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BU FIF SUCCESS AND ACTIVITIES

BU visiting professor Chinnakurli Ramesh has been visiting Sustainable Design Research Centre within the School of Design, Engineering & Computing from 5th November ‘til 8th December 2012. His visit is funded by the BU FIF initiative awarded to Dr Zulfiqar Khan.  Prof Ramesh is a senior academic at PES IT Bangalore. His research interests are Surface Engineering, Tribology and Nanotechnology.

He has been actively involved in collaborative academic activities with the School. He is participating in level C & H Design Engineering education through Design Methods & Projects and Advanced Technology & Innovation units.

BU (Zulfiqar Khan, Mark Hadfield) and PES IT (Prof. Ramesh) and Visvesvaraya Technological University (Prof. Kori & Prof. Rangappa) have jointly submitted an EPSRC – DST  research funding application in collaboration with industrial partners such as Bharat Heavy Electrical Limited & Ingersoll Rand and  research partners Gas Turbine Research & Establishment  &  National Aerospace Laboratories  from India.

Prof. Ramesh and Dr. Zulfiqar Khan have jointly contributed seven papers to International Conferences in STLE 2012, the upcoming STLE 2013, recently concluded AMPT-2012, and Contact and Surface 2013 in the area of coatings, tribology and material processing. Prof. Ramesh & Dr. Khan are participating in joint journal publication as well.

Prof. Ramesh had useful meetings with the School Execs including Prof. Jim Roach, DDRE&I Prof. Mark Hadfield, DDE Dr. Xavier Velay and AD Dr. Tania Humphries-Smith in terms of furthering the existing collaboration in education, research and professional practice.

Mobile eye-tracking in freely moving participants

In July, Dr. Julie Kirkby and Dr. Jan Wiener were awarded a small grant from the Research Development Fund entitled: Mobile eye-tracking in freely moving participants. The aims of the project were (i.) to develop an in-depth understanding of the potential of the state-of-the-art mobile eye-tracker system that the Psychology Group purchased earlier in the year; (ii) to develop new experimental paradigms to use alongside mobile eye-tracking; (iii) to collect first data that will be published in international peer reviewed journals and that is essential for preparing future research proposals; (iv) to establish Psychology Group’s expertise in the emerging field of mobile eye-tracking.

In order to achieve these goals two mobile eye-tracking scenarios was used:

Working memory in the classroom: Poor working memory skills are relatively common in childhood and have a substantial impact on children’s learning. We have developed a novel experimental paradigm combining the mobile eye-tracker with a large field of view virtual reality setup to test the impact of working memory skills on viewing and search behaviour. We have tested a group of young adults at BU and then moved the setup to Avonbourne School in Bournemouth to test a group of school students.

 

Wayfinding: In a pilot study in Poole hospital, people’s gaze behaviour was recorded while they were asked tofind their way through this complex real-world settings. This was the first experiment in which the mobile eye-tracker was used in an actual navigation experiment. The experience and expertise gained through this work has been crucial to develop follow up studies that are currently been carried out in Poole hospital.

 

The small grant allowed us:-

  • … to establish novel experimental paradigms with mobile eye-tracking
  • … to record first data using mobile eye-tracking. In order to publish results from the experiments carried out in this project, we are currently completing the data sets
  • … to develop in-depth knowledge about the mobile eye-tracker which has helped us to develop further mobile eye-tracking projects, for example in Poole hospital
  • … to establish close contact with Avonbourne School in Bournemouth. This contact is now also used for other projects.
  • … to establish a close and ongoing collaboration between JK and JW.
  • … to establish a formal collaboration between the Centre for Visual Cognition at Southampton University and the Psychology Research Group at BU

For further information, please contact Dr. Julie Kirkby or Dr. Jan Wiener in the Psychology Research Group.

Book now on our effective networking workshop

Networking is crucial in academic life and critical for participation in EU funding. In today’s world, to develop a strong academic career, publications aren’t enough; network relations can play a huge role.  Being well connected and carrying out research in cooperative partnerships significantly increases your chances of attaining a professorship and will allow you to grow your research career by participating in a range of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary projects.

Networking can be daunting and exhausting. To help you identify key players and how best to approach them as well as learning  how to network effectively with a range of stakeholders, expert Dr Martin Pickard of Grantcraft will deliver 3 hours of  fantastic guidance in this session on Talbot campus.  Booking is essential through the Staff Development website.

