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Visit and STRC seminar not to miss next Tuesday: Image and Signal Processing Group of University of Valencia (26th June at 15h 30’ in PG16)

REF Subjects

Dear Colleagues,
I would like to draw your attention to the visit of two members and a postdoc researcher of the Image and Signal Processing Group of University of Valencia, Spain.
This group is very influential in several areas like for instance Image Processing (in Geosciences, Medical Brain Imaging, etc.) and Kernel Machines; and they will be in Talbot Campus just for one day.
They will deliver a couple of short talks and after that they will stay for an hour for discussing ideas or future plans with anybody interested in BU.
The special seminar will take place next Tuesday, the 26th of June in PG 16 Lecture Theatre at 15:30 h (Ground floor, Poole House)
After that, you are very welcome to join us in an informal Discussion Panel from 16h 30’ to 17h 15’ approx.
I would like to encourage DEC PhD researchers, senior research fellows and staff to attend; particularly those who work or what to get into image/signal processing and kernel machines because they are leading experts in these areas. Kindly check out, for instance,
http://www.uv.es/gcamps
http://www.uv.es/jmalo/
The agenda of the visit is the following:
• 15h 30’. Short intro by Dr. Malo (Associate Prof): “Research at the Image and Signal Processing Group”. Jesús Malo. A brief overview of our research interests and lines.
• 15h 40’. Short talk by Dr Laparra (Postdoc): “Gaussianization Framework for Signal Processing”
Abstract: We generalize a class of projection pursuit methods to transform arbitrary multidimensional data into multivariate normal data, thus attaining statistical independence of its components. The proposed analysis enables a number of novel ways to solve practical problems in high-dimensional scenarios, such as those encountered in image processing, speech recognition, array processing, or bioinformatics. Our framework extends Independent and Principal Components Analyses-based methods, which are typically not applicable to data generated from nonlinear, non-independent or non-Gaussian sources. The performance is successfully illustrated in a number of multidimensional data processing problems such as image synthesis, classification, saliency analysis, and de-noising.
• 16h. Short talk by Dr. Camps (Associate Prof): “Extended Kernel Methods”.
Abstract: I will talk about our love story with kernel methods for the last 10 years. Kernel methods constitute a simple way of translating linear algorithms into nonlinear ones. I will revise several interesting developments for 1) time series analysis, regression and function approximation; 2) classification problems; 3) nonlinear feature extraction; and 4) dependence estimation. The introduced methods extend previous standard algorithms to deal with non-stationary environments and structured domains, and the presence of non-Gaussian noise. Additionally, I’ll briefly talk about a way to learn the kernel function directly from the data via clustering or graphs. Examples in signal and image processing will guide this overview.
• 16h 25’. Discussion Panel.
Please, feel free to show up or leave any time during this event on your convenience. I hope you consider this program attractive and that you find a slot to come in.
Best Wishes, Emili

At an early stage in your research career? Then come to one of our ECR Forums!

Over the next six months we are running a series of forums for academic colleagues who are at an early stage in their research career. The forums will be open, informal sessions where you can meet with a group of experienced academics and Julie Northam and Julia Taylor from the R&KEO to discuss anything you like to do with research. From publications to projects to funding to research strategy we will be on hand to help and advise. Lunch / refreshments will be provided.

The forums will be held at the following times and you will need to book to confirm your attendance (this is so we can order enough food and refreshments in advance)

25 July 13:30 – 15:00 on the Talbot Campus (Room to be confirmed)

17 September 12:30 – 15:00 on the Talbot Campus (Room to be confirmed)

19 November 12:30 – 15:00 on the Lansdowne Campus (Room to be confirmed)

11 December 12:30 – 15:00 on the Talbot Campus (Room to be confirmed)

 

Last chance to sign up for the AHRC open meeting!

On, Wednesday,  27th June Professor Mark Llewellyn, Director of Research from the AHRC is coming to BU. 

