Azvine, Global Head of Security Research and Innovation at BT. Monday the 11th of November, PG16

BU Challenges, Funding opportunities, PG research

The next of our research seminars will take on Monday, the 11th of November, PG16 at 15:00.
Our distinguished guest is Professor Ben Azvine, the Global Head of Security Research and Innovation at BT; invited by our colleague Prof. Bogdan Gabrys.

Professor Azvine holds a BSc in Mechanical Engineering, an MSc in Control Engineering, a PhD in Intelligent Control Systems all from Manchester University and an MBA from Imperial College, London. Having held research fellowship and lectureship posts in several universities, he joined British Telecom Research in 1995 and set up a research programme to develop and exploit intelligent systems technologies within BT.
Since then he has held senior, principal and chief research scientist as well as head of research centre posts at Adastral Park, the head quarter of BT R&D. Ben has edited several books and published more than 100 scientific articles. He is an inventor on 50 patents, has won two BCS gold medals, and the IET award for innovation in IT, holds visiting professorships at Universities of Bristol, Cranfield and Bournemouth in the UK.

The title of his exciting talk will be “Industrial applications of novel Intelligent Systems”. Intelligent systems play an important role in industry for managing customer relationship, providing business intelligence, helping organisations analyse their data and protecting organisations against Cyber-attacks. In this talk I’ll present a number of case studies within BT where we have used intelligent system originating from within our research organisation and successfully downstreamed them into our operations.

I strongly encourage academics and PhD students not to miss the opportunity to attend to the seminar and to discuss potential collaborations.

Emili

Santander Mobility and Scholarship Awards 2013 14

PG research

Santander is committed to supporting higher education and are once again, through the Graduate School, offering Scholarships and Mobility Awards to any registered BU Postgraduate Research Student.

 

 

4 x £5,000 Scholarships

Scholarships are available to PGRs to undertake a specific piece of work and build or develop links with international researchers through travel to:

4 x £2,000 Mobility Awards

Mobility Awards are available to PGRs to:

  • Argentina
  • Brazil
  • Belgium
  • Chile
  • China
  • Colombia
  • Germany
  • Korea
  • Mexico
  • Poland
  • Portugal
  • Puerto Rico
  • Russia
  • Singapore
  • Spain
  • USA
  • UAE
  • Uruguay

 

Full details, including application forms and the relevant policy documents can be found on myBU – Graduate School PGR Community (follow the Funding – Development and Mobility Awards Tab).  Remember you will need to log on to myBU with your student username and password.

The closing date for applications is 5 pm on Thursday 9th January 2013.

 

Meeting the Dalai Lama

What a defining moment it was to be addressed by the Dalai Lama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and one of the world’s most popular spiritual leaders. The occasion was The Global Spa and Wellness Summit (GSWS) in New Delhi, where for the first time world-renowned tourism experts got together to discuss, define, and shape, the best strategies to grow, this new and emerging tourism sector.

The Global Spa & Wellness Summit (GSWS) is an international organization representing senior executives and leaders from over 40 countries, joined by a common interest to drive economic development and understanding of the spa and wellness industries. Delegates from diverse sectors, including hospitality, tourism, health and wellness, beauty, finance, medical, real estate, manufacturing and technology, attended the organization’s annual Summit, which is held in a different host country each year. Ministries of tourism and ambassadors were in Delhi to share their current strategies and future plans to attract more business and leisure wellness travellers; however academics were rather thin on the ground!

Personally and professionally it was the experience of a lifetime.

BU well represented at Global Women’s (GLOW) Research Conference

PG research

 

At tomorrow’s Global Women’s (GLOW) Research Conference at the University of Birmingham BU’s Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health is very well presented.  Prof. Vanora Hundley presents her poster Clean Birth Kits to promote safe childbirth, which reports the views of policy makers and district health officers in Pakistan regarding the potential for CBKs to facilitate clean birth practices.

 

PhD student Sheetal Sharma also presents a poster on her thesis under the title: Getting women to care in Nepal: A Difference in Difference analysis of a health promotion intervention.  Sheetal’s work is supervised by BU Professors Edwin van Teijlingen and Vanora Hundley, BU Senior Lecturer in Midwifery Catherine Angell, BU Visiting Fellow Dr. Padam Simkhada (ScHARR, University of Sheffield) and Dr. Elisa Sicuri from CRESIB (Barcelona Centre for International Health Research) in Spain and Prof. José M. Belizán from IECS (Institute for Clinical Effectiveness and Health Policy) in Argentina.  Sheetal’s PhD evaluates a community-based health promotion intervention in Nepal which aims to improve the uptake of maternity care.  The intervention is sponsored by the London-based Buddhist charity Green Tara Trust (see: http://www.greentaratrust.com/ ).