Entrepreneurship & Economic Growth Research Theme meeting on 29 November!

The Entrepreneurship & Economic Growth Research Theme is holding its second meeting of the term on Thursday 29 November. The seminar will be held in the Executive Business Centre at 12:00 – 13:30.  Lunch will be provided. The meeting will be informal and will be used as an opportunity to discuss current research and ideas for cross-collaboration.

We look forward to seeing you there – please confirm your attendance to Nikki Gloyns: ngloyns@bournemouth.ac.uk so that we can book lunch for you!

Changes to Research Council research grants administration

Guidance

Changes to final reporting

In a move to reduce the amount of effort required of grant holders and peer reviewers, and building on the policy of consolidating outcomes reporting through online systems, the Research Councils have decided to scale back their requirements for final reporting on grants.

For Councils other than BBSRC and ESRC, most grants with an end date on or after 1st January 2013 will no longer require a final report. ESRC will for now be continuing with its end of award reporting process and BBSRC intends to phase out final reports over the coming months. Some grant schemes within the other Councils may also continue to require reports and in these cases a final report request will be issued in the normal way. But, in the majority of cases, a final report will not be required.

Grants ending before 1 st January 2013 will continue to require a final report in the normal way, unless this requirement has previously been waived.

Changes to research grant terms and conditions

Some changes have been made to the core terms and conditions of Research Council grants, affecting grants announced from 1 October 2012. These are:

GC7 (Extensions) – grants may now be extended for up to 12 months, in total, as a result of maternity, paternity or adoption leave.

GC2 (Research Governance), under Misconduct and Conflicts of Interest – inclusion of a requirement that the Research Organisation has in place procedures for governing good research practice, and for investigating and reporting unacceptable research conduct, that meets the requirements set out in the 2012 Concordat to Support Research Integrity (as well as the RCUK Policy and Guidelines on Governance of Good Research Conduct).

Improvements to peer-review feedback

In a first step towards improving the transparency of the peer review process, the Councils are making changes to the Je-S system in November that will enable the decision provided to grant applicants on the outcome of their proposal to be made available, through Je-S, to research organisation administrative offices.

Environmental Change & Biodiversity Research Theme seminar on Thursday!

The Environmental Change & Biodiversity Research Theme is holding its second seminar of the term on Thursday 22 November. The seminar will be held in TAG01 (Tolpuddle Annex) at 1200. Tea and coffee and biscuits will be provided.

The seminar will be quite informal and will be used as an opportunity to discuss ideas that are in development as well as presenting completed results.

The next Environmental Change & Biodiversity seminar will be held on 13 December in Christchurch House CG13 at 1200. Richard Stillman is the theme leader, so please let him know if you would like to present at one of the upcoming seminars.

Seen But Seldom Heard

Young people working to change perceptions of disability through poetry and performance

A collaboration between the Media School (Dr Caroline Hodges), the School of Health and Social Care (Wendy Cutts & Dr Lee-Ann Fenge) and Victoria Education Centre, Poole.

In February of this year, we were awarded funding from the BU Fusion Fund to begin work on the ‘Seen But Seldom Heard’ project. ‘Seen but Seldom Heard’ is an innovative ‘arts activism’ project through which young people living with a physical disability (aged 14-19 years) can engage in creative activities designed to encourage them to reflect on their lived experiences and to empower them to challenge societal perceptions of disability through poetry and performance. The performance poetry work which has been supported by professional poets, Liv Torc and Jonny Fluffypunk, also offers the group of budding young poets a ‘voice’ to participate in conversations regarding policies and practices which affect them.

The project has so far resulted in a series of co-produced performances including a Paralympics venue in Weymouth as part of the Cultural Olympiad supporting headline performance poet, John Hegley, and The Bridport Open Book Festival, the largest performance poetry event in the country. The performances were an important way to engage with the general public and positively influence perceptions of disability and we hope to stage similar events during 2013. We have also produced a book of the group’s poetry (the sale of which has paid for an additional 2 poetry workshops at the school) and a full-length documentary will be premiered at BU on the afternoon of December 7th as part of Disability History Month.