This is a great opportunity to ask your questions about the AHRC.    It is unusual for a Research Council to make university visits, so please make the most of this chance to hear first hand about AHRC’s future strategy, and how your research might fit within it.

The open meeting with start with a presentation, and then be followed by discussion. 

Click here to book your place.

Day: Wednesday, 27th June

Time: 1.30pm – 2.15pm

Place: Talbot Campus – PG16

If you are off-campus and experiencing difficulty accessing the staff intranet please email your booking to staffdevelopment@bournemouth.ac.uk

In the meantime, if you have any questions please email Caroline O’Kane

BRIAN – Almost there

Guidance

The clock is ticking and we’re almost there with launching BRIAN.  You can watch the latest video on the benefits of uploading full-text outputs to BURO:

Approving or declining publications on BRIAN couldn’t be simpler.  You will receive an email to let you know that you have publications waiting for you in BRIAN.  When you log on to BRIAN it will tell you how many pending publications you have waiting:

 

By clicking the number shown in red, you will be taken through to your list of pending publications.  You’ll be presented with a list of pending publications, which will show a summary of the publication.  You can view full details from here, including the data source. On the right hand side of the publication is a red ‘X’  to decline and a green ‘Tick’ to approve.  If you have several publications to approve/decline then you can tick a check box in the left-hand corner of each publication and then click the larger approve/decline button above to approve/decline in bulk.  That’s it!

The best thing about BRIAN is that it allows you to have control over your external profile.  Whatever you choose to add to BRIAN will be displayed in your external profiles.  This includes a number of activities, such as your biography, academic group, memberships, website and social media links, plus many more options.

As said before, full user guides will be available when the system goes live.

Please can I ask that you do not log into the BRIAN until confirmation is given that the system is live.  Many thanks.

Social Sciences and Security in Horizon 2020

Horizon 2020 will replace FP7 and is currently under development. Several stakeholder groups have been meeting with EC officials to help influence and shape the Programme.

Feedback is available on UKRO from the informal Security Theme meeting and also the Societal Challenges Theme meeting. I really urge you to read these if you have an interest in either of these areas!

ESRC Social Science Festival

Funding opportunities

Professor Ruth Towse and Professor Martin Kretschmer have been awarded funding from the ESRC (RES-622-26-565) to organise an event as part of the Festival of Social Science 2012.

The symposium ‘What constitutes evidence for copyright policy?’ will be held on 8 November 2012 in the Executive Business Centre.

Professors Towse and Kretschmer write: “This interactive event offers the opportunity for discussion on evidence for copyright policy between social scientists, policy-makers and producers and users of copyright works. Copyright law is a topical and contentious area that affects a wide range of stakeholders with differing views on copyright policy. The need for evidence-based policy on copyright policy was emphasised in the Hargreaves Review and has led to several calls for evidence from stakeholders. The responses they provide to the Intellectual Policy Office are varied in nature and quality; the IPO has responded by issuing guidelines on what constitutes acceptable evidence (which itself is contested).

“Besides being a matter of pressing public concern, copyright also attracts the interest of a broad range of social science disciplines each with its own rules of evidence. The emphasis on economic growth as the objective of copyright policy has shifted the need for evidence in the direction of economics but economic evidence is not always easily available. Nor it is the case that only quantitative evidence is regarded as valid.”

The event will involve the following:

  1. Social scientists in a range of disciplines will explore their perceptions of evidence in non-technical terms and discuss their research findings on copyright. The aim is to develop a perspective on what evidence social scientists believe is relevant for copyright policy-making purposes.
  2. Representatives of stakeholder organisations that have responded with evidence to the IPO’s calls for evidence will explain what to them is relevant evidence.
  3. IPO staff responsible for assessing responses to calls for evidence have already committed to participate in this event. They will explain how they use the information they receive from stakeholder meetings and calls for evidence to develop policy measures.

