Category / Research news

CSR – highlights for research and KE

Research news

george osborneOn Wednesday the government outlined their plans for spending over the next five years in the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) and Autumn Statement. The main points in relation to research and KE are:

Research councils:

  • The Nurse Review recommendations will be implemented (see an overview of the recommendations here).
  • Subject to legislation, the government will introduce a new body – Research UK – which will work across the seven Research Councils.
  • Innovate UK with remain and will be integrated into Research UK.

 

Budget:

  • The BIS budget will be cut by 17% (£2.2bn).
  • The science budget will be protected in real terms.
  • This includes a new £1.5 billion Global Challenges fund to ensure UK science takes the lead in addressing the problems faced by developing countries whilst developing our ability to deliver cutting-edge research

 

Research Excellence Framework:

  • The government will take forward a review of the Research Excellence Framework in order to examine how to simplify and strengthen funding on the basis of excellence, and will set out further details shortly.

 

Funding, priorities and investments:

Health and social care:

  • £5bn more to be invested in Health Research, key priorities being the genomes project, anti-microbial resistance and tackling malaria.
  • £600m additional funding will be available for mental health.
  • £150m will be invested in launching a competition for a Dementia Institute with the remit of tackling the progression of the disease.
  • Women’s Health charities/sector will be invested in, as will military charities.

Science and technology:

  • £1bn will be invested in energy research, with a key priority being the reduction in costs of low carbon energy.
  • Defence budget will be increased from £34bn to £40bn – emphasis will be on new equipment, capabilities and fighting cybercrime.
  • Investment in a new Cyber Innovation Centre in Cheltenham to supporting cyber excellence across south west.

Arts, sports and culture:

  • Arts and culture budget will be protected and £1bn will be invested.
  • The Arts Council will be invested in.
  • Funding in UK Sport will be increased in run up to the Olympic Games in Rio.

Knowledge exchange / enterprise:

  • £12bn invested in local growth fund.
  • 26 Enterprise Zones to be created including 15 in towns and rural areas. Two new zones are planned for the south west region.
  • Innovate UK will remain but based on a grant system with £165m in loans will be on offer. It will be integrated into Research UK (overarching body of the Research Councils).
  • Funding to Catapult Centres will increase.

COST Actions – supporting high-risk, innovative and emerging research themes

BU research, Featured academics, Funding opportunities, Research news

COST Actions are a flexible, fast, effective and efficient networking instrument for researchers, engineers and scholars to cooperate and coordinate nationally funded research activities. COST Actions allow European researchers to jointly develop their own ideas in any science and technology field. COST Actions are bottom-up  science and technology networks, open to researchers and stakeholders  with a duration of four years. They are active through a range of  networking tools , such as workshops, conferences, training schools, short-term scientific missions (STSMs), and dissemination activities.  COST does not fund research itself.

COST prides in its support for high-risk, innovative and emerging research themes. Importantly, COST does not set any research priorities. cost

Currently on the COST website is a report on Collecting research data to counter femicide worldwide

Femicide across Europe is the first pan-European research network investigating the causes and risk factors of a phenomenon killing thousands of women every year, worldwide.

Femicide refers to the killing of women and girls because of their gender. European researchers studying the  cultural, societal and psychological   causes  and  risks factors  behind femicide set up the network to fight the phenomenon through advocacy and research. One idea is to create a  European Femicide Observatory  gathering and comparing data from each of the 30 countries involved, of which half are Inclusiveness Target Countries . The goal is to come up with  new guidelines  and shape new EU public policies countering killings.

Specialists have been studying quantitative and qualitative data and ways to reduce discrepancies in country records. Such discrepancies are often due to the different definitions of femicide, which is sometimes seen as gender-based violence.

“When our COST Action was first proposed, the term femicide was not widely used. Everyone knew of homicide, but few had given thought to the fact that some women, particularly those involved in intimate relationships, were murdered simply because they were women. Today, two years within the COST Action, ‘femicide’ has become a buzzword, Action Chair Dr Shalva Weil explains.“

Network members have also been advocating for a more straightforward approach to lowering femicide rates in Europe. They have already addressed the Portuguese Parliament and the Parliament of Aragon in Spain. The network also took part in two United Nations sessions in Bangkok (November 2014) and New York (October 2015).

