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European Technology Platforms set for a revamp

EU

The industrial partners of the European Technology Platforms (ETPs) are exploring how they can revamp ETPs to create a better fit with Horizon 2020.

There are currently 36 ETPs, which were created in 2003 as industry-led thematic groups that define research agendas for Europe in their respective fields. Joining ETPs in your research area is an important strategic move as you will meet academics and businesses leaders with complimentary research interests, allowing you to form consortiums to bid for EU research funding your ETP has recommended.

We know for Horizon 2020 that industry, academia and users will need to work closely together to speed up innovation. With this in mind t is possible that the ETPs will be broken down into more targeted clusters which address Horizon 2020’s focus on tackling problems and exploiting opportunities.

I would advise joining an ETP so you can keep up to date with how these new clusters may operate. Instructions for joining can be found on this previous blogpost.

 

Fusion Investment Fund – call deadline 1 July 2012!

Fusion

The Fusion Investment Fund exists to support a range of practical initiatives and pump priming funds around Fusion.

Last month we launched three strands of the Fund:

We are now seeking applications to each of the strands. The deadline is 1 July 2012.

The panels have been appointed and are meeting in early June to agree specific criteria and FAQs for each of the strands.

Sam Furr joined BU today as the FIF Administrator and will be promoting the Fund over the coming months.

We are currently arranging a number of proposal writing sessions to support staff writing applications to the Fund. Further details on these sessions will be added to the Blog shortly.

If you have any queries about the Fund please email FusionFund@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Interesting Talk Next Wednesday: Evolving Simple and Complex Structures To Combine Predictors

Featured academics, Uncategorized

Our next speaker of the STRC seminar series will be Dr Athanasios Tsakonas. The talk will take place next Wednesday, 23rd of May in Lawrence Lecture Theatre at 16:00 h (please click for a map)

In my personal view, this is a very interesting talk for those of us working on any kind of predictive approaches. Please find below more details.

Title:
Evolving Simple and Complex Structures To Combine Predictors

Abstract:
The popularity of ensemble systems in real-world problems is a natural result of their effectiveness for a range of tasks, where single predictors or classifiers can overfit or provide weak solutions. A primary property in ensemble systems, contributing to their ability to generalize better is a combination of individual performances and diversity among individual learners. This lecture presents effective approaches for the generation of multi-level, multi-component combined predictors, through a grammar driven evolutionary framework. Several grammar schemes are presented for the production of hierarchical and fuzzy rule based ensembles. Candidate architectures are investigated in terms of data resampling, and different training approaches are tested, involving ensemble diversity measures

This is a short curriculum of our speaker:

Dr. Athanasios Tsakonas received his M.Eng in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens and his M.Sc. and Ph.D from University of the Aegean. His Ph.D thesis was “Computational Intelligence in Complex Managerial and Financial Domains – The Evolutionary Neural Logic Network Paradigm”. Athanasios has gathered strong experience in the analysis, design and development of specialized computational intelligence systems, with applications in the financial and medical sector. His experience includes participation in European and domestic research projects (such as BOEMIE, SHARE, EUNITE, INFER, etc.), occupation of related research positions in top research centers (such as N.C.S.R. Demokritos) or in the private sector (banks, software development companies, etc.), as well as teaching related courses in universities (Aristotle University of Salonica, Demokritus University of Thrace, etc.). His research interests include computational intelligence, data mining, genetic programming and complex systems. He has published 1 book and more than 45 articles in total, in international scientific journals, conferences, or as book chapters. He is with the Smart Technology Research Centre, Bournemouth University, since January 2011.

Best Wishes, Emili

ESRC Call for Evaluating the Business Impact of Social Science

Funding opportunities

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is seeking to commission an evaluation study to assess the ways in which social science research and the knowledge and skills of social scientists can have impact in business. The study will begin by assessing the business impact of social science through the work of a small number of Business/Management Schools. It will then track the career paths of social science doctoral graduates from these Schools, and investigate in greater depth the contributions of those working in business.

