Category / BU research

BA Seed funding call NOW OPEN

This year’s BA ECRN seed funding and development fund call is now live.

We are pleased to announce of the next round of seed funding for ECRs in the South West. The aim of this scheme will be to create and support new cross-sector research partnerships and offer the funding to support ECR career development.

These small awards (of up to £3K) will support the direct costs associated with activities that support new research, the development of new stakeholder relationships, broadening knowledge of a sector, future career options or accessing resources and facilities.

British Academy Seed Fund SW Hub bids will need a  e-ITB to be completed 4 weeks before the deadline so the relevant FDO can open a RED ID, prep a costing and send off the approval request to the Faculty, before the PI can submit.

The e-ITB can be found here: Intention to Bid Form  2023 (office.com)

This needs to be done by 30 August 2023 to meet the BA deadline of 27th September 2023.

Please be aware that to be eligible to apply for these you will need to sign up to the  British Academy Early Career Rersearcher Network via this link

 

If you have any questions, please contact:   talentandskills@gw4.ac.uk

Violence Against and Women and Girls: Social Justice in Action Conference – 29 June

A chance to showcase your Research

Dear all,

We are holding a conference at BU: Violence Against and Women and Girls: Social Justice in Action Conference – Event Date: 29 June at BGB, Lansdowne.

The Soroptimist International Bournemouth and Bournemouth University are facilitating a conference with the focus upon Violence Against Women and Girls. The aim of the day is to raise awareness of issues relating to violence against women and girls, bringing together diverse professionals, NGOs, charities and interested others to share knowledge, explore limitations and seek solutions to sustain social justice. This event is open to all those who are engaged in working with Violence Against Women and Girls and those who care about reducing this global injustice.

At the event in the lunch room we will be running an automated PowerPoint presentation, where we hope to showcase BU research that is relevant to the professional audience.

This is open to all BU academics and PGRs – and all you need is for your research to be relevant to the intended audience it does not have to be focused on the main conference topic.

If you would like to showcase your work to this audience, please send a PowerPoint slide to Orlanda Harvey by 26th June 2023.

Please do pass this opportunity on to colleagues across the University


Here is what is coming in June for RKEDF

 

The following training events are coming up in June.

Please book now!

 

Wednesday 7th June 2023, 13:00-15:00 Talbot Campus

Anatomy of an Impact Case Study

This workshop is aimed at researchers who would like to learn what an excellent REF impact case study looks like and how to start building your own case study from scratch.

 

Thursday, 8th June 2023, 11:00 – 13:00 Online

ESRC New Investigator

·     Understanding of the ESRC.

·     Knowledge of the requirements for the scheme.

·     Draft plan for developing an application.

Wednesday, 14th June 2023, 16:00-17:00 Hybrid session

ECRN – Imposter Syndrome

The session will offer a space to discuss this growing issue as well as offer advice, guidance and support on how to manage, avoid and overcome such feelings. At the end of the session attendees will have achieved greater confidence in developing their career and profile.

Wednesday, 14th June, 10:00 – 16:00

BU Research Conference 2023: Embracing Failure, Building Success

The BU Research Conference is back for 2023 and this year’s event will explore the concept of ‘failure’ in academia and building the resilience to overcome obstacles that may be in your path

 

21-22-23/06/2023

Writing Academy 2023

Wednesday, 21st June 2023, 10.00 – 16.00 Online

Thursday, 22nd June 2023, 08.55 – 16.45 Online

Friday, 23rd June 2023, 08.45 – 16.45 Talbot Campus

This workshop covers strategies for academic writing: writing to prompts, targeting a journal/specific criteria, types of prompt for academic writing, ‘snack writing’, goal-setting for writing, motivation, freewriting, generative writing, analysing academic writing, drafting and revising an abstract/summary, constructing a ‘contribution’ argument, using prompts in series, outlining, productive writing behaviours, wellbeing, writing groups, micro-groups and retreats.

Wednesday, 21st June, 14:00-16:00, Online

RKEDF – Real World Examples of Public Engagement

·     Useful knowledge into how successful public engagement are planned and delivered.

·     Skills in critically analysing public engagement with research projects.

·     Inspiring ideas that would translate into their own work and share with others

·     Confidence that public engagement is approachable and practical to deliver.

Friday, 23rd June, 10:00-16:30

Engaging with Parliament for Impact

It will cover multiple ‘Common Routes to Influence’, including Government consultations, Select Committees, All Party Parliamentary Groups, think tanks etc. and the best ways to approach them. You will have an opportunity for stakeholder mapping and to plan your approach.

Thursday, 29th June, 13:00-15:00, Online

The Way of the Productivity Ninja

In this practical, engaging, interactive and fun 2-hour online workshop you’ll learn how to utilize the mindset and tactics of the 9 Characteristics of the Productivity Ninja.

 

To book a place please complete the booking form

If you have any queries please contact RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.