Category / BU research

Deadline extended: Zinc and Dunhill Medical Trust Innovation Fellowships in Healthy Ageing

Industry collaboration

Please see below for the following fellowship opportunity for researchers working in ageing that are looking to branch out into industry.

Zinc and Dunhill Medical Trust Innovation Fellowships in Healthy Ageing

The Innovation Fellowships in Healthy Ageing comprise a 6-9 month programme, starting in September 2023, which will allow UK-based researchers the opportunity to experience first-hand what it takes to build a mission-focussed start-up from scratch, and to build science-rich products and services to improve outcomes for people in later life. Researchers will also have the opportunity to engage in training, support and mentoring to help them translate their skills, explore new career opportunities, and connect with other talented researchers.

This opportunity is open to researchers at any career stage post-PhD, but we particularly welcome applications from early career researchers (you must have submitted your PhD thesis by September, 2023). The deadline for submission of applications is 12 noon 17th May. Interviews will be held in mid-May with decisions being communicated at the end of May.

For more details and to apply, see the full advert here

Dr. Hongchuan Yu’s Research on Automated Tracing of Neurons Published in Nature Methods

BRIAN

Congratulations to Dr. Hongchuan Yu from NCCA for the recent publication of their manuscript titled “BigNeuron: a resource to benchmark and predict the performance of algorithms for automated tracing of neurons in light microscopy datasets” in Nature Methods. As a co-author, Dr. Yu and their team aimed to develop an open community bench-testing platform with the goal of setting open standards for accurate and fast automatic neuron tracing.

This research project was supported by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) “The BRAIN Initiative” for over 7 years and was part of the “Brain Initiative Cell Census Network”. Dr. Yu’s group collaborated with Prof. Hanchuan Peng’s group at the Allen Institute for Brain Science (Seattle, US) on the development of neural tracing algorithms.

Currently, they are working together to develop informatics tools for analyzing, visualizing, and integrating data related to the BRAIN Initiative, with the goal of enhancing our understanding of the brain.

If you are interested in this paper, find it at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-023-01848-5#Ack1

A New Publication by MSPH researcher on Combat Trauma and Heart Rate Variability in a UK Military Cohort

BRIAN, Knowledge Exchange

Rabeea Maqsood is a 2nd year PhD student based in the department of Medical Sciences and Public Health. As a part of her PhD, Rabeea’s original research has been published in BMJ Military Health. Read it #OpenAccess here:

https://militaryhealth.bmj.com/content/early/2023/03/28/military-2022-002316.citation-tools

This is the first study- to the authors’ knowledge- to have comprehensively explored the association between combat trauma (status, severity and mechanism) and ultra-short term HRV in a large sample of 862 participants.
 The co-authors on this paper (in no specific order) are Rabeea’ supervisors: Prof. Ahmed Khattab (MSPH, BU), Prof. Christopher Boos (Department of Cardiology, UHD) and collaborators from the ADVANCE study: Prof. Alex N Bennett (DMRC, Stanford Hall), Prof. Nicola Dear (King’s College London), Prof. Anthony Bull (Imperial College London), Prof. Paul Cullinan (Imperial College London) and Miss Susie Schofield (Imperial College London).

Updated Intention to Bid form – March 2023

Funding opportunities, Guidance, PG research

Since the introduction of the new electronic ITB form on 24 January 2022, there have been incremental updates and the current e-ITB form is now available.

The e-ITB form continues to give a better user experience, creates a more efficient administrative control process for Research Development and Support (RDS) and provides accurate reporting outcomes for management.

 

Updated ITB form: The  Intention to Bid (ITB) form and the updated Research Costings Request Sheet are both available now in the Policies & Procedures/Research/Pre-award section of the intranet under Research > Pre-award. Please complete the Research Costings Request Sheet and attach it to the e-ITB form for completion. PDF copies of all submissions can be printed or saved but there are limitations to editing a form once it has been submitted.

Please send RDS the completed e-ITB form and Costing Request Sheet by the latest 4 weeks before the deadline.

 

Bid Enquiry Process: If you have more than 4 weeks to the submission deadline and need advice or support regarding a bid, please access the same form link and select ‘Enquiry/Advice on Bidding’. This ensures that the pre-award team will see your Enquiry, rather than emailing a sole officer who may not be available at the time.

 

As a service, RDS is committed to delivering service excellence to enable BU’s academic community to deliver and grow world-leading research for societal benefit. The program of work continues to look at processes to enhance the user experience.

 

Changes include improvements to the pre- and post-award support being offered. Building on the delivery of a new Principal Investigator report which is currently in the final stages of being rolled out, and continuing our collaboration with the Transformation Team.