 

Whilst PhD student Rachel Arnold will give an oral presentation of her PhD research under the title:  Afghan women: a qualitative study of the culture of care in an Afghan maternity hospital.   This PhD, supervised by BU Professors Immy Holloway and Edwin van Teijlingen and BU Visiting Professor Kath Ryan (La Trobe University, Australia), analyses the culture of care within a maternity hospital in the Afghan capital Kabul and examines the perspectives of midwives, doctors and cleaners on their role and care within that hospital. In a country striving to reduce the high rate of maternal mortality the provision of quality intrapartum care for women in Kabul’s maternity hospitals is vital.

 

BU Professors Vanora Hundley and Edwin van Teijlingen will also take the opportunity at the GLOW conference to promote the forthcoming BU conference on what will happen after the Millennium Development Goals in 2015 ‘Midwifery and the post MDG agenda’ (http://postmdgagenda-eorg.eventbrite.co.uk/ ).

 

Vanora Hundley is Professor of Midwifery

Edwin van Teijlingen is Professor of Reproductive Health Research

 

Congrats Courtney!

Fusion

Courtney Lee, a Level H, BA Events and Leisure Marketing student has been appointed Social Media Manager for the Festival Impact Monitor.

Courtney brings a great deal of experience to the role. During her placement she worked for the Hong Kong Tourism board, where she worked within the organisation’s Trade Development Team  and also provided support with public relations. Courtney has already designed a comprehensive social media plan for the project which she will launch in early November. This includes the rechristening of the project as FestIM and the design of a logo. She will be accompanying the project’s Principal Investigator, Nigel Williams to key events and presentations to ensure that both the project’s live and virtual media are in sync and key messages are delivered across all the project’s media platforms.

Courtney is open to working with others interested in a social media role and would welcome enquiries from students wishing to be social media assistants.  Interested students should e-mail nferdinand@bournemouth.ac.uk.

The Festival Impact Monitor is funded by the BU Fusion Investment Fund. For more click on this link.

 

Erasmus funding opportunity

I have just benefited from an Erasmus mobility grant, allowing me to visit Aalborg University in Copenhagen.

The MENU (Meal Science & Public Health Nutrition) Research Group at Aalborg investigates everyday food and meal consumption, whether by individuals, communities or within wider populations. A particular research focus for MENU is addressing meals especially the environment of eating and public health nutrition.

As a group of researchers within this field The Foodservice and Applied Nutrition Research group in the School of Tourism at BU and MENU at Aalborg are a close community, where we can learn from each other and with each other to enhance both the student experience and the global research agendas within this field of expertise. 

I gave several lectures to Masters students and in addition, I gave a faculty lecture on ‘Publishing’, sharing with the audience my experience as Editor of Perspectives in Public Health.

It was interesting to see the facilities for food research at Aalborg and how these enhance the student experience. The research team MENU have invested in a FoodScape Lab (a living laboratory). This brand new installation allows a combination of  visual IT aided data collection (using NOLDUS FaceREader ® and Observer XT ®) with compatible food intake measurements from METTLER TOLEDO scales ®.  The visit to Aalborg also allowed me to collaborate with colleagues on a RISE bid, FoodSMART, which we will submit to Horizon 2020 and to discuss Aalborg hosting the International Conference on Culinary Arts and Sciences (ICCAS) 2017 of which I am chair.

So a very busy week but fruitful and inspirational and a funding scheme that I can highly recommend.

Grants Academy – Deadline for your Application – 1st of November 2013

Grants Academy, Training

The Grants Academy has been described by members as ‘brilliant’, ‘excellent’, ‘extremely educational and stimulating’ and ‘very beneficial’. It has also increased bids submissions from members acting as a Principal Investigator by 41% and 20% as a co-Investigator. Members have significantly increased their funding successes too and obtained funding from organisations such as the AHRC, European Commission, ESRC, British Academy, English Heritage and Burdett Trust for Nursing.

