/ Full archive

Peer review and busy academics…

Guidance

Prof Edwin van Teijlingen, School of Health and Social Care, reflects on the benefits of getting involved in peer review…

Prof Edwin van TeijlingenOne of the main elements of quality control in academic publishing is the process of peer review of articles.  Editors of scientific journals will send manuscripts submitted to their journal out to a number of reviewers who are experts on, for example, the research topic, the method, theoretical approach or the geographical in the manuscript. 

Typically journal editors will quickly read the summary or abstract of the submission and on the basis of this decide whether or not to send out the paper for review. The process mentioned above ‘blinds’ as the editor or editorial assistant removes his name from the manuscript before sending it to peer reviewers. However, in many of the newer Open Access journals the review is ‘open’.  This means the reviewers note the name and affiliation of author(s) and the author(s) will receive the feedback and verdict of named reviewers.  Reviewing is an essential element of the process of academic quality control.  More over the reviewers are ordinary academics who volunteer to do this work without additional pay.   Similarly, most editors of academic journals are also volunteers and unpaid.

journalsThose of us who are actively involved in publishing about academic research are regularly asked to review articles for journals in their field.  I usually am invited to review a paper twice or three times a month and I try to do at least one a month.  The reasons for reviewing papers are plentiful.  First, I believe in the essence of peer-reviewing as a system to maintain scientific quality.  Secondly, you get to read some interesting research findings before anybody else, or the flip side, you get some pretty awful papers which makes you realise your own work quite good.  Thirdly, it is something expected of all-round academic, as task you can add to your CV, etc.  Fourthly, if I want my submitted papers to receive proper attention in the review process I feel I must to the same for someone else.  Lastly, I get a chance to see ‘the other side’ as I am also an editor.

As an editor or member of an editorial board I regularly invite, beg or plea to colleagues to review a paper for the journals I’m involved with.  Some times it is more difficult than others to get people to volunteer for the review process. I know how hard it can be to get a decent reviewer for a particular manuscript.   An example of the latter is a recent paper submitted to BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth for which I needed to find reviewers.  In the first week of April I invited eight reviewers from across the globe (as the paper focused on maternity care in a developing country); on the basis of its past experience BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth suggests to its Associate Editors that they invite eight reviewers per paper to ensure at least two agree to review.

Later last month I was asked by the editorial assistant to find a few more potential reviewers for the same paper as none of the people I had originally invited has: (a) accepted the invite; or (b) replied at all.  So, I emailed a few reminders to those who had not replied and found four extra names as possible reviewers.  To my surprise, I received another email yesterday from the editorial assistant that no one had accepted the invitation to conduct a review yet.  There were now nine who had formally declined and the remainder had not replied at all.  So this morning I invited two more reviewers and sent a reminder to those who had not replied at all.

My plea in this blog is encourage BU researchers to get involved in peer reviewing.  If we want to benefit from others reviewing our work, we need to be prepared to do the same in return.  I think, especially for more junior researcher such as Ph.D. and Doctoral students, acting as a reviewer is a good learning exercise as well as way of becoming part of the scholarly community.

I would like to thank Ms. Sheetal Sharma, Ph.D. student in the School or Health & Social Care, for her comments on the draft text of this blog.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
School of Health & Social Care

Associate Editor BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth Guest Editor Special Issue on ‘The Maternity Workforce’ for Midwifery (2011)

Congratulations

Awarded & submitted bids

A slim week in terms of submissions and awards but some notable successes despite this.  Congratulations are due to Philippa Hudson in the School of Tourism for the award of a Shorter KTP with Quartto Foods Ltd in Portsmouth.  In Applied Sciences Rob Britton and Duncan Golicher have received small amounts of enterprise income, however the big news is the award to Kate Welham of a collaborative AHRC/NSF award for work in Tanzania.

Matthew Bennett

Is Knowledge Transfer Important to BU?