There have been a number of beneficiaries from the work. First and foremost the young people who have taken part, together with their peer group at Victoria Education Centre. The project has had such a profound impact upon pupils and staff that the school is raising funds for a ‘poet in residence’ to support future performance poetry activity. In direct response to posting a ‘taster’ of the Seen But Seldom Heard documentary on YouTube (attracting 1,500 views to date from as far afield as Australia, the US and South America), we have received emails and comments from others with direct experience of disability, disability activists, educationalists and care providers thanking and encouraging the young poets and the project team for providing aspiration and positive role models.

In the next phase of the project, which we hope to commence as soon as funding is secured, we also plan to develop a ‘live schools tour’ and audio-visual educational package for use in secondary schools and youth clubs to raise awareness amongst young people of what it is like to live with a physical disability. In addition to public engagement and education activity, we are also disseminating the project outcomes and methodology through seminars and conference presentations during 2013 and journal articles.

A short preview to the full-length documentary can be viewed at: http://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/seen-but-seldom-heard/2012/09/25/documentary-taster/

For more information on the December 7th film screening and to confirm your attendance please visit: 

http://studentportal.bournemouth.ac.uk/news/local-assets/events/Disability%20History%20Month%202012.pdf

Samples of the group’s poetry can be found at: http://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/seen-but-seldom-heard

Qualitative Research in Sport and Physical Activity

A new research methods textbook in sport and physical activity, authored by three academics at Bournemouth University, is published this month. Published by Sage, “Qualitative Research in Sport and Physical Activity” has been written by Ian Jones, Lorraine Brown and Immy Holloway. The text builds on growing interest in qualitative methods within the discipline, and uses a growing body of literature based on qualitative research in Sport and Physical Activity . This is the second sport-related research methods textbook to emerge from Bournemouth University, following Research Methods for Sport Studies, also co-authored by Ian Jones. Published by Routledge, that text recently sold its 20,000th copy worldwide.

Designed especially for students in sport and physical activity, this book provides a detailed guide to planning, undertaking, and writing up qualitative research. Opening with a discussion of the main traits of qualitative inquiry and its use in Sport and Physical Activity, the text provides an accessible overview of qualitative research, using numerous examples to bring the text alive. The book is designed to be essential reading for undergraduate and Masters students carrying out a qualitative research project in sport and physical activity and for PhD students looking to refresh their knowledge.

Latest BU REF Highlight Report now available

REF Subjects, Research assessment

The latest BU REF Highlight Report (#13) is now available for BU staff to download. It covers the period from August to October 2012.

Features in this report include information about:

  • The Review Panel Meeting cycle for the Summer Mock 2012 and the feedback from it;
  • The dissemination of the BU REF Code of Practice, the BU REF FAQs and BU staff circumstances disclosure form, which is also closely linked to the staff circumstances disclosure exercise with an initial deadline of the 31 October 2012
  • The development of BRIAN in line with testing the REF Submission Pilot System;
  • Links to the latest official REF documents.                                                                                                                                                                                      

You can access your copy of the report from the following location on the I-drive (just copy and paste the following into Windows Explorer): I:\R&KEO\Public\RDU\REF\REF preparations\REF highlight reports

Fusion Investment Fund – Applying for BUDI secondment

Funding opportunities, Fusion, Guidance

What is being offered?

The Study Leave Committee (Fusion Investment Fund) will fund five dedicated secondment opportunities for BU staff to get involved with The BU Dementia Institute (BUDI).  Staff can be bought out of their current roles for up to 6 months to get involved directly with BUDI. 

Who are BUDI looking for?

You don’t have to be a health care specialist to participate, they need psychologists, education experts, marketing and media experts, business and leadership professionals, economists, engineers, data analysts, project managers and computer scientists.  It is truly cross-disciplinary and an ideal way for staff to gain experience of research and knowledge exchange bids.

How to apply

Potential applicants are encouraged to contact the Director of BUDI Professor Anthea Innes and can apply before the 1st December deadline via the Fusion Investment Fund application form details of which can be found on the staff portal. 

When you make your online application please mark it clearly ‘BUDI Secondment’ as it will be sent to Anthea Innes for her endorsement before being submitted to the Study Leave Committee.

Two internal EU funding schemes launched today!

 The BU EU Showcase event today is providing the platform to launch the second round of our EUADS and EUNF schemes!

