Category / EPSRC

Share your Views on Impact in Research Applications

UKRI are reviewing their systems to better understand the effectiveness of approaches to supporting impact across the Research Councils.

In order to achieve this they have launched a consultation to gather feedback on how impact development activities are being embedded into proposals by applicants. The aim is also to determine the levels of stakeholder involvement, and how impact development activities within proposals are reviewed and assessed. The results from this consultation will be used to make improvements to UKRI’s processes and will be central to the development of a new reference guide on the topic of ‘maximising impact’ within applications, as well as being used as an evidence base for continuous improvement, cross UKRI policy and other UKRI programmes.

They are asking for input from:

  • academics
  • university research office staff
  • users of research
  • project partners (such as social enterprises, charities, non-governmental organisations, business)
  • other stakeholders.

You can access the survey until 4 February 2022 here.

A three-day Sandpit focused on Digital Technologies for Health and Care

Funding opportunities

UKRI have announced an opportunity to apply to attend a sandpit on Digital technologies for Health and Care.

This is the first sandpit in a series of three which will be advertised over the next three years.

The theme for this sandpit is novel digital technologies for improved self-monitoring and health management. The sandpit will run over three days starting mid-morning on Tuesday 30 June 2020 and finishing mid-afternoon on Thursday 02 July 2020.

Key dates:

  • Call announced: February 2020
  • Call close (expressions of interest): 04 May 2020
  • Participant Selection panel: May 2020
  • Sandpit: 30 June-02 July 2020
  • Funding Application Deadline: w/c 14 September 2020
  • Funding Announcement: Before 30 September 2020

For more details please visit EPSRC web page or contact your RDS Research Facilitator for further assistance.

EPSRC reopens applications for strategic advisory bodies

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has reopened applications for membership of two of its Strategic Advisory Teams (SATs).

Further applications are welcomed for the Physical Sciences and Engineering SATs in order to draw upon as wide a pool of candidates as possible.

Applicants are sought from academia, industry and other stakeholders to advise the organisation on research and training strategy as members of the Strategic Advisory Teams (SATs).

The recruitment process for SAT applications is open until 16.00hrs on Friday 25 October 2019. Applications will be through an online form. The two vacancies are:

  • Engineering: Mechanical Engineering (Industry/ User Only)
  • Physical Sciences: Physical Scientist with Expertise in using Large Data (Academic only)

Those who submitted an application during the previous call in the summer do not need to submit a further application now. Applicants can still only apply to a maximum of two vacancies across both calls.

Appointments for SAT members will begin on 01 January 2020, and will run for three years, with the possibility of an extension for up to a further three years. SAT members are paid a fee for each activity they are involved in, and are reimbursed for travel and subsistence expenses when attending meetings.

The SAT member often looks at the recommendations of EPSRC or the strategies of EPSRC and asks questions such as: how have you arrived at this recommendation? Have you been universal in your application of approach, so that the outcomes and recommendations have been arrived at through research, analysis and evidence gathering? A SAT member needs to be open to broader consensus across strategic thinking for EPSRC.

Applications from the initial round of recruitment for all vacancies are still being processed, and applicants can expect to hear from EPSRC from late November/ early December.

For further information please see the vacancies webpage.

Further information on Strategic Advisory Bodies membership.

EPSRC are looking for new members for Early Career Forum in Engineering

EPSRC logoEPSRC is seeking applications from Early Career industrialists, academics and from individuals working in the third sector and government organisations to join their Early Career Forum in the Engineering theme.

The Engineering theme aims to identify and tackle fundamental engineering research challenges with the potential for lasting academic, social and economic benefit to the UK. These challenges are often inherently interdisciplinary, cutting both across EPSRC‘s portfolio and across the Research Councils more widely. Engaging with early career stakeholders from academia, industry and policymaking is a crucial part of achieving these aims, helping to set the direction for engineering research in the near future.

The Engineering Early Career Forum acts as an informal advisory stream to EPSRC. Members are advocates for EPSRC within the community, and provide a broad perspective of the needs and views of the engineering community, offering opinion across the breadth of the Theme.

They are looking to recruit around eight new members in this exercise, and they have a particular aspiration to improve the diversity of the Forum.

