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Research commissioner argues for open innovation approach

Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the Commissioner for research and innovation, has called for Europe to take a broad and open view of innovation to reach its full potential “innovation is increasingly interpretative: looking for opportunities without necessarily having a fixed definition of the problem.“This requires a completely different approach, an open process driven by curiosity and uncertainty…Open innovation is therefore more than a tool, it is an attitude—an attitude we need to turn Europe into a more innovative place,”

‘Competition out, collaboration in’ says Adrian Smith

Research Professional has today reported that Adrian Smith, the government’s director general of knowledge and innovation states funding cuts and increasing international competition will force UK higher education institutions to collaborate rather than compete.
Following cuts of around 40 per cent to the research equipment and infrastructure budget, restricted resources will prompt a “change of emphasis” he told the Science and Innovation 2011 conference in London on 21 June “I think the UK was served well for a few decades by the [Research Assessment Exercise] and things that drive dynamism and competition between institutions [but] to have competition you need at least two of something. Now there may be areas where you can only afford the equivalent of one, and that drives us from competition to collaboration.”
Smith firmly backed a policy of striving for “critical mass”, saying the government would encourage universities and businesses to group in clusters, such as in science parks, and to establish larger PhD training centres. “Analysis [shows] there are real issues of concentration and critical mass if we are trying to leverage the best efficiency,” he said. “This is not true of all topics, not medieval German poetry perhaps, but probably around big physics equipment.”
Smith also cited Scotland’s research pools—which receive large, multi-year grants from the Scottish Funding Council—as a good example. “We’re going to be moving to a system where those who thought of each other as national competitors work together,” he said. This is in spite of recent concerns over the pools’ future once their current funding from the SFC expires [see RF 15/6/11, p4, via link below].
Priority will go to funding streams that leverage further investment from industry and charities, he added. Making the most of limited resources will also mean looking increasingly for alignment “across disciplines, research councils and government departments, and the relevant bits of business and industry”, as with programmes such as Living With Environmental Change, he said.
Smith shrugged off any suggestion that directing research in multi-disciplinary collaborations was a threat to blue skies research, calling the debate “fuzzy nonsense”. “I don’t think you can spend £6 billion and not pay any attention to things people care about,” he said. “There’s a balance between challenges and maintaining national capacity and letting the brightest and best get on with it.”

latest Green Knowledge Economy focused EU funding calls

Literature Review on the Potential Climate Change Effects on Drinking Water Resources:proposal must complete a literature review on the potential climate change effects on drinking water resources across the EU and the identification of priorities among different types of drinking water supplies. Deadline: 1 August 2011.

European Red List of Marine Fishes: proposal must produce production of a European Red List of marine fishes according to IUCN Red List criteria. Deadline: 1 August 2011.

Assessment of Hemispheric Air Pollution on EU Air Policy: proposal must further underpin the policy development within the EU and the CLRTAP on aspects of intercontinental transport of air pollution. Deadline: 10 August 2011.

Blending of Biofuels with Fossil Fuels: proposal must focus on the blending of biofuels with fossil fuels and other ways to market biofuels in order to provide the Commission with the considerations and inputs necessary to report under the Renewable Energy Directive. Deadline: 12 August 2011.

Renewable Energy Policy Support: proposals must provide a thorough and regularly updated database of renewable energy measures, with a focus on financial support and market/grid access for each EU member state, as well as ad hoc analysis on specific relevant topics. Closing date: 19 August 2011

Evaluators criticise European Institute of Innovation and Technology’s governance

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) based in Budapest, Hungary, has broadly and quickly met its goals but should change its governance model and be more open to external partners and expertise, evaluators say.
In a qualitative report released this month, evaluators note that the EIT successfully set up three Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) that bring together partners from business, education and research.
They praise the relevance of the institute’s concept and recognise that much has been achieved in a short period of time, since 2008.
However, the authors and evaluators recommend that the EIT should extend its benefits more broadly, and develop more links with complementary programmes and engage with a broader range of partners.

Culture and Society

BU Challenges

There are dangers with trying to develop too focused a title for this research theme as this is likely to lead to exclusion of potentially interesting and important areas of research and research collaboration. For instance, adding ‘change’ or ‘cohesion’ introduces a particular idea that socially transformative research would be privileged above, say, methodological endeavour. Whilst there are problems with the use of the singular forms in ‘culture and society’, it perhaps allows for the emergence of greater productive diversity in developing what is likely to be a wide and changing brief.

