Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
The Innovate UK KTP Advisor for our region will be on campus this Friday from 10am-12pm.
Each appointment will be 20 minutes long.
If you would like to make an appointment to talk through any KTP ideas/potential projects or existing KTP, please contact Rachel Clarke, KE Adviser (KTP) on 01202 961347 or email clarker@bournemouth.ac.uk
If you miss this Surgery, the next one will be on Friday 20th November from 10am-12pm.
Innovate UK is taking place on 9 and 10 November in central London.
Bournemouth University is a member of PraxisUnico. This membership is for the whole organisation – colleagues across the University will find it helpful to sign up to receive the mailing list to have the NewsUpdate sent to your inbox (news and information from across the sector, distributed every month to over 5000 individuals around the world). Other information channels include the website, Blog and Twitter feeds of interest.
PraxisUnico is responsible for the range of activities which facilitate the commercialisation of university, public sector and charity based research. The PraxisUnico website acts to signpost information relating to UK KT activity, expertise, success and impact – it gives Members a platform to promote to a range of stakeholders including government, industry, funders and overseas organisations – all of whom are regular visitors to the PraxisUnico website (and recipients of wider communications) as a valued information source.
As a member organisation BU can advertise items on the website free of charge – a great way to share latest news, achievements and job opportunities! Relevant content is also included in the NewsUpdate emails. Please send your content to website@praxisunico.org.uk. The website also features various a range of practical tools and resources for those working within the commercialisation profession, key resources are restricted to members only.
The annual conference will take place in Stratford-upon-Avon, 15-17 June, registration will open in the New Year.
Individuals from BU can also get involved as a volunteer by joining committees, contributing to workshops or delivering training – if this is of interest please let me know jcodling@bournemouth.ac.uk
The ESRC website lists its Festival events for 2015 and amongst the interetsing events is a record number of BU events! The full list can be found on the ESRC webpages, click here!
Pathways to impact: part deux!
This event aims to engage participants who attended a previous one-day ESRC Festival of Science event which took place in 2012 entitled, “Pathways to Impact: ageing, diversity, connectivity and community”.
Children will have the chance to take part in a creative mapping exercise using coastal artefacts and pictures to create their own sensory and emotional maps of the topic, starting with the question of ‘how does it make me feel to be here?’
Older people are increasingly at risk of falling victim to financial scams that target vulnerable people, including mass marketing fraud via post, telephone or email and doorstep fraud.
This event will give practitioners, agencies and members of the public, the opportunity to come together to learn more about the threats posed.
This event asked the question:
Bournemouth University Dementia Institute (BUDI) will bring dementia awareness to life through running creative activities including a performance from the BUDI Orchestra – made up of people affected by dementia and musicians – poetry and technology such as IPads and Nintendo Wii.
Are British children disadvantaged compared to children in other Western countries? An analysis of data from global sources compares the standards of mortality, poverty and health funding for children and adults in Britain vs. those in 20 other Western countries.
One year ago, in October 2014, the UK Government introduced major changes to the Copyright Law with the aim of promoting innovation and creativity. These included a range of exceptions and limitations benefiting users as well as educational and cultural institutions.
These exhibitions run over the course of three days presenting a showcase of Bournemouth University research projects demonstrating our research impacts on social and community wellbeing and our concern for diverse groups and work with a wide variety of stakeholders.
A group of researchers from Bournemouth University are researching the lived experience of students entering higher education from and in ‘non traditional’ contexts. By bringing together research, educational practice and students as research co-creators, a unique lens is created through which to observe the question.
The 5-a-day campaign went global after a recommendation from the World Health Organisation that we should all be eating a least 400g of fruit and vegetables per day. Variations on this message are repeated in countries all across the world. But does the message cause more confusion than good?
These exhibitions run over the course of three days presenting a showcase of Bournemouth University research projects demonstrating our research impacts on social and community wellbeing and our concern for diverse groups and work with a wide variety of stakeholders.