Guidance

Dr Martyn Polkinghorne highlights the importance of Knowledge Transfer to the EU…

Well certainly the EU Commission thinks so. In fact it’s so important that the EU Commission says that member states (e.g. the UK) should “ensure that all public research organisations define knowledge transfer as a strategic mission” and that they should “support the development of knowledge transfer capacity and skills in public research organisations, as well as measures to raise the awareness and skills of students – in particular in the area of science and technology – regarding intellectual property, knowledge transfer and entrepreneurship”.1

Supporting intellectual property, knowledge transfer and entrepreneurship are currently activities successfully being undertaken by BU’s Centre for Research & Enterprise (CRE).

When considering Knowledge Transfer as a strategic mission for public research organisations, the EU Commission also states that it wants to move towards a position in which “ knowledge transfer between universities and industry is made a permanent political and operational priority for all public research funding bodies within a Member State, at both national and regional level”.2

More information regarding the EU Commission’s views can be accessed here.

So is Knowledge Transfer important to BU? My personal view is that at a time when BU is looking to increase its portfolio of research funding (including EU sources of funding) it certainly looks as if knowledge transfer may become increasingly important.

What do you think? Let me know your own thoughts and opinions.

Dr Martyn Polkinghorne

Knowledge Transfer Programmes Centre Manager

1 Commission Recommendation on the management of intellectual property in knowledge transfer activities and Code of Practice for universities and other public research organisations, pp 3, 2008

2 Commission Recommendation on the management of intellectual property in knowledge transfer activities and Code of Practice for universities and other public research organisations, pp 8, 2008

Like our posts? Then let us know!

Guidance

We’re interested to know what you like about the blog, which posts you find useful and what you’d like to see more of.

The best way to do this is by commenting on the blog posts (see our previous post on how to do this).

As of today you can also like individual blog posts using our newly installed Facebook like plugin.

If you like a blog post and have a Facebook account then simply click on the like icon at the start or end of the post.

This will enable us to do more of the posts you like and find useful 🙂

Search for a Champion? Or BU Research Themes

Thank you to all those people who responded to the online questionnaire about the BU Research Themes.  There were 273 responses!  On this basis we can reduce the short list of twelve societal themes down to ten as set out in the briefing paper (available from  – I:\CRKT\Public\RDU\Research themes\Paper.docx).  The ten are:

  • Health and wellbeing
  • Recreation and leisure
  • Culture and society or Society & Social Change
  • Environmental change and biodiversity
  • Green economy and sustainability
  • Creative and digital economies
  • Aging
  • Learning and public engagement
  • Entrepreneurship and economic growth
  • Technology and design

We urgently need some champions to ‘flesh-out’ these themes to help scope them and allow us to ‘road test’ them further.  I am looking for as many views as possible for each theme; just fill out the template (available from  – I:\CRKT\Public\Research themes\Form.doc) and e-mail it back to me.  The idea is to then distill these views and produce a scope for each; if there are no champions forthcoming then we may be able to reduce the list further.  I need the templates back by the 27 May if possible; thank you!

Matthew Bennett

PVC (Research, Enterprise & Internationalisation)

(The documents are saved to the I-drive. If you are on-campus then you need to copy and paste the file pathway into an internet browser. If you are unable to access them please contact Julie Northam who will email you the documents).

BU Studentship Competition 2011

We are delighted to announce that up to 20 match-funded studentships are available for October 2011, or January 2012 starts.  These will be allocated to project teams on the basis of a competitive process across the whole of BU led by Professor Matthew Bennett (PVC Research, Enterprise & Internationalisation) and the Graduate School.  Only the best projects will be funded and proceed to advert as set out in the criteria below.  Preference will be given to those projects demonstrating match-funding, however exceptionally innovative or timely projects on a non-applied theme will be considered for full funding.  Applications should be submitted to Fiona Knight (Graduate School Manager) no later than the 13 June 2011.  Staff are asked to check the eligibility criteria carefully before applying.  Good luck!