How does the Academy work?  Members attend an initial two day training course off campus, facilitated by an external expert bid writer with a well-developed draft proposal. The training days will cover the art of proposal craftmanship, the rules of the writing game and other invaluable information to help you perfect your proposal during the days. Feedback on these days from existing members have been very positive  ‘the workshop was the best I have ever attended’. 

Members can then further develop their proposal over a couple of weeks, gaining unlimited support from the external facilitator in doing so and the cohort re-gathers for a mock peer review panel of each other’s applications. This gives a unique insight into this process in a supportive environment and helps further refine the proposal. One member has described this session as ‘[I now have] profound insights in[to] how the system works…and to realize how that must be for professional reviewers’.

What other support is given? Throughout the 18 month membership of the Grants Academy, members benefit form UNLIMITED support from the external facilitator (and in some cases additional external reviewers) which has been invaluable in helping members secure external funding ‘[His] input enabled me to produce a clearer, more logical and convincing proposal. He also alerted me to issues I had not previously considered and encouraged me to think about ‘impact’ and value for the UK in new ways’. Members also have bespoke assistance from R&KEO in finding funding and collaborators. They also have access to a library of successful proposals from BU, a travel grant, guaranteed places on Funder visits organised for them and surgeries with external facilitators.

How do I apply? To apply for a place, please notify Dianne Goodman who will send you a Membership Agreement Form to be signed by you, your line manager and your DDRE. Applications close on November 1st 2013 for the next sessions due to take place on the: 18 November, 19 November, 10 December 2013.

There is a waiting list for spaces on the Grants Academy due to its success and you will be added to this if no places are available on the next cohort. If you find that you are unable to make these dates you may find it helpful to know that the further Grants Academy sessions will be held on the:

3rd and 4th of Feb and the 24th of Feb 2014

24th and 25th of Mar and the 22nd Apr 2014

12th and 13th of May and the 9th of Jun 2014

You are welcome to apply and register for one of the future Grants Academy sessions (either November or the sessions listed above) and we are happy to put your name on our list for a future session provided you can confirm at the time of applying that you have blocked out these dates in your calendar and we receive your application signed by your line manager and DDRE.

What’s the small print? When making your application, you must ensure that you are available for the 3 dates in their entirety. Membership is only obtained once all training days have been attended. Obligations of membership are that at least one proposal for external funding must be submitted within the first six months of membership. As the training days are attended with a draft proposal, this should be obtainable. Within 18 months at least three proposals for external funding must have been submitted. Failure to meet these obligations will lead to membership being revoked.

If you have any questions about the Grants Academy please get in contact with Dianne Goodman (scheme administrator) or Dr Corrina Lailla Osborne (scheme manager).

FIF says ‘Get co-creating!’

Funding opportunities, Fusion

The Co-creation and Co-Production strand supports activity that embraces as many of the following as possible:

  •  Demonstrates a clear, fundamental and innovative contribution to Fusion benefitting staff and students within BU. Benefits to students could include both direct and indirect benefits.
  • Requires pump-priming to initiate activity which will then become sustainable.
  • Delivers a series of clear, measurable and tangible outputs that deliver benefits beyond the team applying.
  • Presents new, innovative projects or initiatives that are likely to have both reach and significance within and beyond BU and where possible involve inter-disciplinary collaboration.
  • Leads to public engagement with a range of stakeholders.
  • Demonstrates good value for money in terms of return on investment and strategic priorities.

  Duration of the activities can be between 6 and 12 months. Awards made will be between £2k and £75k.

Be inspired by reading about some of the successfully funded activities under this strand:

The Poole and Purbeck Portal is an inter-school collaboration between the School of Applied Sciences, the Media School and the National Centre for Computer Animation.

http://www.pooleandpurbeckportal.co.uk/

Centre for Face Processing Disorders at BU

Dr Sarah Bate from the Psychology Research Centre was awarded funds from this strand to develop a Centre for Face Processing Disorders at BU.  Sarah’s work explored the cognitive presentation and treatment of face processing deficits in adults and children with a range of neuropsychological conditions, such as developmental or acquired prosopagnosia (face blindness), autistic spectrum disorder, and Moebius syndrome. 

More information about this project can be found here: www.prosopagnosiaresearch.org

Want to know more? Of course you do! Follow this link to the FIF intranet pages.

The Fusion Investment Fund is managed by Samantha Leahy-Harland and the Interim Administrator is Dianne Goodman. Please direct all initial enquiries to Fusion Fund.