The ways in which societies and cultures are understood, analysed and approached, and the meanings created by these for individuals and groups within them, again offers fertile ground for exploration and cross-school collaborative work, and this too is an area which would be useful to include within the theme’s overarching brief.

Inclusivity and broad coverage is important. It is within this context that exciting pockets of research can develop across the university. Let’s not be too prescriptive at this stage of the game.

Professor Jonathan Parker

‘Society and Social Welfare’,  HSC

University rankings ‘focus too much on research performance’

University rankings ‘focus too much on research performance’
International university rankings are not transparent and focus too much on research performance and elite universities, according to a report released on 17 June by the European Universities Association.
Rankings encourage accountability, but are biased and insufficiently transparent, the authors say…..For instance, humanities are ignored by the bibliometric indicators used in global league tables.
The EUA study reviewed 13 international university rankings, and was funded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung in Germany and the Portuguese Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

BU on the EU stage

Recent research conducted by a team in the School of Applied Sciences (ApSci) has highlighted the need for a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach to environmental management and policy development.  It is a project which is well placed in BU’s movement towards research focused on societal themes and aims to establish how stakeholder values of their local environment can be used to improve the effectiveness of ecosystem management creating stronger links between citizens and policy makers.

This European collaboration is nearing completion. The Transactional Environmental Support System Project (TESS), supported by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission was coordinated by Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (www.tess-project.eu) and involved several ApSci staff.  The rationale for this project had its foundations in the move towards citizen-driven environmental governance and policy development.  The aim of TESS was to provide a platform through which biodiversity information collected at a local level can be incorporated into policy development and land-use management.  Could a system of this type encourage local communities to have more involvement in collection of these important data, and a greater role in the maintenance and restoration of their local environment and ecosystem services?

The project involved partnership with 14 other institutions from 10 different European countries. The project identified what information is required by both local land users and policy makers in order to develop effective environmental policy which will benefit both biodiversity and economic development.  The results were tested through 11 local case studies which were then used to further develop the TESS portal (due to go online in the next month or so).  BU’s involvement with the project has allowed us to develop strong, collaborative relationships with a number of institutions across Europe, linking strongly with the University’s desire to become more active on the European stage. 

During the project, the ApSci team, including Prof. Adrian Newton, Dr. Kathy Hodder, Lorretta Perrella, Jennifer Birch, Elena Cantarello, Sarah Douglas, James Robins and Chris Moody, carried out a local case study within Dorset’s Frome Catchment Area.  This case study site falls within the Dorset AONB and includes a SSSI, Local Nature Reserves, National Nature Reserves and Special Areas of Conservation. We were able to incorporate local knowledge and opinion into a novel evaluation of the ecosystem services and biodiversity benefits that might be realised through implementation of SW Biodiversity Implementation Plan. Such strategies have the implicit assumption that working on a landscape-scale to develop ‘ecological networks’ should have potential to  facilitate adaption to climate change, increase ecological ‘resilience’ and  improve the UK’s ability to conform to international policy commitments, such as the Habitat Directive.  However, it is accepted that the cost of the ecological restoration required for such initiatives could be substantial and little work has been conducted on cost-benefit analysis of restoration initiatives.  The work carried out by BU for the TESS project addressed the knowledge gap surrounding the cost effectiveness of ecological restoration approaches to climate change adaptation.

We currently have a paper in review with the Journal of Applied Ecology based on this work. It shows that spatial Multi Criteria Analysis could be used to identify important ecological restoration zones based on a range of criteria, including those relating to ecosystem services, biodiversity and incorporating the values of a range of stakeholders.  This tool could be of direct value to the development of ecological networks in the UK as a climate change adaptation measure.  Such tools developed through TESS may enable future plans for ecological restoration to incorporate local stakeholder values, improving the chances of societal benefits and long-term success of the schemes.

The wider results of the TESS project were presented at a conference in May 2011, hosted by the European Parliament Intergroup at the European Parliament in Brussels.  BU was represented at the conference by one of our postdoctoral researches, Emma McKinley.

