Category / REF Subjects

Talk on Software Platforms for Evolving Predictive Systems, wednesday 13th June 14:00, Lawrence Lecture Theatre

Our next external speaker of the STRC seminar series will be Mr . Tobiasz Dworak. The talk will take place on Wednesday, 13th of June in Lawrence Lecture Theatre at 14:00 h
Tobiasz is a highly experience Project Manager and Software Developer in the International Company Research & Engineering Center (REC-global)
I think that those of you involved in software design and development would like to hear this Seminar.
The title of the talk is: “Current state of INFER platform software. (Hands on demo)”
“I will be presenting current state of the INFER (Computational Intelligence Platform for Evolving and Robust Predictive Systems) software with emphasis on new model of predictive elements. Additionally I’ll draft further of INFER core and present live demo of the software. Open discussion will take part after the presentation. I’d like to hear wishes from all potential users of INFER”.
Best Wishes, Emili

Introduction to Adaptive Learning from Streaming Data by Dr Zliobaite, Wednesday 30th of May:

Kindly announce that our next speaker of the STRC seminar series will be Dr Indrė Žliobaitė. The talk will take place next Wednesday, 30th of May in Lawrence Lecture Theatre at 16:00 h (please click for a map)

Indrė (Lecturer in BU as most of us know) will present novel angles of her work in a highly didactic fashion. She will talk about an exciting topic, strategies for predicting streaming data. This is particularly attractive for instance for those of us involved in projects in real-time industrial settings.

Please feel free to show up if you like it regardless you background!

The talk title is:

“Introduction to Adaptive Learning from Streaming Data”

Short description:

Changing data over time presents one of the major challenges in predictive modelling applications, for example automated movie recommendation, bankruptcy prediction, spam categorization, food sales prediction and many more. In such situations predictive models need to have mechanisms to update or retrain themselves using recent data, otherwise they will quickly lose accuracy. This talk will give an introductory overview of settings and algorithms for adaptive predictive modelling.

Best Wishes, Emili

Business School’s Ven Tauringana wins award for outstanding reviewer!

BU’s Business School’s Dr Ven Tauringanahas been chosen as an Outstanding Reviewer at the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2012.

Each year Emerald names and rewards the Outstanding Reviewers who contribute to the success of the journals.  Each journal’s Editor nominates the Reviewer they believe has been that title’s most Outstanding Reviewer. This year Ven received this nomination due to his role as Reviewer for the Journal of Accounting in Emerging Economies throughout 2011, his efforts described as ‘very impressive’ and making a ‘significant contribution’.

Well done Ven!

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

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

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

Title:
Evolving Simple and Complex Structures To Combine Predictors

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

This is a short curriculum of our speaker:

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

Best Wishes, Emili

ESRC Call for Evaluating the Business Impact of Social Science

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

The aims of the evaluation are as follows:

Part 1 – Impact of Business/Management Schools

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

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

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

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

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

 The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.

Innovative post graduate research in the School of Tourism

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

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

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

The pursuit of mud

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

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

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

 

EPSRC Sandpit: More with Less: Engineering Solutions for Resource Efficiency

The EPSRC has announced a call for Expressions of Interest for attendance at their Sandpit for ‘More with Less: Engineering Solutions for Resource Efficiency’.

The UK is a small nation with limited resources that has a high material dependency. With the ever growing concern of material and resource scarcity we look to the ingenuity of the research base to find long-term sustainable solutions.

The Engineering theme will lead a sandpit in response to the challenges raised by the research community in the Resource Efficiency Scoping Workshop in April 2012 and in line with EPSRC strategy. The primary aim is to invest in ambitious, engineering-led, cross-disciplinary research with the potential for long-term transformation across many and diverse sectors, especially among those that have yet to embrace these concepts.

EPSRC are looking for enthusiastic participants from a wide range of disciplines who will bring their expertise to explore the challenges of:

  • Dematerialisation (eg lightweighting, novel materials functionality, novel materials from waste products, materials security and efficiency);
  • Designing for resource sustainability (eg energy, water and materials efficiency, considerations for engineering processes, whole systems and resource flow modelling);
  • Reuseability at any scale (closed and open loop recycling, remanufacturing, extended product life).

Closing Date: 13.00 on 11 June 2012

Documents to Download:

Resource efficiency sandpit call document

Resource efficiency workshop challenge outcomes

Ideas Factory Sandpit expression of interest form: Return form to sandpit@epsrc.ac.uk

Equal Opportunities Form

A Sandpit for Ideas: The concept of the IDEAS Factory is to organise interactive workshops (sandpits) on particular topics, involving 20-25 participants. The focus for this sandpit is MORE WITH LESS: Engineering solutions for resource efficiency. Anyone eligible to apply for funding from Research Councils UK can apply.

The Sandpit Event: The sandpit will run over five days starting mid-morning on day one and finishing mid-afternoon on day five.

As the sandpit progresses, participants will build up thoughts on how the identified ‘challenges’ may be addressed and develop their innovative ideas and activities into research projects. Projects will contain genuinely novel and speculative investigations that address new approaches to resource efficiency. The sandpit will include inputs from a variety of sources.