What’s the importance of RKE Ops?

Guidance, R & KE Operations

 The Research and Knowledge Exchange Operations (RKE Ops) team are here to help academics apply for external funding.  There are so many funders out there with so many different guidelines that it’s not always easy to find out how, who and what you should be applying to.

Costings of all proposals (including those that we are not the lead on) need to be undertaken by RKE Ops before proposals reach the submission stage.  Costings are undertaken by RKE Ops to ensure that a) they are complete and include full costs, b) that they include indirect and estates costs at current BU rates and c) that they include inflation at the BU rate.  Proposals need to be added to RED in order to track our bidding activity, which is in turn reported on and used for KPI’s, HEBCI and HESA returns; and RED generates the APF (Activity Proposal Form explained below).  The costs need to be added to our costings system, pFACT, for accurate costings and audit purposes. 

In addition to this, Legal Services need to check whether we are agreeing to any terms and conditions in advance of submitting the bid – and, if so, what these are.  We also need to check for any potential financial issues in advance of submission that need to be noted (for example, the risk of exchange rate fluctuations).  The APF (Activity Proposal Form from RED detailing the costs and income) and CAF (Contract Agreement Form from Legal Services detailing any legal or financial risks) need to be signed by a BU authorised signatory before the bid can be submitted; this gives approval for submission. This approval ensures that the appropriate senior staff (DDRE/DoP/Dean/UET members/Board members) are aware of the risks and commitments which arise from us undertaking the project, assuming it were to be awarded.  Some proposals will also have to go through the Quality Approval process, which is processed by RKE Operations.

The RKE Operations team will need to go through all of the above processes before the approval process can be completed.  In addition, an intention to bid form needs to be completed at the beginning to establish what processes an application may need to go through and the timescales required.  If you are intending to bid then please contact the Support Officer for your School to obtain a form (they have been tailored for each School).

The purpose of having a centralised group is that we connect all the necessary processes for academics (Finance, Legal, School signatories) and we’re there to help ensure that the application has the best possible chance of being funded.  If academics are successful then they will receive a contract and that contract has to go through certain processes in order to obtain the money and ensure it goes to the correct place.  Most importantly, if this information is never recorded on RED then it has a knock on effect on several things.  BU receives additional money from HEFCE based on the funding that we have received throughout the year.  Small pots of money add up to large sums and if these are never recorded then we lose out on additional funds from HEFCE.  Also, there are KPI’s with targets for R&KE funding to be obtained by academics in each of the Schools.  By not recording funding this will have a detrimental effect on the Schools targets for meeting the KPI’s.

If you’d like more information on RKEO as a whole then please see this helpful leaflet: R&KEO Leaflet

Decreasing spatial disorientation: towards dementia-friendly environments: A progress report

Spatial disorientation is among the earliest indicators of dementia, an increasingly common condition in our ageing society that currently costs the UK £23 billion annually. With support of the Fusion-CCCP strand we have created ViRtUOS (Virtual Reality User Orientation System), a state-of-the-art eye-tracking and virtual environments research platform which will facilitate the study of factors that affect spatial disorientation in people with dementia. Data gathered using ViRtUOS will be used to formulate design principles for dementia-friendly care homes, reducing care costs, and leading to new knowledge with significance and reach.

To develop ViRtUOS we have brought together undergraduate RAs from Computing, Creative Technology and Computer Animation to work co-operatively and as part of a high-level, well-resourced multi-disciplinary team.

This video demonstrates the results of their excellent work:

 CLICK HERE TO VIEW; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1oo6JXWNuY

So far, this FIF project has been a great success and feedback from the students RAs suggests that they have enjoyed this unique student experience and that working in an inter-disciplinary team has helped them improve their skills.