The EU Academic Development Scheme (EUADS) is a unique scheme developed to kick start your career in EU research; it’s open to all BU academic staff relatively inexperienced in gaining EU funding.  The EUADS will help you build up to making a submission by providing unlimited 1-2-1 support from an expert EU bid writer, group mentoring and unlimited assistance in actually writing your application over a 12 month period. As if this training wasn’t fantastic in itself, and the supportive culture of being a cohort undertaking the journey of EU funding extremely appealing, the EUADS also includes an individual fund. Each successful participant will be provided with grants as requested totalling up to a whopping £3k each by to spend on activities supporting bid development, such as:
• Travel with the intent of networking
• Conference attendance with the intent of networking
• Pilot research work
• Fieldwork
• Attendance at external networking events leading to collaborative research proposals
• Meetings with external organisations to establish collaborations
• Preparation of specialist material or data
• Replacement teaching 

You can read more on this scheme in the EUADS Policy Document  and make a submission using the  EUADS Application Form; the deadline is 18.12.12

The EU Networking Fund (EUNF) is open to any BU academics who want to network across Europe with a view to finding collaborators. We have a pot of money to support this scheme, and the fund will end when the pot is empty.
You can apply for support for a range of activities relating directly to networking, such as:
• Travel with the intent of networking
• Conference attendance with the intent of networking
• Attendance at external networking events leading to collaborative research proposals
• Meetings with external organisations to establish collaborations.

You can read more on this scheme in the EUNF Policy Document and make a submission using the EUNF Application Form; there is no deadline.

You can search the blog for many wonderful stories from our academics who have received support from these schemes. And don’t forget we also currently have the BU in Brussels scheme open until 28.11.12 and the Fusion Investment Fund Erasmus Staff Mobility scheme open until 01.12.12.

There are plenty of EU initiatives to support you here at BU, so don’t miss out!

 

Expert training at BU on the art of networking

Networking is crucial in academic life and critical for participation in EU funding. In today’s world, to develop a strong academic career, publications aren’t enough; network relations can play a huge role.  Being well connected and carrying out research in cooperative partnerships significantly increases your chances of attaining a professorship and will allow you to grow your research career by participating in a range of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary projects.

Networking can be daunting and exhausting. To help you identify key players and how best to approach them as well as learning  how to network effectively with a range of stakeholders, expert Dr Martin Pickard of Grantcraft will deliver 3 hours of  fantastic guidance in this session on Talbot campus.  Booking is essential through the Staff Development website.

Twitter – what’s the point?

We’ve written a lot about Twitter in previous blog posts and the benefits of using it to support and enhance your research (you can read more here: Twitter posts). Academics across the world are using Twitter to support their research through, for example, sharing papers and research findings, asking questions and providing advice and guidance, networking and establishing links, keeping up to date with what is being discussed by peers in areas of interest, and undertaking research. Twitter provides a free and easy to use platform from which you can do all of these things from your office, using a laptop, or even using you tablet/phone, and it is an excellent way of making connections and expanding your awareness of research being undertaken in your field, as well as enhacing the impact of your own research in your field. In this post I’m going to look at two ways Twitter can seriously improve your research and your experience as a researcher through 1) using Twitter to garner opinions and obtain guidance and, 2) using Twitter to enhance your publication impact.

Using Twitter to garner opinions / obtain guidance – Twitter can be used to crowd-source advice quickly and effectively on an important topic. A recent post on this topic featured on The Contemplative Mammoth blog (post: Crowd-Sourced Advice for Writing your #firstgrant) in which the author, Jacquelyn Gill, created a hashtag, #firstgrant, and asked for advice from her Twitter followers on how to write a first grant application. Within a couple of days, she was inundated with useful comments, guidance and advice from peers around the world, showing how powerful Twitter can be in obtaining opinions and advice on important topics, and especially in getting views from peers outside of your institution and country (you can read the original tweets here if you’d like).