These exhibitions run over the course of three days presenting a showcase of Bournemouth University research projects demonstrating our research impacts on social and community wellbeing and our concern for diverse groups and work with a wide variety of stakeholders.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
Congratulations to CMMPH Professor Edwin van Teijlingen on his latest publication about why researchers do not always seek ethical permission for health research conducted in low income countries. The authors in this paper have identified and explained five possible reasons; a) approval not needed: b) not familiar with the ethics committee: c) applying the wr
ong committee; d) resource constraints; and e) assumption that non-clinical research are exempted, which are of course overlap and interact each other, for not applying ethical approval in low income countries. They have also provided examples of ethical approval taken from other countries than the host countries and further go on to stress that junior researchers and students should be encouraged to be familiar with research ethical approval. In their paper, they encourage journal editors and peer reviewers to ensure ethical approval bein
g granted for manuscripts based on empirical studies. This paper was co-authored by BU visiting faculty Professor Padam Simkhada and recently published in Nepal Journal of Epidemiology. The paper is freely available through the journal’s website http://nepjol.info/index.php/NJE/issue/view/919
Reference:
van Teijlingen E, Simkhada P. Failure to apply for ethical approval for health studies in low-income countries. Nepal J Epidemiol. 2015;5(3); 511-515
Pramod R Regmi, PhD
Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Faculty of Health and Social Science
It is estimated that some 30% of airline engines worldwide are analysed using PA’s current-generation technologies to detect fan blade defects
A team from the Faculty of Science and Technology, led Professor Siamak Noroozi and Dr Richard Gunstone, have successfully obtained a Grant Offer Letter (GOL) for a high-impact KTP working with Precision Acoustics Limited (Dorset).
In this blog post we discuss some of the background to this KTP, and objectives.
Precision Acoustics (PA) manufactures acoustic measurement products for the medical and Non Destructive Testing (NDT) industries and is well established as a major supplier of equipment for the (MHz) ultrasound markets world-wide. PA has a close working relationship with the National Physical Laboratory, London, and academic establishments across the UK to further R&D.
The company’s core products are acoustics measuring devices. The company already has a significant share of the world market in this area, and is now embarking on innovative industrial NDT systems working on a number of precursor projects including with Rolls Royce. The longer term objective can only be achieved if PA introduces a software capability able to devise, maintain and develop a development process that has the expected attributes of resilience, performance and integrity, supporting product deployment. This is the principal focus for the KTP, capitalising on the capability in systems design, software, and assurance within BU.
The diagnostic systems work at PA are being developed and used in numerous applications, including malaria detection. It is estimated that some 30% of commercial airliners globally use the technologies developed by PAL for analysing defects in engine fan blades, for example. Due to the inherent nature of NDT systems and the potential application areas, these application areas are likely to have societal relevance and high-impact.
A great deal of effort has been spent in designing the project to be flexible and comprehensive. This has been made possible by the capable contribution of Norman Stock, the Faculty Business Relations Officer. He has worked closely with the academic staff and also the company to present a suitable proposal to Innovate UK, who are part-funding the collaboration.
In terms of project design, the KTP incorporates the new “KTP laydown” of an integrated MRes opportunity for the Associate, combined with expectations of research activity leading to co-authored papers. This provides a route for knowledge transfer of expertise from the university to the company, in a way that delivers advantages for all stakeholders.
We look forward to providing further reports on our collaboration with PA as time progresses.
In terms of advice for others considering KTP funding, Richard highlights a few relevant points:
“Engage early with the Business Relations Officer for your Faculty. Make sure deadlines are adhered to, including submission windows with Innovate UK. Finally, clarify the project plan as early as possible, including what is achievable in the project timescale – scoping is key”
This is a monthly publication that provides a digest of useful information about funding, financing, support and events to assist creative, digital and design businesses with their innovation and growth strategies.
You can sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox or alternatively follow the Knowledge Transfer Network group on social media.
This is a great way to get a quick heads up on what is happening in these sectors with links to further information.
Click here for more information.
Check out the latest funding opportuntities, events and news within these sectors and more.
Knowledge Transfer Networks have been set up to connect people. Aiming to speed up innovation , solve problems and find markets for new ideas.
Why not sign up to receive information relevant to your area of interest and research.
As organisations make submissions to the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review 2015, Director for Employment & Skills at CBI, Neil Carberry, outlines the case for investment in universities.
Productivity levels and skills are considered two of the greatest challenges. This is where universities and their graduates – and their relationship with UK business – come in.
The latest CBI/Pearson Education and Skills Survey, Inspiring Growth, illustrates the magnitude of the skills emergency. Two out of three businesses surveyed expect their need for staff with higher level skills to grow in the years ahead, but more than half of them fear that they will not be able to access enough workers with the required skills. Even more disturbingly, it is the high-growth, high-value, high-potential sectors which are under most pressure – including construction, manufacturing, science, engineering and technology.