Studentship Competition: Details & Criteria

  • Preference will be given to matched funded projects
  • Matched-funding (50%; £21k over three years) may come from: industry/business partners, government and non-government organisations, Academic Schools, NHS, Research Councils or other external bodies.  In seeking match-funding and developing the associated projects applicants are encouraged to avoid a local or regional focus.
  • Exceptionally 100% funding may be granted for highly original, timely and non-applied or “blue-sky” research projects especially where they are strategic importance to a research group/centre.
  • All projects should be linked to a REF Unit of Assessment and map on to its strategic goals.  They must be endorsed by the applicants Line Manager and Head of Academic Group or Deputy Dean (Research & Enterprise).
  • All projects should be innovative, novel and applicants are encouraged to appeal to the imagination of the assessment panel.
  • The first supervisor should take responsibility for the applications and ensure that they meet the eligibility criteria set out below.
  • Studentships are offered on a stipend basis for 36 months only, with fees waived for the same period.  Fees will be charged after 36 months.  Schools (or match funder) are responsible for providing each studentship with a guaranteed grant of between £3k and £5k over 36 months for use by the student to support fieldwork, consumables and conference travel. 
  • Normal studentship terms and conditions will apply.
  • Applications will be assessed and awards made by a panel chaired by: Vice Chancellor – Professor John Vinney and consisting of: Deputy Vice Chancellor – Professor Tim McIntyre-Bhatty, Pro-Vice Chancellor – Professor Matthew Bennett, and three Senior Grade 2 Professors.  None of the panel members are eligible to apply for support.
  • Feedback on all applications will be provided to encourage proposal development.
  • Once awarded all Studentships will be advertised and subject to a recruitment process managed by the Graduate School.  Note that these funds cannot be used to support BU staff to complete doctoral programmes.

 

Eligibility Criteria

  • The first supervisor should be the person completing the application and must be a permanent member of academic BU staff.
  • The first supervisor should be an experienced supervisor defined as having successfully supervised an entire cycle of a research degree or successfully completed the full PG CERT Research Degree Supervision.
  • The first supervisor should be research active, and be in consideration for the REF submission.
  • The applicant should be supervising no more than 6 PGR students including this project.
  • All proposals should have a balanced supervisory team.

 

Indicative Timetable

It is envisaged that projects will start in October 2011 or January 2012, as such

  • It is envisaged that projects will commence either in October 2011 or January 2012.
  • The call for proposals will go live on the 16 May 2011 via the BU Research Blog.
  • In late May 2011, a generic “teaser” advertisement campaign (e.g., banner in THES or Guardian) will run announcing forthcoming studentships at BU encouraging potential applicants to watch the website.
  • The call for proposals will close 11.30 AM on the 13 June 2011.  Submission to the Graduate School Manager who will circulate to the judging panel for consideration.  The panel will score each proposal and meet formally to select the successful projects.  
  • Successful applicants will be informed on the 27 June 2011.  Unsuccessful applicants will be provided with formative feedback in the following two weeks. 
  • Full marketing campaign to be launched on the 27 June and projects advertised externally.
  • Closing date for all student applications will be 31 July 2011 using the standard application form and submitted to the Graduate School.  The Graduate School will manage the recruitment process.
  • Interview days for all October project starts will take place in August.  If an October start is proposed the first supervisor must ensure their availability during August to conduct the interviews.  All interview panels will be consist of a member of the selection panel, first supervisor and a Professor from the host School and will be arranged and managed by the Graduate School.  UEG approval of candidates is required and formal offer letters will be issued by the Graduate School.
  • Interview days for all January project starts will take place in September.  All interview panels will be consist of a member of the selection panel, first supervisor and a Professor from the host School and will be arranged and managed by the Graduate School.  UEG approval of candidates is required and formal offer letters will be issued by the Graduate School.
  • Project Start Date 1; 3 October 2011
  • Project Start Date 2; 9 January 2012

 

Proposal forms can be downloaded from here or email the Graduate School Manager.

The Wellbeing across the Lifespan Network

The Wellbeing across the Lifespan Network co-locates with, and builds on the work of CeWQoL (Centre for Wellbeing and Quality of Life). Staff are welcome from across the University to join the Network and develop interests that either build on CeWQoL’s programmes or extends beyond it into new exploratory areas. Currently, 113 staff are registered for this theme, with sub themes such as quality of life, economic wellbeing, technological support and ethics arising from member’s research interests and which enable collaboration (visit here for the full list).