Enhancing publication impact – Twitter is also an effective tool for sharing research papers and findings and enhancing publication impact. Research indicates that highly tweeted articles were 11 times more likely to be highly cited than less-tweeted articles. Top-cited articles can be predicted from top-tweeted articles, with 93% specificity and 75% sensitivity (Eysenbach, 2011). The LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog featured a post about this earlier this year (post: Who Gives a Tweet? After 24 Hours and 860 Downloads, we Think Quite a Few Actually do) which reported on the amazing success of a research paper released on Twitter by the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM). Within 24 hours of being uploaded to Twitter the paper was retweeted 10 times to over 5,000 followers and shared 135 times (using tools such as email, microblogging, social bookmarking, social networking, etc) on the NCRM website. The result was 861 downloads within 24 hours. As the paper was not publicised anywhere else at this time it is safe to say this was a result of releasing it via Twitter. Over a period of two months the paper was downloaded 3,936 times and shared 518 times using social sharing tools.

Help with using Twitter – If you’re interested in trying Twitter to see how it can benefit you and your research then give it a go! It is free to sign up and you can be up and running in a matter of minutes. Advice in-house can be provided by Paul Hughes, Marketing & Communications, and also Rebecca Edwards, RKE Development and Operations. There are also a number of helpful online guides available:

Hear it direct from the horse’s mouth! – Individual one-to-one advice from FIF committee members

Funding opportunities, Fusion, Guidance

For the December round of Fusion Investment Funding the committee members from all three strands (open to staff) are available to contact to arrange advice and guidance on completing your applications, from today until the 1st December deadline.

Please note the CCCP committee members will be available by phone or email only.

To contact members from one of the panels send an email to a member, names found clicking on the following pages and scrolling down to the ‘assessment’ box:

Co-Creation and Co-Production strand CCCP

Staff Mobility and Networking strand SMN

Study Leave strand SL

 

Don’t forget to apply by the 1st December deadline!

Sam

Last chance to book for some cake and EU time!

What better way to find out more about EU funding than with lunch, cake and hearing your colleagues’ first hand experiences? Today is your last day to book your place at this event

We all know the importance of getting involved in EU funding as national funds dwindle, greater importance is placed on international collaborations and of BUs strategic focus on internationalisation. The EU Showcase event will celebrate our successful EU award holders who will share their tips for engaging in EU funding.

We have presentations on schemes to help you start your EU career (Christos Gatzidis on the Leonardo scheme of the Lifelong Learning Programme and Bogdan Gabrys and Rob Britton on Marie Curie schemes) and schemes for those already engaged (Anthea Innes on applying for an FP7 grant and Adrian Newton on being a Partner in an FP7 consortium). We also have top tips on how to network effectively to become involved in EU funding (from the very experienced Dimitrios Buhalis and Cornelius Ncube). Finally I will be launching 3 very exciting internal EU focused funding competitions at this event to help you engage in EU funding and we have presentations from those who won funding through 2 of these schemes last year.

The informal and informative event will be opened by Matthew Bennett in Kimmeridge House  on 14th November. Plenty of coffee, tea, lunch and cake provided and due to the restriction of room size, registration is essential. This takes only 10 seconds on the Staff Development website.

The event will be finished in plenty of time for you to drive/ catch the uni bus to the Executive Business Centre (EBC) to hear the Inaugural Lecture Dementia: personal journey to policy priority by HSC’s Prof. Anthea Innes.

Fusion Investment Fund Applications – Three weeks to go!

Funding opportunities, Fusion, Guidance

I would like to remind you of the deadline for applications to the Fusion Investment Fund, which is the 1st December 2012.

Fusion Investment Fund workshop takes place – Martin Pickard leads successful surgery.

I attended a workshop session on Tuesday this week with a small group of your colleagues, attendees had the opportunity to bring along draft proposals to show Martin and myself to get individual feedback and discuss in the group aspects of their applications that can be improved, in order to secure Fusion Investment Funds.  Martin will also offer further feedback to attendees having read their ammended proposals following the session.  I would urge applicants to the fund to use further intervention opportunities ahead of the December deadline. 

Fusion Investment Fund intervention opportunities:

Each of the three committees are contactable by email in order to get individual feedback on your application.  You should scroll down to the assessment section of the relevant strand webpage to find committee member names and do drop them an email!

CCCP Strand; Staff Mobility and Networking Strand; Study Leave Strand

 

Applying to the fund.

To apply to the fund please see the information here on our intranet pages. I would stongly advise reading the FIF FAQs revised before you fill out a form.

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

Best of luck!

Sam