Excerpts from students’ feedback:

“I enjoyed working on a project which is not exactly ordinary in my field, and working with people who come from different professional backgrounds. It was interesting to see how contrasting subjects tie into the same workflow to try and produce a coherent product. Personally, I am glad to take away new knowledge about my own study subject and the ones of my fellow colleagues; most of that knowledge I will surely apply in my last year of study.” Jurate Pozeraite (Computer Animation, Media School)

“I’ve learnt a lot in my time here, which will be invaluable for both my final year project and my future career. I’ve learnt not only about software development, but about modelling, developing reliable systems, working as a team to produce a joint system and error handling and bug fixing. I feel that working with other students, in a similar position to myself, really helped me in this project. They made me feel at ease and they helped me learn about their roles in developing this system, which otherwise I would have completely ignored. Overall I feel that for me personally this was a very worthwhile project, for expanding my experience and learning something new. I would love to continue my work with this project for as long as possible.” William Chappell (Computing, DEC)

“During the full length of the project I had learnt more and more, I think that this was the best opportunity I have had in a long time. This job gave me lots of experience with people from different schools, which have completely different perspectives. They are both brilliant in their profession and I have learned a lot from them. Also I hope they have learned some things from me. Generally, I have gained new skills including working with ‘Vizard 4.0’ software and ‘3DsMax’. In fact, the project was really interesting and I was glad to not only earn experience from it but also produce a good quality product at the end. Overall I am very happy that I get a chance to work with such a wonderful team. It was a great experience that improves my skills for future projects. If I had a chance to go back in time and redo this project again I will definitely do it.” Arkadiusz Szerszmidt (Creative Technology, DEC)

 We believe that ViRtUOS has great potential to also foster other inter-disciplinary collaborations within BU and we would like to invite academics and students from across BU to get in contact with us, visit the laboratory and explore its potential for their research interests.

The further development of ViRtUOS will be driven by two PhD projects that started in October this year and we are planning to run first experiments investigating spatial orientation in people with dementia soon.

The team, from left to right: Arkadiusz Szerszmidt (undergraduate RA, Creative Technology), William Chappell (undergraduate RA Computing), Mary O’Malley (PhD student, Psychology & BUDI), Mariela Gaete-Reyes (BUDI), Jurate Pozeraite (undergraduate RA, Computer Animation), Chris Ramsey (PhD student, CDE), Jan Wiener (Psychology & BUDI)

 CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE VIDEO !!!

By Mariela Gaete-Reyes & Jan Wiener

Thank FIF it’s open! – Round two now open to applications

Funding opportunities, Fusion, Research themes

 

 

 

The Pro-Vice Chancellor would like to invite you to apply for the current round of Fusion Investment Fund.

 Three funding strands are available for staff at BU:                                                       

Co-Creation and Co-Production strand (CCCP)

 Study Leave strand (SL)

There are three sub-strands under this strand: Academic Study Leave, Internal Secondments and Industrial Staff Placements.

 Staff Mobility and Networking strand (SMN)

This strand includes Santander and Erasmus.

 Awareness sessions will take place on the following, giving applicants the valuable opportunity to discuss their applications with the FIF Manager and committee members:

  • Wednesday 13 November 12-1pm, S203, Lansdowne
  • Monday 18 November 2-3pm, Casterbridge room, THS, Talbot
  •  In addition, Dr. Martin Pickard of Grantcraft will be running a two and a half hour session giving essential Fusion bid writing advice on Wednesday 20 November, at 9.30am in, CG04, Christchurch House, Talbot Campus. Martin is a specialist in writing and supporting research grant applications and tenders, as well as providing administrative and management support services for ongoing projects.

If you are interested in attending any of these sessions please contact Fusion Fund to confirm your place and your preferred session.For all the updated strand policy documents, application form and more information please visit the FIF intranet pages.

The Fusion Investment Fund is managed by Samantha Leahy-Harland and the Interim Administrator is Dianne Goodman. Please direct all initial enquiries to Fusion Fund.

Cyber Security Seminar: Incident Management (David Parker, Bournemouth University Cyber Security Unit)

I am delighted to announce that our next Interdisciplinary Cyber Security Seminar will take place on Tuesday, 29th October at 5pm. The seminar will take place in EB202 in the Executive Business Centre, and will be open to all. Our seminars are approachable, and require nothing more than a general interest in security, and an enquiring mind.

Our speaker will be David Parker from the Bournemouth University Cyber Security Unit. David is an experienced Information Security specialist with 21 years in government level security. For 17 years, he was the head of a UK Government CERT and has a global reputation for his knowledge and expertise amongst the CERT incident management community.

Abstract: The term CERT or Computer Emergency Response Team, in relation to cyber security, is increasingly mentioned in the media by those who have little understanding of what the term means or its functions. It is even seen by some as a panacea to many cyber security problems. The purpose of the presentation is to provide attendees with a basic understanding of what a CERT is, some of the associated operational issues and why more CERTs are increasingly needed in a global interconnected society.