The aims of the evaluation are as follows:

Part 1 – Impact of Business/Management Schools

  • identify the range and nature of business impacts resulting from the work of the Business/Management Schools
  • evaluate the processes through which business impacts may be or have been generated, through research and related activities (including academic/business collaborations, knowledge exchange and business engagement initiatives, networking and dissemination)
  • develop an understanding of the contributions of social science within local, regional and national contexts, and the factors that promote or inhibit impact within these contexts
  • identify and analyse the determinants of the impacts identified (ie why and how impact has been generated)
  • identify good practice and lessons learned, to support the development of impact generation within the business sector
  • inform the development of methodology for future impact evaluation studies in this area.

Part 2 – Impact of social scientist with PhDs working within business

  • identify the employment destinations of social science doctoral graduates from the three Schools
  • identify the range and nature of impacts that social scientists with PhDs working in business have contributed to
  • identify and analyse the determinants of the impacts (ie why and how impact has been generated)
  • explore impact processes and potential impacts, and identify any barriers to impact generation
  • develop an understanding of businesses’ appreciation and need for the higher level skills associated with PhD training
  • identify good practice and lessons for enhancing the contribution that social science doctoral graduates can make to business
  • inform the ESRC’s investment in PhD training with a view to maximising future impacts.

Further details, and a copy of the full specification are available from the Research Councils UK Shared Services Centre Ltd. Please contact Jonathan Smith by email: jonathan.smith@ssc.rcuk.ac.uk or by telephone: 01235 446394 (Ref PS120008).

The deadline for submission of bids is 11.00 on 11 June 2012.

 The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.

Who are the FP7 Evaluators?

EU

The list of FP7 Evaluators who have reviewed applications between 2007 and 2010 is available on the EC webpages. The published lists of evaluators can now be seen for the FP7 calls up to and including the 2010 calls. The lists are organised according to FP7 programme, and the names, institutions, nationality and gender of the individuals are displayed. You too can register to be an evaluator which will give you excellent experience in how the EC works. You can register here.

BU Researcher Development Programme from May to June 2012

PG research

Updated sessions for the BU Researcher Development Programme from May to June 2012 are below. Booking is essential as places are limited – details of how to book are listed under each session.

Statistics Surgeries: Individual statistics advice with Dr John Beavis

 Public Engagement Workshop

  • Outline:  The workshop will look at What Public Engagement is; Why does it matter?; How to do it: Engagement in practice; Internal support for creating a supportive environment for engagement
  • Date: Wednesday 23 May 2012
  • Time: 9.30 am – 11.30 am
  • Room: PG22
  • Facilitator: Dr Rebecca Edwards
  • Booking: graduateschool@bournemouth.ac.uk

Practice-Led Research

  • Outline: What are the fundamentals of practice-led research?
  • Date: Wednesday 23 May 2012
  • Time: 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
  • Room: PG22 Poole House, Talbot Campus
  • Facilitator: Dr Stephen Bell and Associate Professor Neal White
  • Booking: graduateschool@bournemouth.ac.uk

Intellectual Property & Copyright

  • Outline: Understanding IPR and Copyright in relation to your research
  • Date: Wednesday 30 May 2012
  • Time: 15:00 pm –17:00 pm
  • Room: PG22 Poole House, Talbot Campus
  • Facilitator: Dr Sukhpreet Singh
  • Booking: graduateschool@bournemouth.ac.uk

Academic Writing Skills Course

  • Outline: This workshop covers essential good practice in writing, editing techniques and methods of improving organisation
  • Date: Monday 18 June 2012
  • Time: 09.30 am – 4.30 pm (lunch will be provided)
  • Room: P401, Poole House, Talbot Campus
  • Facilitator: Sue Mitchell (external visitor)
  • Booking: graduateschool@bournemouth.ac.uk  FULLY BOOKED – places still available for the same workshop on 19 June (see below)

Academic Writing Skills Course

  • Outline: This workshop covers essential good practice in writing, editing techniques and methods of improving organisation
  • Date: Tuesday 19 June 2012
  • Time: 09.30 am – 4.30 pm (lunch will be provided)
  • Room: EBC704, Executive Business Centre, Lansdowne Campus
  • Facilitator: Sue Mitchell (external visitor)
  • Booking: graduateschool@bournemouth.ac.uk There are limited places available for this workshop, so book early to avoid disappointment!