Location and Date

The date for this sandpit is 23rd – 27th July 2012. Location to be confirmed.

ISRF Mid-Career Research Fellowship Call announced

The Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF) wishes to support independent-minded researchers to do interdisciplinary work which is unlikely to be funded by existing funding bodies. It is interested in original research ideas which take new approaches, and suggest new solutions, to real world social problems.

The Foundation intends to make a small number of awards to support original interdisciplinary research, across the range of the social sciences, to be held from a start date during the academic year 2013-4. Scholars from within Europe are eligible to apply.

The award is intended to enable a scholar at the mid career stage to pursue his/her research full-time, normally for 12 months. The amount will be offered to buy out the costs of replacing all teaching and associated administration in the applicant’s home institution, and will be considered to a maximum of £60,000 per successful applicant. Within that sum, reasonable support for research expenses may be considered on a matched-funding basis with the host institution.

The applicant should normally hold a salaried position at an institution of higher education and research, and be 10 years or more from the year of their PhD award. However, a shorter time from PhD award may exceptionally be considered, if the candidate has other qualifications to be considered as mid-career.

Applicants should consult the Criteria as set out in the Further Particulars and show that they meet them. Applicants should follow the Application procedure and should present their Proposal in the format specified there.

Closing date for applications is 4pm on June 21st 2012.

Application Queries: Telephone +44 (0) 20 7262 0196 or email applications2012@isrf.org

The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.

DEC Post Graduate Researcher Poster Competition

The School of Design, Engineering and Computing is holding its 5th Annual Post Graduate Research Student Poster Competition Conference on Wednesday 23rd May 2012 in the Thomas Hardy Suite.  This event showcases the School’s current PhD research.  Judging will take place in the morning and then the display will be open to all at 14:00 hours. Bournemouth University Board Member, Dr Peter Barnwell MBE will officially open the conference at 14:30 p.m. and will be awarding the prizes for the best posters at approximately 15:00 pm. Students will be there to discuss their research until 16:00 hours.  All staff are welcome.

International placements deemed priceless

Bournemouth University’s Professor Jonathan Parker and Dr Sara Crabtree have been examining the true benefits an international placement has on a student’s learning experience, employability and future career.

The study, conducted alongside Parker and Crabtree’s BU colleague Clare Cutler, examined a range of aspects of inter-cultural learning arising from placements. Current students and graduates were questioned about their confidence, cultural attitudes, employer feedback and other factors arising from the international placement experience.

Professor Parker explained: “This research has shown how working in totally different and sometimes physically inhospitable cultural environments, develops students’ confidence to practice in varied, challenging and unknown situations. This is so important when they come back to work in a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic country like the UK.”

While the study has primarily focused on international placements in Parker’s own research area of social work, it is already being applied to other disciplines. “We are now surveying students taking international placements in our School of Tourism and these research findings are equally positive,” he explained. “But the concept can be much more widely applied to encompass any career working with the general public.”

But there’s one big problem holding many UK students back: “As a general rule, UK students are very poor at languages, which are so important in so many aspects of life.”

This apparent ‘failing’ of the school system, whereby languages are not compulsory at GCSE level, needs to be addressed if students are going to reap the rewards of international placement schemes such as Erasmus. “Students need a basic degree of language skill,” Parker concluded. “It should be compulsory”.

This international placements research project is supported through BU’s Fusion fund, promoting projects which create a unique academic experience through the powerful fusion of research, education and professional practice.

More information about Professor Jonathan Parker’s and Dr Sara Crabtree’s research can be viewed on BURO.

NERC announce first round of the 2012/13 Follow-on Fund

Applications are invited to NERC’s first round of the 2012/13 Follow-on Fund.

The aim of this scheme is to develop outcomes from previous funding to a stage where commercial opportunities are possible.  The fund is open to researchers in UK universities and research council institutes with current or past research council funding.

Funds are typically requested to further develop the scientific or technical aspects of an idea.  This may be to strengthen the intellectual property position, carry out further market research or investigate possible licensees.

Applications must be made through the JeS system (https://je-s.rcuk.ac.uk/).

The closing date for applications is 4pm, 6 June 2012.

NERC also funds a Follow-on Fund ‘Pathfinder’ scheme to support small-scale, specific activities that can help develop a better understanding of future work needs and may be beneficial when submitting a full Follow-on Fund application.

For more information and contact details go to http://www.nerc.ac.uk/using/schemes/followonfund.asp

The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.

Useful documents

To find out more, please download the documents you need from the list below.

Guidance to applicants

Eligibility and assessment criteria

Specific guidance – ‘Full’ Follow-on Fund

Specific guidance – Follow-on Fund Pathfinder

Moderating panel membership

Guidance for writing supporting letters

EPSRC announce call: Working together in ICT

Summary

EPSRC’s ICT Theme intends to commit around £5M of funding for research projects which will directly address its Working Together priority.