UK productivity has for a long time lagged behind most other developed countries. There are a number of causes, including low skills levels in many sectors, but a fundamental driver of productivity growth is innovation, where the UK is held back by low levels of public and private investment and an unbalanced ecosystem in which the infrastructure for supporting commercial innovation does not match the world-class research base.
Click here to read the full blog post.
http://blog.universitiesuk.ac.uk/2015/09/22/the-value-of-university-business-collaborations-to-uk-economy/
![InnovateUK_LogoA_Interim_RGBx320govuk[1]](http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/files/2014/12/InnovateUK_LogoA_Interim_RGBx320govuk11.jpg)
Innovate UK and Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) are to invest up to £580,000 in technical feasibility studies to stimulate innovation throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC) while focusing on the verification and validation* (V&V) of two classes of complex systems: cyber physical systems (CPS) and systems with emergent behaviours.
This competition encourages businesses to develop appropriate ‘links’ between the behaviour of a system in the physical world and the software implementing its planned interactions. It also seeks to stimulate development of new engineering methods for systems in which a machine – rather than a human user or operator – drives the decision- making process. Such systems can be trained to recognise complex patterns and to make intelligent decisions based on existing data. They are starting to be used in sectors such as automated and autonomous vehicles, and robotics and autonomous systems (RAS). Our aim is to ensure that small and micro businesses in the UK further develop their early capabilities in this area.
Projects are open to companies of any size, but must be led by a small or micro company, working in collaboration with one or more business or research partners.
The Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) is a well established process to connect public sector challenges with innovative ideas from industry, supporting companies to generate economic growth and enabling improvement in achieving government objectives.
SBRI provides innovative solutions to challenges faced by the public sector, leading to better public services and improved efficiency and effectiveness. It generates new business opportunities for companies, provides small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) a route to market for their ideas and bridges the seed funding gap experienced by many early stage companies. It supports economic growth and enables the development of innovative products and services through the public procurement of research and development (R&D).
The following is the list of recently opened & upcoming SBRI funding competitions.
Hosted by the UK Intellectual Property Office and the China-Britain Business Council
The Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG
09:00-17:00, Wednesday 21 October
Do you want to know more about obtaining and enforcing your intellectual property rights in China? Have you experienced IP issues in China and want to know more about the support networks available or how the IP system is changing? Do you work for a Chinese company looking to protect IP as you invest and do business in the UK?
The 3rd UK-China Intellectual Property Symposium is an opportunity for businesses to engage with policymakers to understand the current IP systems in both countries and to learn about future reforms.
China is a key priority of the Government’s trade and investment strategy. In 2013, UK exports to China were worth $24.5bn (£15.7bn). The Government has worked to increase two-way trade to $100 billion by the end of 2015, and within this to double UK exports to China from their 2010 level to $30 billion. The UK is on track towards achieving this goal.
An effective IP regime is crucial to the success of British businesses in China. China’s IP legal framework is improving through a rapid and relatively transparent process of legislative reform. In this dynamic context the UK Intellectual Property Office and the China-Britain Business Council, will host the 3rd UK-China IP Symposium in London at the Royal Society on 21st October. It will be opened by the UK’s Minister for Intellectual Property, Baroness Neville-Rolfe. The Symposium will cover all the intellectual property rights as well as more focused sessions on anti-counterfeiting and judicial enforcement. Each session will include a diverse panel of speakers from the British and Chinese governments, industry and academia. They will outline the latest developments and current approaches to IP in both China and the UK.
The organisers expect high level engagement from a number of UK and Chinese businesses. The delegation confirmed to attend from China includes representatives from Lenovo, ZTE, Baidu, JD.Com, Zhongguancun, Xiaomi, 360 Qikoo and Foton.
Find out more and register at the event webpage.
Mobile working is on the rise in the UK, with more and more people travelling for work or being away from home for extended periods of time, which has significant implications for work-life balance and family life. Someone working Monday to Friday in in a location away from home might miss out on valuable time spent with a young family, while another worker travelling for long periods may have difficulties finding time to spend with a partner.
In a digital age, how can we solve these problems and maintain family life while on the move? That’s exactly the problem that academics from Bournemouth University, Newcastle University, the University of the West of England and the Royal College of Art set out to tackle with their innovative research project – Family Rituals 2.0.