The importance of communication for optimal patient care

international

As part of the Erasmus+ exchange, Professors Vanora Hundley and Carol Clark were recently invited to discuss the importance of communication with nurses at Manmohan Memorial Hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Good communication is a vital part of quality of care, but something that can be neglected when wards are busy and nurses are handling numerous tasks.

Participants in the session came from a range of areas within the hospital from medical-surgical wards, emergency room, through to outpatients’ department. However, all reported that finding time to stop and listen to patients could be a challenge when the hospital was busy. The group participated in a number of exercises,  which included role-playing to understand how it feels to be a patient entering the hospital.

Later Vanora and Carol were able to visit the research facilities to understand how recruitment and randomisation to vaccine trials is being handled in Manmohan Memorial Hospital. Dr Sujan Marahatta explained the process and discussed how the hospital was contributing to this important research.

Finally, a visit to the physiotherapy department provided the opportunity to discuss collaborative research in women’s health.

 

 

Erasmus+ teaching in Nepal

international, Knowledge Exchange

BU professors Vanora Hundley and Carol Clark are currently in Nepal as part of an exchange between Bournemouth University (BU) and Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (MMIHS) in Kathmandu, Nepal.

They have enjoyed discussing research with the Masters in Public Health students at MMIHS, whose research proposals include topics as diverse as stress and burnout, musculoskeletal injuries in hand-loom workers, and occupational health of high altitude porters.

Yesterday they were teaching the students as part of their Sexual and Reproductive Health Unit. Vanora outlined the history of Safe Motherhood and the group had a detailed discussion about the causes of maternity mortality and strategies to improve care for mothers and babies. Carol gave a lecture on urinary incontinence (including teaching the class how to do pelvic floor exercises) and explored how we handle taboo subjects such as this.

Carol and Vanora had an opportunity to meet with students from MMIHS who had recently returned from their exchange with Bournemouth University. The students spoke about how their time in Dorset had enabled them to learn about health in the UK and to share their expertise in delivering public health in a low income country.

The Erasmus+ exchange promotes cross-border education and knowledge exchange. It facilitates networking, enables capacity building and provides opportunities for future collaboration.

Add the PhD Supervisor keyword to your BRIAN profile

PG research, staff profile pages

 

 

 

 

 

Academic Staff who are currently supervising Postgraduate Researcher (PGR) students – or who wish to in the future – can now add the ‘PhD Supervisor’ keyword to their BRIAN profile.

With thanks to the IT team who worked on the developments, potential PGR applicants can now search the staff profile pages by their area of research interest, filtering it by those with the ‘PhD Supervisors’ keyword. This provides PGR applicants an outstanding resource for looking at the capacity of BU to supervise their projects, while easily allowing them to contact potential supervisors to discuss their research, ahead of making an application.

The changes to the search and filtering functions will go live shortly, but staff are able to add the ‘PhD Supervisor’ keyword already. We will update our applicant pages to provide guidance on how best to use this new facility.

If you have any questions about recruiting PGR students, please contact us on PGRadmissions@bournemouth.ac.uk

BU professors lead research workshop at Kathmandu University, Nepal

international, Training

Prof Carol Clark and Prof Vanora Hundley travelled to Dhulikhel in the Kavrepalanchok District of Nepal to deliver a workshop on research methodology.

The attendees included nurses, lecturers and senior academics from Kathmandu University. Together the group discussed the research gaps in women’s health in Nepal and the types of studies needed to help build evidence for practice.

Like many countries, research into women’s health is a neglected area but one that is beginning to gather strength. The discussion identified research gaps in specific areas of health, such as postnatal care and nutrition, and also cross-cutting themes, such as empowerment and education. Next steps for research collaboration were also discussed.

The workshop was supported by Erasmus+ and Green Tara Nepal (GTN).  Erasmus+ is the European Commission’s flagship for financial support of mobility for Higher Education students, teachers and institutions. Bournemouth University has been working with GTN for the last two decades and has collaborations with BU academics including Prof Edwin van Teijlingen, D. Pramod Regmi, Prof Carol Clark, Dr Nirmal Aryal, Dr Shanti Shanker, and Prof Vanora Hundley.

 

New Book from BU Researcher: The Popular Emergence of Digital Fiction

Lyle Skains’ Neverending Stories: The Popular Emergence of Digital Fiction (Bloomsbury) has just been released, exploring the many ways narrative storytelling has evolved and risen to popular awareness since the “disruptive” innovation of the computer.