Projects submitted in response to this call should comprise two or more ‘streams’ of research which run concurrently and show significant mutual benefit. These streams may include ICT researchers working with researchers in areas outside ICT, as long as the potential benefit to ICT research is the main driver for the project.

Full call document including background, funding available, aims and scope of call, eligibilty, how to apply and assessment can be found here.

Closing date: 16:00 on 10 July 2012

Submitting application

You should prepare and submit your proposal using the Research Councils’ Joint electronic Submission (Je-S) System (https://je-s.rcuk.ac.uk/).

When adding a new proposal, you should select: Council ‘EPSRC’; Document type ‘Standard Proposal’; Scheme ‘Standard Research’; On the Project Details page you should select the ‘Working Together in ICT’ call.

The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.

BSG Calls in Geomorphology

The British Society for Geomorphology has issued three calls in Geomorphological research. 

The first is Innovative and Emerging Techniques in Geomorphology.

Up to £10,000 (ideally £5,000) is available to support the development of new technology and/or analytical techniques in geomorphology as stated in the BSG Mission, Sections 1.5 and 1.6. It is envisaged that the pump-priming of new techniques in geomorphology will support applications to the RCUK. Applications must have a geomorphological focus.

Deadline: 30 September 2012

The second is Early Career Researcher.

Up to £10,000 (ideally £5,000) is available to pump-prime geomorphological research undertaken by an Early-Career Researcher (ECR). We define an ECR as a member of staff who holds an employment contract of 0.2FTE or greater and who started their academic career within four years of the closing date of applications. Note that to be eligible for this scheme, the primary employment function of applicants must be in ‘research’ or ‘teaching and research’, within any HEI or other organisation, whether in the UK or overseas.

PLEASE NOTE: Applicants should state the start date of their career on the application form.

There is no restriction on the type of support eligible for funding (e.g. conference, workshop, field visit, data purchase, lab costs), although consistent with other BSG grant schemes, they will not support salaries. Applications will be evaluated both for the quality of the research, and for its potential to pump-prime subsequent work.

Applicants to the ECR scheme cannot be a Principal Investigator on any other grant bids to the BSG in the same funding round.

Deadline(s): 30 September and 1 February

The third is in Research Networks in SE Asia and China.

Up to £10,000 (ideally £5,000) is available to support development of research networks in SE Asia and China. The purpose of this grant is to bring together global partners with a research interest in the SE Asia or China region. It is envisaged the £10,000 may support one or more workshops or conferences hosted within the region by SE Asia or China colleagues. The region supported by these awards includes India but excludes Japan.

Deadline: 30 September 2012

All applications should be applied for Online through the BSG’s site.

The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.

How Martin Kretschmer’s research impacted the proposed plan to extend copyright term

Watch this excellent short video from BU’s Prof Martin Kretschmer on how a BU conference and signed statement resulted in the European Union amending a proposed plan on copyright law.

To see other BU videos on YouTube go to the BU YouTube page!

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGZZ4SrrzSI

 

View Martin Kretschmer’s publications in our institutional repository.

EPSRC/ESRC Invitation for Outlines: Consortia for Exploratory Research in Security

                                                                                                                                                                                                         

As part of their contribution to the RCUK Global Uncertainties Programme, EPSRC and ESRC are jointly inviting proposals for research consortia (PDF 79KB) to explore current and future cyber security challenges.

CEReS consortia are encouraged to work across or between established disciplines and to draw on expertise from multiple research organisations wherever necessary. They particularly welcome proposals with significant novel mathematics and/or social science content.

Initially, outline proposals will be assessed for their novelty and fit to the aims of the call. Successful outline applicants will be invited to submit full proposals later in 2012.

EPSRC and ESRC have made available up to £4M available to fund full proposals funded through the CEReS call. They expect to support a range of projects which is broad in terms of scale (likely to be between £500k and £1M for each consortium), duration (two to four years), mix of disciplines (with single discipline proposals being the exception rather than the norm) and subject matter (although all must focus on cyber security-related challenges in the broadest sense).  Activities funded through CEReS are limited to those currently allowed on EPSRC grants. As a result they will not be able to accept applications which request funding for PhD studentships, even if they are outside EPSRC’s remit.

CEReS is a call for exploratory research. Consortia should identify ambitious goals with far-reaching impacts on future research and, potentially at least, practice in cyber security. Projects which continue or extend current work in a straightforward or obvious way will not be supported. Collaboration between disciplines is strongly encouraged. Although it is not essential that all projects include cross- or intra-disciplinary working it is likely that the assessment process will select positively for consortia which adopt this approach.

Although it is being managed by EPSRC the CEReS call is also open to researchers eligible to apply for targeted funding from ESRC. There is no quota of applications or funding based on Research Council remits. It is possible for the same researcher(s) to be associated with more than one consortium application.

For further information visit the call website: http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/calls/open/Pages/ceres.aspx and read the call documentation: http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/SiteCollectionDocuments/Calls/2012/CEReSCall.pdf. Outline proposals should be prepared and submitted using the Research Councils’ Joint electronic Submission (JeS) System (https://je-s.rcuk.ac.uk/).

The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.

The closing date is 14 June 2012.