The interdisciplinary research project stemmed from a ‘Creativity Greenhouse’ session held by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, where researchers from a multitude of disciplines came together to tackle societally relevant problems from very different angles.
It was this mixture of perspectives and expertise that meant the team working to develop Family Rituals 2.0 have been able to analyse the problem of mobile working from the point of view of employers and employees, as well as develop novel technological solutions to specific issues faced by families who spend a lot of time apart due to work. These designs will be on display as part of the London Design Festival.
Lead researcher for Bournemouth University, Professor Adele Ladkin comments, “It’s been a great experience to work together with researchers in other fields to tackle the problems faced by families as a result of mobile working. We all have very different skills and expertise which has helped us to analyse the issues and then come up with creative solutions.
Here at Bournemouth, we worked with UWE to interview employers about the support available for mobile workers, as well as talking to employees about the consequences for them, their families and partners. Those results, as well as in-depth interviews with a handful of families, were used by Newcastle University and the Royal College of Art to create the designs that will be on show at the London Design Festival.”
The machines designed include a digital solution for a couple to share a drink together while miles apart and a creative means for a parent who drives a lorry for work to hear messages from their children while stationary in traffic.
“Each machine was created for a specific family, according to their situation and domestic life,” explains Professor Ladkin, “While we don’t expect these designs to present a solution to the issue of mobile working and separation, we do hope that it will stimulate discussion about what home and family life mean and what the effects of being separated from it are.”
The exhibition is open to the public from 19 – 24 September, 10am – 5:30pm at the Royal College of Art in London.
More information about the exhibition can be found on the London Design Festival website or by following the #LDF2015 hashtag on Twitter.
Carried out between January 2015 and July 2015, our Fusion CCCP and RKEO Small Grant funded BU Datalabs project explored the possibilities and challenges associated with the communicative power of visual
izations, maps and related interactive digital media for telling data stories on sensitive subjects of societal importance.
We use the term Data Storytelling to refer to the process of creating data-driven stories, from data collection all the way through to crafting the visual and contextual narratives that give data meaning(Greshon and Ward 2001).
Through a series innovative Datalabs events and workshops, we used a hands-on, participatory approach to teaching that combined principles of scaffolded technology learning and hacklabs (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007). Activities included:
Prioritising collaborative exchange, we brought together researchers, students, journalists and NGOs to generate key insights and co-create tangible outputs. Partners included the Omega Research Foundation, who co-author reports with Amnesty International, and Minute Works, whose sustainable design roster includes Greenpeace. Together with our partners we co-created visualisation outputs including the Data Distortion Layer Cake, the Reclaim Brixton map, and the #RiotID civic forensics project. Partners also went on to put their new visualisation skills into action. Our partner IRIN, a humanitarian news agency, created infographics and maps, including this interactive map of migrant deaths.
Feedback from our survey of Datalabs participants showed that most people’s familiarity with the tools and concepts taught during the workshops increased substantially, with most participants leaving the workshops feeling ‘familiar’ or ‘experienced’ with the basic tools and techniques of Data Storytelling.
Challenges and Opportunities
The emergent area of data storytelling provides both opportunities and challenges. Like any new digital skill, visualising data requires time and resources. This puts NGOs and small organisations at a disadvantage in terms of their ability to tell compelling data stories with visualisation. This disadvantage does not only manifest itself in the lack of resources to afford certain technologies, but also to afford know-how in the form of data visualization designers that are being “snatched up” by the corporate sector to work under Non-Disclosure Agreements (Wilson 2015).
In addition, while the rise of digital tools and techniques certainly diversifies the kinds of narratives we can tell with numbers, not all data stories are easy to capture. Sensitive subjects often have no straightforward data source, documents are scattered across agencies and organisations.
Our BU Datalabs project contributed to broader initiatives to bridge the emerging ‘big data divide’ that stands to leave the third sector and SMEs behind. Here at BU, we can help to narrow this divide by bringing together our skills and resources with stakeholder partners, to co-create visual resources and data stories for publi
c engagement.
What’s Next?
Our BU Datalabs Report reflects on the key insights that arose out of this co-creation project. The aim of the final report is to show how other universities and organisations can use our model as a template, enabling their organisations to co-create data stories with public stakeholders. A preliminary version of the report was presented at the Data Power conference in Sheffield in June 2015. A further presentation is scheduled for November 2015 at the Media Education Summit in Boston, USA.