Digital fiction has long been perceived as an experimental niche of electronic literature. Yet born-digital narratives thrive in mainstream culture, as communities of practice create and share digital fiction, filling in the gaps between the media they are given and the stories they seek.

“By putting the work of authors historically marginalized in discussions of the ‘computational’ at the forefront, [R. Lyle Skains] offers an alternative history of digital fiction that points to an exciting and expansive future.” Anastasia Salter, Associate Professor of English, University of Central Florida, USA

Neverending Stories explores the influences of literature and computing on digital fiction and how the practices and cultures of each have impacted who makes and plays digital fiction. Popular creativity emerges from subordinated groups often excluded from producing cultural resources, accepting the materials of capitalism and inverting them for their own carnivalesque uses. Popular digital fiction goes by many different names: webnovels, adventure games, visual novels, Twitter fiction, webcomics, Twine games, walking sims, alternate reality games, virtual reality films, interactive movies, enhanced books, transmedia universes, and many more.

“Unlike many exclusionary scholarly works in the field, Neverending Stories celebrates inclusiveness and diversity by tracing the emergence and development of digital fiction variations in various languages and cultures around the world. As foundational and comprehensive, this book is indispensable for scholars and students interested in perceiving the creativity and versatility of popular culture and fiction in digital environments.” Reham Hosny, Digital Creative Writer and Assistant Professor of Literary Theory and Criticism, Minia University, Egypt

The book establishes digital fiction in a foundation of innovation, tracing its emergence in various guises around the world. It examines Infocom, whose commercial success with interactive fiction crumbled, in no small part, because of its failure to consider women as creators or consumers. It takes note of the brief flourish of commercial book apps and literary games. It connects practices of cognitive and conceptual interactivity, and textual multiplicity-dating to the origins of the print novel-to the feminine. It pushes into the technological future of narrative in immersive and mixed realities. It posits the transmedia franchises and the practices of fanfiction as examples of digital fiction that will continue indefinitely, regardless of academic notice or approval.

Gain national recognition for your doctoral supervision: Join us online today!

PG research

Come and join us today (Tuesday 07 February 2023) at 12:00pm to learn more about the UK Council for Graduate Education’s (UKCGE) Good Supervisory Practice Framework and the Research Supervision Recognition Programme which allows established supervisors to gain recognition for this challenging, but rewarding, role.

This discussion will be led Dr Martyn Polkinghorne, UKCGE Recognised Research Supervisor, BUBS: Associate Professor, FLIE: Education Excellence Theme Leader, TeachBU: Academic Lead.

Staff attending will be able to: 

  • use the Framework to navigate the wide-ranging, highly complex and demanding set of roles that modern research supervisors must undertake to perform the role effectively
  • reflect on their own practice, compared to a benchmark of good practice
  • identify strengths and weaknesses and build upon the former and address the latter with targeted professional development
  • work towards recognition of their expertise by a national body.

Further details on the session as well as information on future lunchbite sessions can also be found on the staff intranet.

Date: Tuesday 07 February 2023

Time: 12:00 – 13:00, Teams

To book a place on this session please contact the Doctoral College: DoctoralCollege@bournemouth.ac.uk 

Further details and future sessions can also be found on the Supervisory Development Lunchbite Sessions staff intranet page.

Shaping the metaverse into reality: multidisciplinary perspectives on opportunities, challenges, and future research. 

New METAVERSE paper coauthored by Professor Dimitrios Buhalis

Koohang, A, Nord, J, Ooi, K, Tan, G, Al-Emran, M, Aw, E, Baabdullah, A, Buhalis, D, Cham, T, Dennis, C, Dutot, V, Dwivedi, Y, Hughes, L, Mogaji, E., Pandey, N, Phau, I, Raman, R, Sharma, A, Sigala, M, Ueno, A and Wong, L (2023) 

Shaping the metaverse into reality: multidisciplinary perspectives on opportunities, challenges, and future research.
Journal of Computer Information Systems. ISSN 0887-4417 https://doi.org/10.1080/08874417.2023.2165197 

The term metaverse is described as the next iteration of the Internet. Metaverse is a virtual platform that uses extended reality technologies, i.e. augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, 3D graphics, and other emerging technologies to allow real-time interactions and experiences in ways that are not possible in the physical world. Companies have begun to notice the impact of the metaverse and how it may help maximize profits. The purpose of this paper is to offer perspectives on several important areas, i.e. marketing, tourism, manufacturing, operations management, education, the retailing industry, banking services, healthcare, and human resource management that are likely to be impacted by the adoption and use of a metaverse. Each includes an overview, opportunities, challenges, and a potential research agenda.

 

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis research on Metaverse