Postgraduate Research Conference

  • Outline: This annual conference is designed to showcase the best of BU’s postgraduate research and to provide a unique opportunity for PGRs to present their work within a learning environment. Our multi-disciplinary conference will allow for cross-school interaction as well as opportunities for collaboration, where appropriate. Full details can be found here
  • Date: Thursday 28 June 2012
  • Time: 09.30 am – 4.30 pm (lunch will be provided)
  • Room: Thomas Hardy Suite
  • Booking: graduateschool@bournemouth.ac.uk  

Details of further workshops coming soon!

Details will be published on the BU Research Blog, so subscribe today to the BU Research Blog to keep in touch with current events to avoid the disappointment of missing out!

First grant proposal submitted

Awarded & submitted bids, BU research

I joined DEC as a lecturer about a year ago. My research focuses on mining streaming data. We are building predictive models (e.g. to recommend an interesting text to a user) that can diagnose themselves and automatically adapt to changes in data over time.

This week I submitted my first grant proposal as a principal investigator. When I was asked to share my experiences on preparing the proposal, I thought I’d rather wait for the outcome. Still, in this post I will share some experiences and tips for those planning to apply for their first grant, which I think are valid no matter if my proposal gets funded.

Start early. Preparing the proposal took about six months. I started drafting the proposal back in October-November. In November I attended an excellent internal workshop on bidding given by Dr. Martin Pickard. I highly recommend to attend his workshops if you have an opportunity. They give you an insight perspective on bidding processes.

Decide about the funding program and stick to it (right after you have an idea about the content and potential collaborators). I have some experience in preparing proposals at my previous institutions (not as a PI, including successful bids), The content requirements seem to vary a lot. So you need to tailor your proposal. I picked the First Grant Scheme within EPSRC, which is a very nice option for early career researchers. The proposals are evaluated only against other early career researchers and no previous experience as a PI is expected.

Decide what you want to get from the bid. A research assistant? Equipment? Contact RKE OPS right from the start, you may be surprised how little fits under the estimated budget, because there are overheads. For instance, the funding cap for the First Grant within EPSRC is 125 TGBP, which effectively means that you can budget a research assistant for up to one year, some of your time, maybe some equipment or some traveling and that’s it. RKE OPS will give you advices on the financial side and help you to do your budget. Your budget restricts how much content you can plan for the proposal to be realistic and feasible, so this should be one of the first decisions to make.

Get as much feedback as you can. During the process I got three reviews from the internal review process (the RPRS, contact Caroline O’Kane), multiple feedbacks from Caroline herself, feedbacks from my line manager, feedbacks from the organizer and the participants of an external workshop on bidding that I attended, and from Dr. Martin Pickard by phone as a follow up of the workshop in November. All this feedback was extremely valuable and helped me to shape my proposal. That also gave a perspective how people from different fields see the proposal and which parts need to be clarified. I must say incorporating the feedback was much more challenging than writing the first draft. Naturally, there were quite some opposing comments and contradicting views by different people. First I was confused, but later I found that extremely valuable, as that helped me to form a big picture of the bidding philosophy.

I’ve learned a lot during this process. I am very grateful to all the reviewers and the research support people for their support. Thanks!

BU student identifies Legionella pneumophila in windscreen washer fluid

BU research

Matthew Palmer [one of the BU students on the MSc Public Health programme within HSC] has just published part of his dissertation as a letter to the editor of the European Journal of Epidemiology. Matthew is reporting and confirming, for the first time, the identification of the microorganism (Legionella pneumophila) in water obtained from the windscreen washer fluid of a car without added screenwash.