Footprints & Fieldwork!

News from the PVC

Next week I get a chance to get out in to the field when I am due to visit the Roccamonfina footprint site in central Italy about 60 Km from Naples.  It is quite a well known footprint site and certainly the oldest in Europe.  Roccamonfina is a stratovolcano located north of the Campanian plain and the Devil’s footsteps are preserved in one of the ash layers on its flank and where first publicised by a group of Italian colleagues in 2003 (Mietto et al., 2003; Nature 422).  There are around 56 prints forming three trackways recording the movement of one or more individuals adopting a ziz-zag path as they negotiated a soft and potentially unstable slope formed of volcanic ash.  In terms of anatomical detail the prints are not perfect due to the slope and consistence of the ash, but at 350,000 years old they fill an important gap in our understanding of the evolution of gait which is the main thrust of my current NERC grant held jointly with Liverpool University.  We hope with Italian colleagues to document the prints using photogrammetry to preserve their digital signature for comparison with other footprint sites such as those we found in northern Kenya back in 2009.  Above all else for me it is nice to be let out of the office to enjoy a brief spell of fieldwork!

My last spell in the field was back in December when I was working in Namibia on a much younger footprint site (<2000 years old) which has some fantastic prints and provides a perfect laboratory with which to explore the control of substrate on print formation.  The research team made a short video clip during this trip which much to my embarrassment has just made it to the website in Applied Sciences, but despite my shyness it does give you an idea of what sort of tasks I get involved with when in the field.  You can watch the video if you are interested here: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ8Qxsoxh68. 

I am keen to hear about your fieldwork or research experiences so why not post on the blog about these as well?

Professor Matthew Bennett

PVC (Research, Enterprise & Internationalisation)

Good luck & congratulations

Awarded & submitted bids

This week messages of good luck are due to Sophie Smith in HSC for a grant submitted to the Higher Education Academy and congratulations to Clive Andrewes for successful bids to the South West Strategic Health Authority and Dorset Community Health Services.  Within DEC Nan Jiang, David John, Glyn Hadley, Sherry Jeary, Jacqui Taylor, Melanie Cole, Heather Mays and Suzy Atfield-Cutts have all submitted bids to the Higher Education Academy this month, while Christine Keenan has been successful in two bids for educational projects supported by HEFECE.  I also have to report that I am involved in large NERC grant which was submitted last week via Liverpool University to look at the evolution of endurance running.  Otherwise it has been a quiet week for bidding!

Research Professional – help shape its search terms

Research Professional is working on a project to improve its usability and they want to make sure that the terms they use on the website are easily understandable to all users. In order to shape the redesign, please fill in this short survey designed by Research Professional which should only take 5 mins, by 1st July. Any feedback you give will be enormously useful  in making the site easier to use.

Norway signs research collaboration agreement with Poland

Norway and Poland signed a research cooperation deal worth 290 million kroner (€37m) on 10 June, the Norwegian research council . The money is part of a 2 billion kroner deal between the two countries focusing on green technologies, like carbon sequestration projects.The Norwegian research council has welcomed the collaboration. It is a way for Norway to develop its participation in EU framework programmes, said Jesper Simonsen, divisional director in the research council.

Researchers should be paid to communicate, Swedish VA says

Sweden’s academics should be rewarded for communicating their research and for research collaborations, VA, an interest organisation for researchers, suggested in a proposal to government. “Money is an important incentive. That’s why we want collaboration and communication to be taken into consideration when funding is allocated,” says Cissi Askwall, secretary-general of VA.

AHRC members resign over Big Society

Members of the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Peer Review College have resigned over the council’s continued refusal to remove references to the government’s Big Society slogan from its delivery plan.

Maria Manuel Lisboa, a professor of Portuguese literature and culture at the University of Cambridge, told Research Fortnight Today that she resigned a few weeks ago after receiving no response to a letter of complaint to the council.  She described it as “completely unacceptable” that a research council has direct references to a party-political slogan in its delivery plan.

According to an article in The Guardian on 19 June, some 30 academics are planning to resign in the next two weeks. Manuel Lisboa, however, said she was not aware of an organised mass resignation and that her decision was a personal choice. 