If you are interested to participate, please contact Dr Rebecca Edwards (Research Development Officer, Public Engagement): redwards@bournemouth.ac.uk

Adele Ladkin joins the EPSRC workshop ‘Sustainable Society: Achieving work-life balance on a digitally dependent world’

EPSRC issued an expression of interest in April for applicants to participate in a virtual workshop on the topic of Sustainable Society.

Adele Ladkin, Professor of Tourism Employment, from the School of Tourism has been accepted to join the workshop to be held in two stages, in July.  Adele’s application focused around work-life balance in the tourism and hospitality sectors.  These sectors raise two issues, the first is the long hours culture and shift work characteristic of many jobs that invariably leads to reduced leisure time for employees, compounded with the emotional and physical strain of irregular working hours.  Second, in the accommodation sector, particularly small accommodation providers such as B&B’s, there is often no physical separation of work from home.  Business takes place within the home resulting in the boundaries between work and home becoming blurred, creating another dimension to work life balance.

Adele is looking forward to participating in the two events that will give her the opportunity to potentially work across different disciplines.

Good luck Adele!

Fusion Investment Fund Update – FAQ’s released

Funding opportunities, Fusion, Guidance

Just a quick update on the Fusion Investment Fund.  The application deadline is fast approaching and I am aware of lots of activity.  Last week the selection committee for each of the three funding strands met for the first time and discussed the selection criteria they would use in making their assessments. 

There was a range of different views but all three committees decided to adopt a very similar approach based on five criteria which would be scored one to four and supplemented with textural comments. 

These assessment criteria are included within a series of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs FIF V3), based on questions that I have been asked in the last couple of weeks.  I would encourage you to read these carefully since there are some key hints in fine tuning your applications.

The budget allowances for each funding stream have changed too following the committee’s first meetings; The committee for ‘Staff Mobility and Networking’ confirmed awards from £1,000 and up to £10,000 will now be made.  The committee for the Co-Creation and Co-Production strand confirmed awards from £5,000 and up to £75,000 will now be made. 

The SL Committee recognises that in some cases it may need to make grants larger than £15k in order to support some periods of study leave.  Applicants requesting larger sums should make this clear on the application form and in the case of support.

During the last few weeks we have run a series of surgeries and workshops to help staff in preparing their applications. There is still opportunity to gain further support:

  1. On Friday the 22 June I will be running a bid surgery between 11.00 and 13.00 in P403, details and the booking form are available on the Staff Portal.  Just bring your draft proposal or idea along and I will see what we can do to help.
  2. On Monday 25 June I will be running a telephone workshop between 10.00 and 11.30 simply drop an email to staffdevelopment@bournemouth.ac.uk with your extension number or the number you will be on during that period and I will give you an individual call at some point during the session.  It is your chance to ask an individual or specific question.

 If you have any other queries don’t hesitate to get in touch with me directly and I wish you all good luck with your applications.

 

Matthew Bennett

BRIAN – 3, 2, 1, LIVE

Guidance

 

Well it’s only three days to go before BRIAN goes live and it’s a hive of activity at this end.  You can see the latest video on the benefits of building an online profile:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz9o9eDQRKA

One of the many benefits of BRIAN is that you can refine your ‘search’ settings to find new publications for you to approve.  You should only need to do this once but you can tweek your ‘search’ settings at any time.  Here are some basic instructions on how to refine your search once BRIAN goes live:

Click on ‘search settings’ in the ‘my elements’ menu.

Under ‘Name Variants’ add all combinations of your name and initials under which you publish.

Under ‘Addresses’ you can add previous institutions or those which you collaborate with.

If your name is popular, e.g. John Smith, you may wish to add a ‘Start Date’ or ‘Keywords’ to restrict the search.  This will be most beneficial to new academics who go by the name ‘Albert Einstein’.

 BRIAN is linked to several data sources from which it imports publications.  If you have an ID with a data source, e.g. Web of Science, you will be able to enter this so that the data source specifically sends your publications through against that ID only.  More details will be available on this in the ‘Quick Start Guide’ when BRIAN goes live.