Legionellosis or Legionnaires’ disease is a severe bacterial pneumonia caused by Legionella pneumophila acquired through droplet inhalation. Its public health significance lies primarily in the potential for large outbreaks of the disease such as the 1976 outbreak at an American Legionnaires’ conference in Philadelphia from which the disease derives its name. According to the Health Protection Agency there are, on average, 237 cases a year in England and Wales.

This is the first time that Legionella pneumophila has been identified in windscreen washer fluid and the first time that screenwash has been shown to be effective against its growth. With this in mind, we felt that Matthew should waste no time in getting this into the literature by starting publishing his findings. We envisage that there will be a fair amount of interest in Matthew’s discovery, especially within the public health world.

Matthew is currently working as a senior health protection practitioner at the Health Protection Agency and he has been doing his MSc degree at BU on part-time basis under the supervision of Professor Ahmed Khattab, Vanessa Heaslip and the MSc Public Health team.

You can access Matthew’s paper via this link: http://www.springerlink.com/content/u024qt22g77820t7/

Read more about Legionnaires’ Disease on the NHS website: http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/legionnaires-disease/Pages/Introduction.aspx

Prof Ahmed Khattab, HSC

Innovative post graduate research in the School of Tourism

Yesterday saw an opportunity for PhD students from the School of Tourism to update colleagues on the progress of their research through a day conference based on a series of interactive poster sessions.  18 students presented their work on a wide range of subjects (see below) and then submitted themselves to questioning and interrogation from the audience.  This built on the presentations that student had done at the recent Post Graduate Tourism Conference at Exeter University and really highlighted the breadth and depth of research in this area within the University.

The Posters that were presented are listed below and some pictures of the day can be found on Dr Miguel Moital’s blog at, http://miguelmoital.blogspot.co.uk/

  • Zornitza YOVCHEVA – Information system design of Smartphone augmented reality for tourism
  • Ivana RIHOVA – Consumers as producers: customer-to-customer co-creation in the context of festival experiences
  • Nicolas GREGORI Y RIBES- Technology and social media enabled service development and design
  • Barbara NEUHOFER – Technology enhanced tourist experience 
  • John FOTIS – The impact of social media on consumer behaviour; focus on holiday travel
  • Gayathri KANAGASAPATHY – The heritage experience, a visitor perspective: a comparative study of heritage destinations in Malaysia
  • Gde Indr BHASKARA – The local community as a stakeholder group and its participation in UNESCO’s World Heritage Nomination process: Jatiluwih Rice Fields, Bali, Indonesia
  • Emma KAVANAGH – A narrative enquiry into the experience of maltreatment in high performance sport
  • Sean BEER – Human perceptions of the authenticity of food
  • Andrew HARES – Tourist understanding of and engagement with the climate change impacts of holiday
  • Julia HIBBERT – Tourism travel and identity
  • Jan HUTCHINGS – ‘In the Swim‘ – an ethnography on Masters swimming
  • Stephen CALVER – The influence of mass media on countryside leisure visit behaviour compared
  • Gregory KAPUSCINSKI – Tourism, terrorism, political instability and the media
  • Joanna HAWKES – ‘My Bones Won’t Break Me’: an auto-ethnographical exploration of premenopausal osteoporosis in a physically active female‘
  • Pamela WATSON – Grab Your Fork’: a netnography of a foodie blog and its community
  • Stacy WALL – Synergies in public health and tourism; an organisational ethnography
  • Amanda WILDING – The diffusion and adoption of sport psychology by track and field coaches

Wellcome Trust call for Small Arts Awards

Funding opportunities

Arts Awards support imaginative and experimental arts projects that investigate biomedical science.