In a statement sent to Research Fortnight Today, a spokesperson for the AHRC said the council is not contemplating removing big society from its delivery plan:  “We have over 1,200 members in our peer review college across all the arts and humanities disciplines. Since the initial petition against the inclusion of Big Society in the AHRC delivery plan appeared at the beginning of April only 2 academics have resigned from the peer review college, and they resigned very early on in the process,” he said.

The full story can be accessed on Research Professional

AHRC seeking opinions on international collaboration

AHRC logoThe Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) are currently carrying out a survey to gather vital information about International collaborations. The survey will allow the AHRC to gain a greater understanding of existing International partnerships, and gain input from the Arts and Humanities’ research community on where further links may need to be developed.

This is your opportunity to inform the AHRC of your experience in International collaboration and feed into the on-going development of the AHRC’s international activities.

This survey is aimed at UK based researchers eligible for AHRC funding, and will take no more than 10 minutes to complete. The deadline for submission is 10th July 2011.

All responses will be greatly appreciated, and will be used to inform the continuing development of the AHRC’s International activities and opportunities.

Please click here to undertake the survey.

Creative and Digital Economy

BU Challenges

Authors: John Oliver and Darren Lilleker

Alternative name suggestion: Creative and Digital Society

Brief theme summary:

This theme aims to explore the way digital  technologies are developed, and how they are used and applied within organisational and  social contexts. One important aspect of this is to understand technological developments, we argue that the key to understand the impacts of technologies is to adopt a social constructionist approach. This allows us to understand how users shape technologies to facilitate the accomplishment of their own objectives. We will explore this by looking at usage by corporate, media, political or governmental organisations, highlighting innovations in usage in order to develop best practice guidelines. However, this will be supplemented by focusing on end user perspectives. In particular we want to connect understandings of organisational usage to the way in which the broader consumers and citizens engage with technologies. The extent to which these facilitate participation in the development of consumer goods and services or public or social policy, and how technologies afford users the opportunity to be content creators, shaping the experiences of other users within a collaborate ecosystem. Of equal interest is how usage feeds back into technological development to explore the circularity between developers, professional users and the broader online participants, audiences and users.

Scope of theme: what is included?

We would cover any area of academic research where digital technology has relevance and meaning. However, specific areas could include; creative arts, creative industries, film, special effects, computer animation, computer games, marketing communications, digital marketing, media communication, journalism, social media, branding, media production, story-telling, cloud computing, geographic information systems,  consumer psychology and behaviour, digital citizenship, and audiences.

Scope of theme: what is excluded?

We would cover any area of academic research where digital technology has relevance and meaning to the economy or society. Research conducted under the umbrella of this theme would include the development and application of technology in a wide variety of contexts and would exclude areas of study that would not have a digital technology component.

Which big societal questions are addressed by this theme?

  • What are the sources of knowledge and creativity?
  • How will digital technologies change the way we work and communicate?
  • What is the role of social innovation and exchange?
  • How do people engage with digital technologies?
  • How will stories be created and conveyed through digital media in the future?
  • How will audiences be reached and engaged in the future?
  • What roles do trust, data protection and privacy play in a digital society?
  • What is intellectual property and who owns it?

How do this link to the priorities of the major funding bodies?

NESTA – interested in innovation and the role it has to play in enhancing eeconomic growth in the creative economy and public services.

AHRC – provide numerous opportunities through in their knowledge economy and innovation agenda. Particularly, emphasis is placed on funding research into improvements in social and intellectual capital, community identity, learning skills, technological evolution and the quality of life of the nation.

ESRC – have strategic priorities relating to; Understanding and influencing behaviour, Technology and innovation, Economic Performance and Sustainable Growth.

TSB – Innovation is a key enabler of growth. They place an emphasis on the Creative Industries, and in particular, how to exploiting digital technologies and commercialise digital content.

British Academy – a wide range of opportunities in the humanities and social sciences, opportunities.

EPSRC – have strategic priorities that relate to; information and communications technology, digital economy, user-led knowledge.

European Union – opportunities under FP7 for research into commercialisation, competitiveness and knowledge-based economy.

Leverhulme – broad range of opportunities. 

How does this theme interlink with the other BU themes currently under consideration?

Since the digital world is increasingly embedded in all areas of life, we would see this theme linking with all other BU research themes.