Stay tuned for more news tomorrow.

Good luck and Congratulations!

Awarded & submitted bids

Congratulations to Rudy Gozlan for securing a NERC Algorithm Studentship, Alan Fyall for securing funding from the ESRC and for Developing a Citizen Brand Ambassador Workshop to be held on 10 July 2012 with 60 participants, Shuang Cang for securing funding from the European Commission, Mike Molesworth for securing funding from Work Research Limited, Dean Wright for submitting a project to Lennox Blackwood, Jonathan Parker for securing funding from the Higher Education Academy and Steve Calver for securing funding from both The National Trust and Teachers Building Society.

Congratulations also to Anthea Innes for securing funding from NIHR, Luisa Cescutti-Butler for the bid to hold the Examination of the Newborn Study Day on 12 September in Bournemouth, Bronwen Russell for her various submissions to Distributed Generation Limited, Waddeton Park Ltd, Balfour Beatty Construction Scottish and Southern Limited and Anesco, Kathy Hodder for her submission to Fieldwork Ecological Services Ltd, Tim Darvill for successfully securing funding from Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, Martin Smith for securing the BABAO Conference, Ruth Towse and Martin Kretschmer for What Constitutes Evidence for Copyright Policy and Kip Jones for Pathways to Impact: diversity and the rural community at the ESRC Festival of Social Science.

Good luck to Indre Zliobaite for submitting a Grant application to EPSRC – First Grant scheme, Trevor Hearing for submitting a project to NESTA, Peter Thomas and Zoe Sheppard for submitting a bid to NIHR, Alan Fyall for submitting an application for funding to the Crown Estates via Big Lottery Fund, Heather Hartwell for submitting a tender to Food Standards Agency, Edwin Teijlingen for submitting an application for funding to MRC, Jacqui Taylor for her submission to Southampton Solent University, Dorothy Fox for her submission to Louth Leader Partnership, Steve Calver for his submission to Eastern Shires Purchasing Organisation, Jian Zhang for his submission to EPSRC – Health Care Tech Challenges for Engineering, Vanora Hundley, Edwin Teijlingen, Anne Luce and Catherine Angell for their application to RDF – Small Grant Scheme 31 May 2012, Peter Thomas and Zoe Sheppard for their funding application to NIHR (The Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust leads), Venky Dubey for his application to NIHR.

Upcoming Info Days and slides from those which have been!

Info days are invaluable for not only finding out more detail on a call but also for networking. Below are some info days open for registration, and links to slides and videos of those which have already occured.

FP7 Energy Booking Open for European Information Day on 2013 Calls: The European Commission is organising an information day in Brussels on 4 July, which will cover most of the final thematic funding opportunities relating to energy research under FP7. It will cover the calls within the 2013 Work Programme for the FP7 Energy theme (which is expected to be published in July 2012), as well as various other FP7 calls related to energy. Booking is now open and if you are unable to attend, then the event will be broadcast online. Videos and slides will be available afterwards too. A brokerage event will also be held on the following day, the 5 July.

FP7 Transport Brokerage Event for Rail Transport Research in Europe: The European Commission and the Polish National Contact Point for Research Programmes of the EU are holding a rail research brokerage event in Warsaw, Poland on 26-27 June 2012. The event will include presentations from the Commission and the European Rail Research Advisory Council (ERRAC); information on the proposal for a new Joint Technology Initiative in the rail transport sector for Horizon 2020 (SHIFT2RAIL  JTI); and details on the European Single Rail Area and the Commission’s outlook on rail research in Horizon 2020. The two day event will conclude with a brokerage session, where potential project partners can discuss project ideas with new contacts.