The scheme aims to:

  • stimulate interest, excitement and debate about biomedical science through the arts
  • examine the social, cultural and ethical contexts of biomedical science
  • encourage new ways of thinking
  • promote high-quality interdisciplinary practice and collaborations between arts, science and education practice
  • support formal and informal learning.

The scheme is open to a wide range of people, including artists, scientists, curators, film makers, writers, producers, directors, academics, science communicators, teachers, arts workers and education officers.

Your project must involve the creation of new artistic work and have biomedical scientific input into the process, either through a scientist taking on an advisory role or through direct collaboration. This expert may be from an ethics, science or history background, but must be an expert in the area of biomedical science you are investigating.

If your proposed project has an artistic dimension but does not involve the creation of new work, then it may be more appropriate to apply for a People/Society Award.

You can apply for funding at two levels:

Small Arts Awards (small to medium-sized projects – up to and including £30 000)
Funding can support the development of new project ideas, deliver small productions or workshops, investigate and experiment with new methods of engagement through the arts, or develop new collaborative relationships between artists and scientists.

Large Arts Awards (larger projects – above £30 000)
This funding can support full or part production costs for high-quality large arts projects that aim to have significant impact on the public’s engagement with biomedical science.

Projects that are not eligible for Arts Award support include health promotion, education or campaign projects, arts projects for therapeutic purposes, straight documentaries, work that is purely illustrative, and projects dealing with non-biomedical sciences.

You should refer to the application guidelines, Grant Conditions and evaluation guidelines before completing your application.

Complete a full application form, via the Trust’s eGrants online application system (select the ‘Small Arts Awards’ form in the ‘Full application’ drop-down menu), and submit it at any time before the deadline of 27th July 2012.  Funding decisions will be made approximately three months after the relevant deadline.

 The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.

EPSRC Call for Feasibility Study Proposals: Through-life engineering services

Funding opportunities

Summary

The EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Through-life Engineering Services is offering funding for feasibility studies in the field of through-life engineering services. Through-life Engineering Services are technical services that are necessary to guarantee required and predictable performance of a complex engineering system throughout its expected operational life with the optimum whole life cost. The feasibility studies should examine a subject area in the field, review activity in it, identify key challenges and research questions not currently being addressed and develop full proposals for funding by established routes. Awardees are expected to attract significant new industrial support and the subsequent major award will form a strategic part of the Centre activities. Awards are limited to £20,000 at 80% FEC and to a maximum duration of six months.

How to apply

Feasibility study applications should be submitted to Professor Rajkumar Roy, the National Centre Director (director@through-life-engineering-services.org), and copied to Andy Shaw, the National Centre Manager (manager@through-life-engineering-services.org).

Key dates

Activity Date
First Call Launched 14 May 212
Closing date for applications 30 June 2012
Evaluation of applications by the Centre Executive Committee                13 July 2012
Grants announced and feedback given by 30 July 2012
Expected start of the projects by 15th August 2012
 
Documents to download
Contact:

Stephanie Lewis

The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.

EPSRC call ‘Design for Wellbeing: Ageing and Mobility in the Built Environment’

Funding opportunities

                             

Summary

EPSRC is leading a call with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and invites proposals from interdisciplinary consortia for evidence led research into ageing and mobility in the built environment. This call is being run under the auspices of the Lifelong Health and Wellbeing (LLHW) cross-council ageing research programme which supports research addressing factors throughout life that influence health and wellbeing in older age.

This call is seeking to create a step change in interdisciplinary engineering, social science and design research for wellbeing in the built environment. There is up to £7M available (EPSRC up to £4M, ESRC up to £2M and AHRC up to £1M) to support a maximum of five large multi-disciplinary projects of up to three years duration.

Prospective applicants will need to complete an Expression of Interest form by 12:00 on Monday 10 September 2012.