As a result of a successful HEIF bid application, involving staff from 5 Schools and 3 Centres, we have created a new Wellbeing Project Innovation Space in Bournemouth House, Lansdowne Campus as part of the Collaborative Research Space (which all Network members are encouraged to use) and a new enterprise and linked research programme around ‘Wellbeing in the Workplace’. The next meeting of this network will take place in this space on July 13th 11.30-13.30, please come and meet colleagues who have similar interests and explore working together. We usually have good attendance – and provide a structured session and networking opportunities over lunch. For part of this session we will have a presentation by the Centre for Event and Sport Research.

Professor Steven Ersser is the WBLN facilitator, supported by Dr Heather Hartwell, Associate Professor, both of whom have been involved in promoting a cross -University wellbeing research and enterprise agenda. Steve is departing from the University in July and so sends his regards to all those involved in the Network and thanks to all those who have supported this interdisciplinary collaborative initiative. Heather will continue to facilitate the termly sessions and will become the primary point of contact.

For further information on the Network contact Heather by email.

Market Research Group Update and Overview

Awarded & submitted bids

Current news:  we have just moved our data entry facility to Talbot Campus reuniting the group on one site (DG10, ground floor) we have also updated our scanning equipment and software to make data processing faster and more accurate. Some good teamwork with IT services and Estates made the move possible, while handling a record amount of data for this time of year.

 Our ongoing projects include:

  • Dorset County Council panel surveys, providing data for the ‘Big Society’ and various staff surveys
  • RDO European Time Share research.
  • Data processing for two Bangor University, healthcare research projects with Health and Social Care.
  • Data processing for Kings College London, healthcare research with Health and Social Care.
  • Renaissance South East – Research into museum and gallery visits by primary and secondary school children in the SE region.
  • Data processing and analysis for North Staffordshire NHS, Maternity Patient Surveys a joint project with Health and Social Care.
  • The National Trust Countryside visitor research – a survey of 60 countryside areas managed by the organisation.
  • The National Trust visitor research – a survey of 180 properties in the United Kingdom, providing monthly market intelligence and feedback to properties and analysis to guide strategic decision making at a national level. The research includes and investigation of specific topics including, community engagement and drivers of visitor enjoyment.
  • Countryside and leisure research, sponsored by the National Trust to investigate drivers of countryside visit behaviour and motivation.
  • Hindhead Common, Surrey, impact of road new road route and tunnel.
  • Wareham St Martin Community research project this will provide analysis feedback for the development of community projects.
  • Research support for the Digital Hub HEIF 4 research managed by Philip Alford.
  • Research support for the GIS HEIF4 research programme managed Mark Dover, Applied Sciences
  • Research support for the Boscombe Surf Reef Project managed by ICTHR and Applied Sciences

The value of projects in the ‘order book’ at present is around £400,000 but of course this value is much enhanced by the value of case studies and research material to support the curriculum.

We also have a number of bids in progress including  Bournemouth Arts Festival, the Pembrokeshire Tourism Survey and research for the Northern Constabulary.

Launch of our snazzy new Daily Digest email!

Guidance

Subscribers to the Blog will today have noticed our snazzy new Daily Digest email.

The Daily Digest is sent to all Blog subscribers every day at 4pm and provides an easy to read overview of all of the posts added to the Blog in the past 24 hours.

For details on how to subscribe to the Blog read our previous blog post on subscribing.

If you have received the Daily Digest email but cannot see all of the images then you may need to unblock image downloads from the Blog. To do this follow these  simple steps:

1. Open the Daily Digest email

2. Click the infobar at the top of the message, and then click ‘Add Sender to the Safe Senders List’ (as per the picture below)

3. Marvel at the beauty of all future Daily Digests which should make accessing current research information at BU a doddle 😀

Further £12 million investment in new R&D will accelerate innovation and support growth

Funding opportunities

The Technology Strategy Board is to invest up to £12 million through three new research and development competitions that will stimulate innovation and support growth across the UK.

Scheduled to open in May and June, the three competitions are designed to accelerate the development of innovative new technologies in different areas – materials technologies for use in energy generation, transmission, distribution & storage, strategies to improve the resistance of buildings to climate change and ICTs for the manufacturing and construction sectors.