Further information on the Forum and its current membership is available on the Engineering Early Career Forum page.

Submitting an Application

The expression of interest form can be found at the bottom of this page.

Applicants should submit their form response by the deadline of 16:00 on 1 August 2019.

Please note: You will not receive a receipt of submission of the expression of interest.

Visit the EPSRC website for more information and the full call document.

NEW: EPSRC Delivery Plan 2019

Today sees the launch of Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s new Delivery Plan.

To realise their vision, this delivery plan (DP) identifies three complementary high-level objectives. First, they aim to generate economic impact and social prosperity by exploiting their existing and future research base to deliver a productive, connected, healthy, resilient nation. Second, they will unlock the potential of engineering and physical sciences research by stimulating and challenging the research community to open up new areas of science, as well as by supporting talented people and strengthening engagement with research users and business. Third, they aim to enrich the engineering and physical sciences landscape by providing the foundations for world-class research, which means attracting the most talented researchers, providing state-of-the-art research infrastructure at laboratory and national scale, and managing their portfolio so they can rapidly position themselves in new, ground-breaking areas. They have also identified four priorities associated with each of these three high-level objectives and developed a suite of near-term actions for each priority.

 

EPSRC seeking council members

UK Research and Innovation brings together the seven Research Councils, Innovate UK and Research England. We work to ensure the UK maintains its world-leading position in research and innovation.

Each Council is led by an Executive Chair, supported by a council of between five and 12 members.

The councils have a pivotal role in ensuring the success of UK Research and Innovation, helping it achieve its strategic objectives to be the single, strong voice of UK research and innovation, and building on our world-leading reputation.

The council members have a range of expertise and experience in research and innovation across higher education, industry and commerce, policy and/or civil society reflecting different characteristics and professional backgrounds. The exact membership takes into account the specific needs of each council.

EPSRC logoEPSRC as part of UK Research and Innovation is using Green Park to recruit two additional posts, looking for individuals who are either active researchers in a fundamental area of EPSRC‘s remit or who are a user of EPSRC research from an industrial or government perspective. If you have relevant expertise and experience Green Park would like to hear from you. To view the candidate brief and how to apply please visit the Green Park council recruitment page.

The closing date is 12 noon on 22 July 2017.

EPSRC funding calls timeline and new schemes

Funding opportunities

EPSRC logoThis is rather whizzy! The EPSRC have created an ‘Investment timeline’, which sets out major calls under various strategies, including, ISCF, GCRF, Future Leaders Fellowships, Strength in Places, etc. It also sets out new schemes that are being introduced shortly. Have a look here to see what’s coming up over the next 18 months.

You can click on each of the calls for more information.

EPSRC supporting flexible research careers

Guidance

EPSRC logoWhether you want to continue with existing university or external activities, have caring responsibilities or are returning from a career break, EPSRC is committed to provide support both as part of your initial application and should your situation change over the course of your grant. With this in mind, we welcome applications from academics who job share, have a part-time contract, or need flexible working arrangements.

Read EPSRC’s blog post on this topic to see what’s available to you as an applicant and existing grant holder.

In addition, EPSRC wish to ensure the support they offer is flexible in practice as well as in principle, and are interested to hear your views. Throughout April they will have a survey open where you can share your experiences of where their support has and has not worked for you and help them improve their guidance and policy. A separate survey is available for students.

EPSRC Engineering advent calendar

In support of the 2018 Year of Engineering, a year-long government led (Department of Transport) campaign to celebrate UK engineering and increase awareness and understand what engineers do, EPSRC have created a ‘fun’ Engineering advent calendar.

Every day, from now until Christmas, you can click on the doors (for the link above) to find out how engineering impacts on our everyday lives.

Enjoy!

EPSRC publishes new data on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in peer review

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has published further diversity data related to peer review. This extension of data for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (E,D&I) will highlight the progress made to date to improve diversity in their peer review process, and the opportunities to continue to work with their communities to make further improvements.  Please click here to read the full report.