This year we are working to institute Datalabs activities and Data Storytelling education at BU through continuing collaborations between the Faculty of Media and Communication, the Data Science Institute, and the GIS Lab. We also continue to work with our partners as we prepare for larger bids.
Our next public Datalabs event is scheduled during the ESRC Festival of Social Science. This day long workshop on Datastorytelling will take you through the full process of creating a data story, from scraping and cleaning to crafting the narrative.
To find out more about the Datalabs project you can visit civicmedia.io or email: afeigenbaum@bournemouth.ac.uk or ethorsen@bournemouth.ac.uk
References
Gershon, N. and Ward P., 2001. ‘What Storytelling Can Do For Information Visualization’. Commun. ACM, 44 (8),pp.31-37.
Hmelo-Silver, C.E., Duncan, R.G. and Chinn, C.A., 2007. Scaffolding and Achievement in Problem-Based and Inquiry Learning: A Response to Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006). Educational Psychologist, 42(2), pp.99-107.
Wilson, M., 2015. What Killed The Infographic? Fast Company, [blog] 6 May, Available at: <http://www.fastcodesign.com/3045291/what-killed-the-infographic> [Accessed 27 July 2015].
Open call to SMEs and new entrants for industrial experiments Digital Agenda for Europe
The Digital Agenda for Europe will shortly be inviting applications for its second open call to SMEs and new entrants for industrial experiments. The call will open on 28 October 2015 and the closing date is 3 December 2015. This call aims to initiate new business and innovation opportunities between SMEs and new entrants, major cyber physical system-platform providers, and competence centres. The maximum European Commission contribution for industrial experiments per applicant is €150,000. The funding rate is 70 per cent. The maximum duration of industrial experiment is 18 months.
For more information:
https://www.eurocps.org/innovators-projects/open-calls/
In post-war societies such as in the Western Balkans, war monuments may serve to preserve a single narrative of the past. Sometime the intention is to shape future generations’ understanding of conflict, thereby perpetuating militant potentials and societal divisions. But how do young visitors really experience such war monuments? Our fusion-funded project aims to foster conflict transformation (reconciliation) by facilitating young people’s engagement with a plurality of narratives while simultaneously nurturing empathy and recognition of the cultural heritage of war via contemporary gaming technology.
BU’s fusion approach encouraged me, a Balkan specialist and social anthropologist, to seek collaboration across faculties with Dr Avital Biran (‘dark tourism’/FM); Dr Melanie Klinkner (‘transitional justice’/ FMC); and Assoc. Prof. Feng Tian (‘gaming’/ FST). The new fusion-funded project is directly related to our Conflict Transformation Studies Team’s contribution to a major European Union Horizon 2020 bid: a working package on enhancing visitors’ perception and consumption of memorials via gamification, submitted in May 2015 (Reflective Societies, RED 8756).
The team presented its overarching research concept at BU’s Interdisciplinary Week on 12 May with our interactive session on Transforming conflict after war: memory, heritage and digital media. With support of two consecutive Undergraduate Research Assistants, a social anthropological spin-off exercise entitled Reconciliation-in-Practice was then conducted at the Festival of Learning. During the sessions, to which also Wendy Cutts (FHSS) contributed, we challenged participants’ assumptions about the ease with which reconciliation expectations can be exported to countries of Western geo-political interest after war and conflict.
This fusion-funded sequel aims to co-opt interested student from different disciplines into the process of story line development and game design based on post-war memory at selected sites in Kosovo. As part of FiF strand Co-creation and Co-production, collaborations will not just include students and staff from BU’s four faculties but also external stakeholders in post-war Kosovo. We hope to include local students and colleagues of University of Prishtina, Human Rights activists, the British Council, site managers and artists.
Pending ethics approval and faculty support, our aim is – with help of the creative abilities of all involved students and partners – to explore the potentials of ‘gaming’ for education and enhancing visitors’ experience at heritage sites. We plan to, firstly, research the challenges associated with contested memorials in Kosovo; secondly, develop ideas for a story-line for gaming to promote tolerance and understanding; thirdly, explore the possibilities of designing a ‘serious game’; and, finally, under the leadership of Feng Tian, devise a Game Development Document (GDD) which may serve as a blue print for the application of gaming at post-conflict sites.
Dr Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers
Faculty of Health & Social Sciences
sssievers@bournemouth.ac.uk
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