The investments will build on the Technology Strategy Board’s ongoing programme of activity to stimulate and support business-led innovation across the UK, through funding to aid the development of new technologies and a range of activity that fosters and encourages collaboration and knowledge sharing in a wide range of technology areas and business sectors across the UK.

The three new competitions are Energy Materials (£3m), Design for Future Climate (£2.4m) and ICT for high value manufacturing and construction (£7m). In addition to the new competitions, the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has offered to support a recently-launched funding competition by providing an additional £500,000 for innovative research and development projects.

The three new competitions, which will open in May and June, are:

  • Energy Materials: Up to £3m will be invested in collaborative research and development projects that address the application and demonstration of materials technologies for use in energy generation, transmission, distribution and storage. The focus of the competition will be on projects which address challenges in scaling up technologies, from initial laboratory proof of concept to small-scale technology demonstrations and pilots in a representative environment. The competition will open in May 2011.
  • Design for Future Climate: The new £2.4m investment will assist design teams in developing adaptation strategies to improve resistance to climate change of specific buildings they are already working on. The focus will be on improving building resilience and adaptation to climate change, thus extending the commercial viability of buildings. Projects must be on a specific building / refurbishment project with a client and design team both applying together for the funding. The funding covers all building projects >£5m spend. This is the second part of the competition. The first ran in 2010 and provided funding totalling £2.5m for 26 building projects worth £2.7bn. The second part will open on 31 May 2011 and funding of up to £2.4m will be available.
  • ICT for competitive high value manufacturing and construction: The £7m investment will stimulate the use of innovative ICTs in the manufacturing and construction sectors in which there are major opportunities to increase productivity and competitiveness. ICT has a major role to play in many critical capabilities in manufacturing and construction including and not limited to: automation; customisation; knowledge sharing across supply chains; and simulation and modelling. The focus of the competition will be on applying recent developments in ICTs to significant challenges in manufacturing and/or construction and on encouraging new and sustainable partnerships between businesses

The Nutrition for Life funding competition, which opens on 9 May, is intended to encourage the development of innovative processes and technologies with an emphasis on providing “healthy” and “safe” food and drink, and will support both feasibility studies and collaborative research & development projects.

Further information about the three new competitions will be available shortly on the competitions page of the Technology Strategy Board website – www.innovateuk.org

Out and About…

Prof Alan Fyall, Deputy Dean (Research and Enterprise) in the School of Tourism, reflects on how unstructured networking can benefit academic careers…

Continuing the theme of “talking to strangers”, first raised in the post by Dr Julie Robson on 10 May (Talk to Strangers), I remain a strong advocate of simply getting out and about so you are in a position to actually meet strangers in the first place. Julie is right in referring to networking as deliberate and planned and is right to suggest that clear objectives need to be set at the outset and then followed up. At an early stage of your career, however, I am a strong advocate of simply getting out, be it in the real or virtual world (http://www.academia.edu/ is a good place to start),  as unless “out there” you will never meet strangers and never migrate to networking.

To this day, I remain the very best of friends with colleagues from Edinburgh Napier and Aberystwyth universities having first met them at a late-night encounter at a conference dinner in Newcastle in the mid 1990s. Since then, we have written numerous papers and published four books together while we are currently in the process of writing some new material for the forthcoming REF. One of the books authored is on the theme of Collaboration which quite simply relates to autonomous organisations working together to meet a common goal. All the processes, structures of governance and detailed plans developed to achieve these common goals are virtually guaranteed to fail unless those collaborating get on personally ….. a little like the current coalition government but the less said about them the better!