FP7 PPPs Energy Efficient Buildings Online Brokerage and Information Webinar: On Monday 18 June at 9.30am (British Summer Time) a joint online brokerage webinar will take place with the E2B National Liaison Point (NLP) Network and the Modern Built Environment Knowledge Transfer Network (MBE KTN). This online event gives those interested the opportunity to get an early view of the upcoming calls in advance of the PPP information days in July 2012, as well as interacting with potential partners. Marta Fernandez, from the E2B Association (E2BA) and Associate Director of Global Research at Arup, and Olaf Adan, Principal Scientist at TNO (the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research), will introduce the potential 2012 call themes based on the multiannual roadmap. Call topics are currently being finalised and this year will amount to EUR 220 million. Those who would like to present their own project ideas as part of the webinar can fill in the details during the registration process which is mandatory as places will be limited.

MIRA FP7 Funding: This is a free seminar hosted by the Transport KTN, FP7UK and others which ill outline the funding priorities in FP7 for transport. It will be held on July 5th

FP7 Security Information Day on 2013 Call: The FP7 Security Call Information Day will take place on 11 September in Brussels. The exact venue is yet to be confirmed but is likely to be the same as in previous years: the REA Offices, Covent Garden Building, Place Rogier, Brussels. On-line registration will open on 10 July, which is the same day that the Call opens officially.

FP7 Environment Presentations from European Information Day on 2013 Work Programme: The presentations are now available from the recent European Information Day on the FP7 2013 Environment Work Programme. As well as presentations by the European Commission, there were also ‘flash’ presentations by researchers interested in applying to the calls. The participant list and the video-streaming from the event are also available.  Researchers interested in the Environment theme should also note that there is a UK event on the 2013 Environment and Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Biotechnology (FAFB) work programmes on 6 July in London. Presentations and other documentation from the European Information Day.  Webstreaming from the event.

FP7 Co-operation Presentations from Ocean of Tomorrow Information Day: The web-stream recording is now available with the presentations from the recent information day on the ‘2013 Ocean of Tomorrow’ Joint Call. This call will be launched in mid July 2012 under the FP7 Co-operation Programme. An ‘Orientation Paper’ is also available with further details of the likely call topics for this call, which is expected to be published in mid-July 2012. Webstream of presentations from the information day on the Ocean of Tomorrow.

Feedback on FP7 EU bid – lessons learned from feedback

Awarded & submitted bids

Philip Alford (School of Tourism) and Mark Dover (Applied Sciences) put a consortium together and submitted an application to the EU FP7 program. The project title was Cloud Information Retrieval and Re-Use System and the bid was for nearly €4 million. The following summarises the project:

Tourism indirectly generates more than 10% of the European Union’s GDP and Tourism sector comprises SMEs employing less than 50 people Their respective diversity and fragmentation means that individual SMEs, and their often localised associations, lack the resources to generate and define sophisticated, sustainable marketing tools enabling the competitive campaigns required to maintain position and growth. The recent expansions in social networking and advances in Cloud Computing technologies and infrastructure now present an opportunity to develop sophisticated, dynamic, promotion and marketing tools for use by any SME, in any context – without any requirement for end-user knowledge of the configuration of the service delivery. CIRRUS is thus designed to develop such a universally functional framework, employing a suite of tools, supporting a simplistic dashboard interface, to enable sophisticated, dynamic, marketing input and provision of services at the individual, non expert, level across the many different sectors of the European tourism industry. CIRRUS will

1. Develop a novel, simplistic, non-expert dashboard interface to cloud content and usage enabling incorporation into web and marketing media.

2. Build a support framework behind the dashboard for tourism SMEs which embraces the new marketing paradigm of online customer-to-customer marketing and which is based on international best practice.

3. Conduct 4 Validation Case Studies from 3 European Countries, and different tourism perspectives (accommodation, attractions and events), illustrating enhanced business performance through CIRRUS use.

4. Build and adapt, through these case studies, the application and facilitate its deployment in the targeted countries.

5. Position the application for deployment, with input from both SMEs and SME-AGs, in member states beyond those immediately involved in the partnership.