The expressions of interest will be assessed by an expert short listing panel in September 2012 and those aligned appropriately with the assessment criteria will be invited to submit full proposals. The deadline for submitting an Expression of Interest is 12:00 on 10 September 2012. Those invited to submit a full proposal will be notified by the end of September 2012. The deadline for the submission of full proposals will be 28 November 2012, and will be peer-reviewed in March 2013 with the expectation that funding decisions will be made by the end of March 2013.

Timetable

There are two stages in the assessment process. This call invites Expressions of Interest (EoIs) which will be assessed by a shortlisting panel in September 2012. Shortlisted applicants will then be invited to submit full proposals.

Activity Date/Time
Call for Expressions of Interest May 2012
Call for Expressions of Interest submission deadline 12:00 noon on 10 September 2012
Applicants informed of outcome and full proposals invited        26 September 2012
Deadline for submission of full proposals 16:00 on 28 November 2012
Prioritisation panel March 2013
 
Documents to download
 
The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.

Book Citation Index for WoK – 3 month Trial – take part now!

BU research, Publishing

BU have just enabled a trial of Web of Knowledge Book Citation Index.  It will last for 3 months, until 6th August.

The Book Citation Index allows you to search for books and book chapters using all of the fields and features available in Web of Science. They have added two new indexes to Web of Science:

  • Book Citation Index– Science (BKCI-S) — 2005-present
  • Book Citation Index– Social Sciences & Humanities (BKCI-SSH) — 2005-present

Key features available when searching for books and book chapters include:

  • View citation counts captured for books and book chapters for Citing Articles, Cited References, Related Records, and Shared Records for all available years.
  • View citation counts provided to book sources from journal articles and conference-proceedings that cite books and book chapters and vice-versa.

Whilst we don’t currently have a subscription, we are interested in seeing what the coverage is like for BU academics, particularly in the humanities and social sciences that have traditionally experienced less comprehensive coverage by citation databases, although science books are also covered.   Please note, not all published books appear here, with concentration on purely research books rather than text books or more populist titles.

There are 143 items listed as having BU Authors:

http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/library/resources/w.html

Please have a look at what WoK can offer and provide feedback to Emma Crowley: e-mail: ecrowley@bournemouth.ac.uk web site: Library and Learning Support

The pursuit of mud

BU research, News from the PVC

I am fortunate to have been let out of the office and into the sunshine this week to pursue a small piece of data collection I have wanted to do for ages as part of my NERC grant.  It involves standing knee deep in mud!

I have been working for a while on the control of substrate on footprint typology and believe firmly in working in natural depositional environments to do so when I can.  In recent years the team has done a lot of work on various beaches looking at the control of moisture content and walking speed on print form and linking this to plantar pressure data taken in the lab.  We have also done some really cool work in Namibia on footprint morphology and substrate properties, which one of my colleagues recently reported at the Annual American Physical Anthropology conference in Portland.  But testing the limits of print preservation needs some real mud!

Plotting BU’s research strategy and REF submission is no match in terms of fun when one could be wading bare foot and knee deep in mud, although the two feel quite similar at times!  This week I am collecting data from a range of estuarine muds – different grains sizes, moisture contents to explore the limits of footprint formation and typological variance.  Visiting different sites we make a trail of prints and then photograph each print, perhaps 30 or 40 times, from different angles and perspectives to provide the data to build three dimensional models using photogrammetry.  We will then combine these models to create an average print and compare this to the sedimentological data we are also collecting at each site.  In the past I have used an optical laser scanner to analyse foot prints, but no one in their right mind would let me loose with one of those in this mud!  So it’s a week of mud for me and I will see you all back in the office next week.

 

Got colleagues in China? This new education cooperation agreement could really work in your favour…

EU

A new education component of the EU-China “people-to-people dialogue” agreement was recently announced .  The agreement aims to make China more attractive for European students by setting up scholarship programmes, increase the mutual recognition of diplomas, and set up joint schools such as the China-Europe Institute of Clean and Renewable Energy. The European Commission will also encourage Chinese researchers to take part in the Marie Curie Programme for researcher exchange.