It is too easy to remain in our offices and too complacent of us to accept that opportunities will simply appear be it to write a paper or be part of an application for a research grant. My advice is to escape the office on a regular basis, mingle with staff either in your own School or beyond, enjoy a chat over coffee or even register for that workshop, conference or event that you keep telling yourself you are too busy to attend. Getting out and about and communicating with your colleagues either at BU or further afield can lead to new friendships and hopefully a co-authored paper or two, a  joint research seminar or if you are really lucky a grant application. One of my best “chance encounters” occurred on a work trip to Malaysia back in 2007 when I shared a taxi from the airport in Kuala Lumpur to the centre of the city with the former Director of Tourism for Antigua & Barbuda. In the space of 40 minutes we discussed the state of tourism in the Caribbean and sketched out a PhD proposal while at the same time agonising over which schools to send our respective children. To this day my “KL Taxi” acquaintance remains a good friend and in her new position in the Caribbean is no longer a “stranger” but someone who is a strong advocate of BU, an employer of our students, a conduit to professional international networks and …… a potential co-author and PhD candidate when the pressure of work subsides!

Professor Alan Fyall

Deputy Dean Research & Enterprise

School of Tourism

Workshop on Information Discovery and Data Analytics Made Easy

DEC are hosting a workshop on Information Discovery and Data Analytics Made Easy facilitated by Prof. Michael R. Berthold, Konstanz University, Germany on 18 May.

TIME: 18th May 2011, 10.00 am – 1.00 pm,

PLACE: PG10, Poole House, Talbot Campus

The purpose of the event is to present methods and tools that can be used in processing large datasets and how to discover knowledge from them. Michael Berthold is a coordinator of the project BISON that is a research project funded by EC under the 7FP. He is also one of the founders of KNIME which is a user-friendly and comprehensive open-source data integration, processing, analysis, and exploration platform. So the goal of the workshop is also to start collaboration with Konstanz University and find out more about EC 7FP projects.

The workshop is open to all BU staff and PhD students as well. It will be of interest to all people who are involved in intelligent data processing. For sure it will be of interest for DEC staff: SMART Technology Research Centre, Creative Technology Research Centre and Software Systems Research Centre. I bielieve also that people from School of Applied Sciences will be interested.

Research areas that it covers include: intelligent data analysis, predictive modelling, complexity science, complex adaptive systems, knowledge discovery from data.

SCHEDULE:
10.00-11.00 – From Pattern Discovery to Discovery Support: Creativity and Heterogeneous Information Networks
11.00-11.30 – coffee break
11.30-12.30 – KNIME. Integrating Data, Tools, and Science
12.30-13.00 – Q&A Session
13.00-14.00 – Lunch

Prof. Michael R. Berthold’s Bio
After receiving his PhD from Karlsruhe University, Germany Michael Berthold spent over seven years in the US, among others at Carnegie Mellon University, Intel Corporation, the University of California at Berkeley and – most recently – as director of an industrial think tank in South San Francisco.
Since August 2003 he holds the Nycomed-Chair for Bioinformatics and Information Mining at Konstanz University, Germany where his research focuses on using machine learning methods for the interactive analysis of large information repositories in the Life Sciences. Most of the research results are made available to the public via the open source data mining platform KNIME.
M. Berthold is Past President of the North American Fuzzy Information  Processing Society, Associate Editor of several journals and the President of the IEEE System, Man, and Cybernetics Society. He has been involved in the organization of various conferences, most notably the IDA-series of symposia on Intelligent Data Analysis and the conference series on Computational Life Science. Together with David Hand he co-edited the successful textbook “Intelligent Data Analysis: An Introduction” which has recently appeared in a completely revised, second edition. He is also co-author of the brand-new “Guide to Intelligent Data Analysis” (Springer Verlag) which appeared in summer 2010.

For more information about workshop or to book a place, please contact: Katarzyna Musial (kmusial@bournemouth.ac.uk)

Vice-Chancellor’s Award: Research/Enterprise Project of the Year

The Design Simulation Research Centre (DSRC) in the School of DEC won the Vice-Chancellor’s award for the best research/enterprise project. The research, led by Prof Siamak Noroozi, Dr Philip Sewell and Bryce Dyer, is detailed below.

Members of the DSRC have used the results of previous research, funded by EPSRC and the medical charity REMEDI, to develop a research collaboration with Chas A Blatchford & Sons Ltd, the UKs leading prosthetics supplier.  This has resulted in the team being awarded an EPSRC CASE Award (£86k) to design and develop a ‘Smart Socket’ to provide lower-limb amputees with increased mobility and improved quality of life.  This collaboration has also led to the development of research to evaluate the performance of prostheses used by athletes in elite sport.