Recruitment of EPSRC Strategic Advice Network (SAN) Members

The Strategic Advisory Network provides the EPSRC Executive with strategic advice to develop and implement plans and to make appropriate recommendations to EPSRC Council.  The Network is a flexible resource, enabling the Executive to obtain the advice required in a timely fashion, drawing on a range of perspectives from across EPSRC’s key stakeholder groups including academia, business, third sector and Government.

This advice stream has increased relevance to EPSRC as it transforms to form part of the newly created UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) organisation. EPSRC will need ever more timely advice in order to adapt and react to the new landscape, funding streams and in preparing a new Strategic Delivery plan (as required under the Higher Education and Research Act 2017).

EPSRC is seeking applications from respected industrialists, academics and from individuals working in the third sector and government organisations to join our Strategic Advisory Network.

They are looking to recruit around 8 new members in this exercise. Through this exercise, they have a particular aspiration to improve the diversity of the Network.

The terms of reference of the SAN are published on the EPSRC web site.

More information on the application process can be found on the EPSRC website.

Do you have any Big Ideas??!?!!?

EPSRC logoIf you have any Big Ideas that you would like to share – the EPSRC would like to hear about them here. Unlike other announcements, this is not a call for proposals but rather a request to help develop the research strategy of the EPSRC through a number of community led ‘Big Ideas’ related to engineering or physical sciences.

Please contact your faculty Funding Development Officer for help with the processes for submitting your idea or Ehren Milner (emilner@bournemouth.ac.uk) or Rachel Clarke (clarker@bournemouth.ac.uk) if you would like to develop your idea further before submitting it.

PGR funding with EPSRC – Connected Nation Pioneers

Funding opportunities, PG research

Connected Nation Pioneers is an exciting partnership between the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and key stakeholders. They have come together to recognise exceptional UK doctoral students whose research contributes towards the development of a Connected Nation.

The competition is open to all UK doctoral students in the final two years of their doctorial training. Applicants need not be funded by the EPSRC to participate.  This competition is being sponsored by DSTL, Facebook, BT, Samsung, Huawei, Thales, Amazon and NVIDIA.

This competition celebrates the transformative and pioneering research of UK-based doctoral students in contributing to up to two of the following category topics:

  • Safe and Secure Cyber Society
  • Intelligent Informatics
  • Making Digital Technology Work for People
  • Creative Computing for the Digital Economy

Applicants will be assessed per category by a panel of industrial sponsors in three stages:

  • An Expression of Interest statement (500 words)
  • A three-minute video pitch
  • An exhibition and pitch presentation

All applicants reaching the third stage of the competition will receive media and presentation training and will have an excellent opportunity to network with representatives from both academia and industry. Each of the four category winners will receive a prize of £2,000 and a NVIDIA graphics card at a VIP Awards Ceremony Dinner, to be held at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. The category winners will also compete in an elevator pitch contest as part of the Awards Ceremony to select an overall winner, who will receive a further £1,000.

How to apply

Before applying for the 2018 Connected Nation Pioneers competition, please read the call document for full information regarding eligibility and assessment criteria. Please forward questions or comments to PioneersCompetition@epsrc.ac.uk.

The Expression of Interest form should be completed and submitted by the closing date of 16:00 on Thursday 26 April 2018.  This can be found here.  Key dates are also on the link.

You must contact your RKEO Funding Development Officer for your Faculty in advance of applying.  Their name will need to be given on the expression of interest and we will need to record the application on BU’s database for research and innovation.

EPSRC 2018 CDTs outlines call

Funding opportunities

EPSRC logoEPSRC have issued a call for applications to support Centres for Doctoral Training focussed on cohort-based doctoral training in areas where both breadth and depth of research training are required to address UK skills needs at the doctoral level. EPSRC expects to commit up to £492 million (subject to budget confirmation) to support in the region of 90-120 Centres for Doctoral Training (CDT) subject to quality across the Engineering and Physical Science landscape.

Additional resources including frequently asked questions can be found in the dedicated CDT 2018 web space.

Please note: Bournemouth can only submit one outline submission as the lead institution (we can partner on other lead universities). Please see the call document for more information.  If you intend to submit to this call then please contact your RKEO Funding Development Officer immediately.

Resources

EPSRC Building a Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing Community workshop

Guidance

EPSRC is holding a two-day workshop on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing. The workshop will be highly multidisciplinary as well as bringing together those who are developing platforms and standards with researchers deploying and evaluating in real world environments.