We were unsuccessful with the application but got some useful feedback from the EU. In summary we needed to:

  • More fully describe the limitations of the current state of the art technology in tourism
  • Make the interdependencies of the work packages clearer
  • More adequately demonstrate the partners’ expertise in key areas
  • Improve the dissemination activities which are described but are not particularly targeted
  • Provide more detail on the exploitation plans of the SME partners

 

BRIAN – coming to a computer near you!

Guidance

The new publications management system, BRIAN, will go live on 22 June.  Here’s what it can do for you:

  • BRIAN will provide a facility for academics to quickly and easily update their research activity via a single point of data entry which will enable research information to be used in multiple places, including BURO and the BU Staff Profile web pages, without the need to duplicate or enter additional data.
  • BRIAN will allow academics to have ownership of their staff profile web pages so these are easily kept up to date, allowing academics to promote themselves for potential research collaborations, research grants and enterprise opportunities, research assessment exercises, etc. It will also provide a search function for staff to find out about potential collaborative opportunities with colleagues from across the institution.
  • BRIAN will enable BU to meet research assessment requirements (particularly the UK Research Excellence Framework) by improving the administrative efficiency and data accuracy – in terms of staff preparation, mock exercises, data collation, analysis, scenario planning and meeting future requirements.
  • BURO will in future only contain records for outputs supported with a full-text copy of the output. Academic staff will no longer add records direct to BURO, but via BRIAN.

Watch this short video to find out the benefits of having one system in which to enter data, which is then used multiple times:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH–vuEZlDw

There will be further guidance and helpful hints on using BRIAN throughout this week and so watch this space!

Digital Economy finds NEMODE

Funding opportunities, Fusion

Academics from multi-disciplinary backgrounds recently attended a two day Digital Economy Network+ event at the University of Cambridge. The aim of the event was to continue the process of building a network of people interested researching New Economic Models for the Digital Economy.

The focus of the event was to share the diverse perspectives on new economic models for the digital economy and to develop and shape the research agenda on two key themes;

  • What are economic models and how do different communities define them?
  • Does an economic model differ from a business model?

Both days consisted of a number of brainstorm and discussion activities that opened with each academic presenting their views on the ‘big questions’ in relation to their own subject domain, which in my case is Media Management. It was certainly interesting to look at the same research questions from very different perspectives, and it this has helped inform my thinking for the Advances in Media Management (AiMM) research group that I lead and our forthcoming symposium on New Economic Models.

Further network events are planned, but for those BU academics researching within our own  Creative & Digital Economy Theme – the funding headlines are;

  • The EPSRC are managing the New Economic Models sub-theme of the Digital Economy
  • The network will now be known as NEMODE
  • NEMODE have £980k to support network activities including funding 10 small (£50k) feasibility/scoping studies. A call for the first two projects will be made in October this year.
  • Successful feasibility studies can be scaled up via direct applications to the RCUK Digital Economy.
  • Funding Applications that involve practitioners will be looked upon more favourably – which sits nicely with BU’s Fusion Strategy!

EUNF – It’s been good to talk!

I have recently returned from the World  Media Economics & Management Conference in Greece – many thanks to the EUNF.

This event is a biennial meeting of the global community of media business scholars who reflect on contemporary issues in the economics and management of media industries and firms. It aims to provide to a platform for academics who research in this area to meet and network. I was particularly interested in developing relationships and collaborative project ideas with a number of academics from EU universities including Jönköping International Business School, Sweden; Tampere University, Finland; the Berlin Media Business School, and the University of Vienna, Austria.

I met with academics from all of these institutions (and others) and discussed how we could collaborate on the opportunities provided by the Creative Europe fund (2014-20) and any other related media funds that they were aware of.  As a result of the EUNF I have established contacts and am now in the process of working up 2 outline projects for the Creative Europe fund. I have also been invited by the University of Vienna to be a Key Note speaker at their European Summer School for media related doctoral research students, and am in the process of assisting an Eramus exchange between BU and the University of Zaragoza.

Many thanks BU EUNF, it’s a great initiative!