The underlying technology developed has other applications in civil, aerospace and marine engineering resulting in the initiation of two research projects with BAE Systems (PhD matched-funding – £26k and an EPSRC CASE Award – £95k).

IP rights have been negotiated with both companies meaning that a proportion of the income generated form any products developed will come to BU.

The research into the ‘smart socket’ and prosthetics fit has seen widespread public interest as the socket will help soldiers returning to active duty who had been injured in combat.  This has resulted in the following publications in the international press:
– Soldiers could get back to active duty with the help of a ‘smart’ prosthesis” was published in the Guardian, January 2011.
– Ahhh…Comfort! UK Research Takes Next Generation “Smart Limb” to New Level” was published in the International Magazine OandP Edge (Vol. 9, No. 5), May 2010.
– Amputee mobility fix is socket science” was published in the Engineer, February 2010.

The parallel stream of research in the ethical use of sports prostheses saw one of its researchers invited to join the International Paralympic Commitee Sports Equipment Working Group. This advises on legislation of equipment used by athletes at the Paralympic Games. Along with this, invitations in this area resulted in several keynote speeches on the centre’s research at international conferences in both Germany and Spain during 2010.  The team won the research prize at the Paralympics GB National Conference based on this research.

The findings from both projects and the resultant innovations will inform an area which has seen little attention historically.  As a result of this research the team was nominated for ‘Outstanding Engineering Research Team of the Year’ at the Times Higher Education Awards in 2010.

The research into prosthetics fit and the smart socket will potentially transfer into widespread practitioner health practise through Blatchford’s 30 UK prosthetic centres. As a result this will influence how amputees are rehabilitated both from treatment within the NHS but also specialised private clinics such as Headley Court which addresses military personnel both retired or seeking return to service.

The research into the prostheses in sport has resulted in across school collaboration between DEC and the School of Tourism. This relationship investigated novel ways of assessing amputee motion. One of the researchers was invited to join a working group within the International Paralympic Committee which will help inform the sports stakeholders and the wider community ahead of the 2012 London Paralympic Games.

Congratulations to the Design Simulation Research Centre! 😀

Good Luck & Congratulations Weekending 7 May 2011

Awarded & submitted bids

This week the messages of good luck and congratulation go to a varied mix of people and projects!  It is really nice to see a  large bid going into the Leverhulme Trust from Barry Richards in the Media School; an intriguing project about emotion while playing interactive games.  Zulfiqar Khan has also submitted a large bid to EPSRC which I am pleased to say was reviewed by the Research Peer Review Scheme.  In HSC Heather Hartwell and Clive Andrews has submitted bids for various pieces of well-being work and/or medical training while Rob Britton in applied Sciences has submitted something to the CABI.   On the congratulations side Julie Robson (Business School) has just secured a grant from Friends Provident for work looking at the relationship between pawnbrokers and their clients and Richard Gordon of the School of Tourism has secured a small piece of training with St. John’s School in Leatherhead.  So good luck and congratulations to all concerned!

 

Matthew Bennett

PVC (Research, Enterprise & Internationalisation)

Media School launch a world first!

The Media School recently launched the world’s first Professional Doctorate programme for professionals working in the Creative Industries. 
 
The Creative Industries in the UK has shown itself to be a diverse, vibrant, and expanding sector that contributed nearly £60bn to the UK economy in 2008. With this dynamic picture in mind, this practice-led programme is multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional in nature and aims to build new knowledge in the field of practice.
The Professional Doctorate: Creative Industries (DProf) programme is aligned with the Bournemouth University’s strategic plan in so far as it offers;

•         high quality education
•         aims to develop high quality professional practice
•         is likely to raise our public media profile
•         will potentially offer opportunities for Media School staff to engage in enterprise activities with businesses within the Creative Industries.
 
Dr John Oliver, the Programme Director and Acting Head of Research for the Media School, says that this is an exciting addition to the Media School’s portfolio of doctoral research provision and has already attracted high calibre professionals in the form of an Executive Director at Virgin Media.