In the Balancing Capability exercise, Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing was selected as an area to grow. While this is likely to happen due to the increasing economic and social influence of the Internet of Things and related technologies, EPSRC believe that some effort is required at this stage to ensure a balanced portfolio of funded research by the end of the delivery plan period.

Moreover, while they believe this field has a key role to play in contributing to the achievement of their cross-ICT priorities, they think that to achieve the objectives described in the priorities: People at the Heart of ICT, Safe and Secure ICT and Cross-Disciplinarity and Co-Creation a mature community discussion will be required.

Further information about EPSRC‘s portfolio and strategies, see our website.

What is Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing?

Put broadly, Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (PUC) is the fundamental and applied research that aims achieve the integration of computing into any device in any location that interacts with our lives.

Research in this area is necessarily multi-disciplinary and in order to achieve success will draw-on and synthesise ideas at the boundary of numerous other strands of research. This includes:

  • Context awareness and affective computing in mobile systems and fundamental research into smart devices.
  • Communication and information management between trillions of devices as well as new forms of distributed data handling and processing at scale.
  • Research into the software or hardware of devices that have mobility as a unique aspect of their application. This includes the solutions to challenges of building systems on a grand scale such as interoperability, reliability and scalability.

Research into new forms of interaction with pervasive computer systems and related research into trust, privacy and security. This will require novel computer science and engineering while incorporating research from the social sciences, humanities and law.

How to apply

Those wishing to attend the workshop should complete the short Expression of Interest (EoI) form on this page.

This is a fantastic opportunity for BU academics as a lot of our research would be classed as ‘Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing’.  If you do get a place, please can you let your RKEO representative know as we are interested in how this area will grow and what calls may come out of it.

EPSRC Physical Sciences Early Career Researchers workshops

Guidance

EPSRC is holding two one-day workshops for Early Career Researchers who work in the area of Physical Sciences.  This is a great opportunity for BU ECRs (especially those who are new to funding) in these areas to get a first hand insight to strategies and policy changes, and to network with peers and funders.

The workshops will be held in:

  • Glasgow – 06 March 2018
  • Nottingham – 14 March 2018

The workshops will provide an update to EPSRC and Physical Sciences strategies and will communicate recent and upcoming policy changes, such as the New Investigator Awards. The workshops will be attended by a number of EPSRC staff but also by experienced academics and current or previous Early Career Fellowship holders from across the Physical Sciences portfolio who will provide guidance and mentoring. The workshops will also include opportunities for networking with other ECR colleagues.

EPSRC anticipate this event will be of greatest interest to Physical Sciences researchers who are eligible to hold an EPSRC grant and hold few or no grants as a Principal Investigator.

The aims of the workshops are to:

  • To develop early career researchers understanding of EPSRC, including strategic priorities and funding mechanisms.
  • To develop relationships with Early Career researchers who will become future advocates for EPSRC.

Those wishing to attend the workshop should complete the Expression of Interest (EoI) form on this page. This will be used to select participants based on their justification of attendance as described in their EoI submission and will take into account how their research aligns to the EPSRC Physical Sciences remit and research areas. In addition, EPSRC will also ensure a balanced representation of organisation, research area, expertise and career stage.

Places are limited and the number of participants from a given organisation may have to be restricted in the event of multiple applications. Selection will primarily be based on the justification of attendance and completion of the survey is not a guarantee of attendance.

The EoI will close at 17:00 on 31 January 2018.

If you do get a place, please let your RKEO contact know as we are interested in what information will be shared, particularly if there are new initiatives for ECRs.

REMINDER – Cross-Research Council Mental Health Network Plus call Meeting

Funding opportunities, Guidance

Just a quick reminders…

We will be holding a networking event for BU academics who are interested in the Cross-Research Council Mental Health Network Plus call on 1st November 09:30-11:30 in PG140. It will be a chance to get like-minded people in one space to identify possible collaborations and differences.

No preparation is necessary for the meeting; however we would ask you to read the call guidance see here.

Refreshment will be provided, if you would like attend please contact Alexandra Pekalski or Lisa Gale Andrews.