Talk to strangers…

Guidance

Dr Julie Robson, Director of Enterprise in the Business School, reflects on the benefits of talking to strangers…

The ‘top ten tips to ..’ lists seem to be everywhere these days.  Tops ten tips to live longer, be happier, healthier and to find your ideal partner. One list that I came across recently in the business section of one of the Sunday newspapers promised to provide the reader with ten ways to be successful at work. Most of us have seen these lists before and to be honest the advice, although perhaps sound, was somewhat predictable:  i.e., deliver solutions rather than problems, be positive at work, be prepared to go the extra mile, etc.  The one tip that did stand out from the rest invited the reader to talk to strangers. This one probably stood out most as from a young age it’s the very thing we are advised against. Strangers are after all dangerous aren’t they? The rationale for talking to strangers was simply the more people you talk to the more you widen your list of contacts and knowledge of others and how they see the world.  Whilst I’m not necessarily advocating that we all go out and talk to strangers, in many ways talking to strangers is really just networking, albeit networking is more structured in terms of planning ahead, having a clear objective and following up afterwards.

networkingCould good networking then be the secret to being a successful academic? On reflection it’s a good way to identify new ideas, new ways to transfer knowledge to a wider audience and new partners for bids  Maybe talking to strangers, or at least new people, is good advice after all.

Dr Julie Robson

Director of Enterprise and Acting Head of Marketing

The Business School

For further information on successful networking see these two articles:
How to develop successful networking skills in academia
How to create an academic network

The Graduate School story part I…

Professor John Fletcher founded BU’s Graduate School in 2002. Here he reflects on what life was like before the Graduate School and where we have come to so far…

This blog is a reflection of the BU Graduate School story so far as the first incarnation of the Graduate School makes way for a new vision. When I was asked to set up the Graduate School in November 2002 as 0.2FTE of my time, it was in the wake of two RAEs where BU had been criticised for its lack of institutional support of its PGRs and a stream of complaints from our postgraduate researchers via the Student Union.  The first step was to examine the processes and systems in place across both campuses which quickly revealed that the seven Schools had seven different sets of processes and systems and, even more challenging, it transpired that we had somewhere between 80 and 147 PhD students but nobody quite knew how many.  When looking at the qualification rates at that time BU was only managing to get 11% of its PGRs through within 4 years and some researchers had been registered for more than 13 years!  Eight years on the Graduate School has implemented a Code of Practice and a set of processes that are now common across BU’s six Schools, overseen the introduction of new and innovative doctoral programmes and help improve our qualification rates. The systems that the Graduate School has put in place were deemed to be so effective that members of the panel that came to BU for the institutional audit contacted the VC to ask if they could adopt the BU model for their own institution.  BU was also one of the first handful of universities to introduce a credit bearing training programme for its supervisors, something that is now becoming commonplace across the sector. 

The support provided by the Graduate School to our PGR students has reduced the isolation and the complaints received from PGRs but there is still a long way to go to ensure that we have the correct systems in place to create a best practice research environment.  The introduction of myBUILD as an online research student log and compliance system met with considerable resistance but was innovative at that time and BU was one of the first institutes across the HEI sector to introduce an online log.  The lack of resources has meant that it was not possible to continue to develop the platform as the numbers of researchers increased but even though myBUILD has probably long gone past its “best before” date, it is vastly superior to the varied and somewhat unusual mixture of record keeping that was found in the individual Schools. There is an urgent need to redevelop the online system to make it more intuitive and better integrated with the other platforms across BU.

BU now has well over 300 PhD students and the qualification rates, particularly those of our part-time researchers, is vastly superior to that of 2002.  The Graduate School introduced the Annual PGR Conference which has been enormously successful and was an integral part of the Special Audit of PGR programmes, a working member of the EUA’s programme on improving the quality of doctoral programmes across Europe and was the hub for BU’s application to ESRC and AHRC for doctoral support bids (the former falling foul of the spending cuts but the latter achieving success). It is hoped that Graduate School will move from strength to strength as the importance of the postgraduate segment of our student body becomes more significant as we move forward in the 21st century.