By participating in the network’s training schools and scientific exchanges, young researchers are also given the chance to better understand the phenomenon EU-wide. One outstanding result of the Action’s work is a  comparison of national statistics from 10 European countries .

The Action’s next annual meeting will take place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in May 2016.

Why not take a look at the COST Action database to see if there is a current Action relating to your research? You can then consider joining an existing Action or submitting your own proposal.

Click on the tag COST Action (below) to see other BU posts on this topic, including  Edwin van Teijlingen’s report on his recent publication and his experience of attending a COST Action Training School.

If you are interested in applying for COST, please contact Emily Cieciura, Research Facilitator: EU & International of you Faculty’s Funding Development Officer.

Suicide in India: Modelling data

BU research, international, Publishing, Research news, Uncategorized

The latest BU research publication used a modelling approach to suicide in India [1].  The paper ‘Time Trend of the Suicide Incidence in India: a Statistical Modelling’ is now online and freely available as it was published in an Open Access journal.  The first author of this paper is BU Visiting Faculty Dr. Brijesh Sathian.  The modelling resulted in some useful predictions of future risk of suicide at a population level, see for example: 10.12691.ajphr-3-5A-17.fig_1

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Reference:

Sathian, B. , De, A. , Teijlingen, E. V. , Simkhada, P. et al. (2015). Time Trend of the Suicide Incidence in India: a Statistical Modelling. American Journal of Public Health Research, 3(5A), 80-87.  Online at:  http://pubs.sciepub.com/ajphr/3/5A/17/

Creative Writing for Academics with Kip Jones

BU research, Research news, Uncategorized

Creative writing

Summary: The Creative Writing workshop will be a unique event in that it will not be a typical ‘writing retreat’ (with trees to hug and lots of time to ruminate), but rather a very active experience with lots of exercises, suggestions and supportive feedback on participants’ work from Kip Jones and other participants.  The point is to encourage both students and academics who would like to include more creative writing in their outputs, particularly those whose writing includes reporting on narrative and other qualitative methods of research.  It also helps immensely in the move to publishing in the wider world of blogs and online outlets, moving work to media and film, auto-ethnography and even fiction.

Justification: The important point of Creative Writing for Academics is to help academics and students achieve the goal of achieving more of their work read by wider audiences; in other words, impact. By providing an intense two-day experience for participants to engage in developing writing skills, the playing field is levelled and opportunities for facilitated learning developed. By engaging in creative writing, it becomes possible for all to write more clearly, more simply, even more creatively, when writing not only for academic publications, but also for outlets previously unimagined.

Methods: The workshop will present opportunities to work with academic material and expand its means of production and dissemination to new and creative levels through interfaces with techniques from the arts and humanities, including blog and magazine writing, film treatments and scripts, and poetry and fictional exercises. These intellectual exchanges encourage joint exploration of how researchers can engage with principles and tools from the arts in order to expand and extend the possibilities of dissemination of research data. Concepts of creativity itself will evolve and be transformed by participants’ outlooks and willingness to engage with unfamiliar territory. These processes comprise a ‘facilitated learning’—in that knowledge will be gained as a secondary goal through a process of developing new relationships through small group problem-solving and self examination, grounded in personal past experience and knowledge.

12115534_10153710964944855_4944742169117744163_nKip Jones BA MSc PhD is Reader in Performative Social Science and Qualitative Research in the Faculties of Media & Communication and Health & Social Sciences at Bournemouth University. Jones has produced films, videos and audio productions and has written many articles for academic journals and authored Chapters in books on topics such as masculinity, ageing and rurality, and older LGBT citizens. His groundbreaking use of qualitative methods, including biography and auto-ethnography, and the use of tools from the arts in social science research and dissemination, are distinguished internationally.

Workshop Price: £120. for two days. £90. for students/BU staff

Academics and students at all levels welcome!

Register online at: 

http://creative-writing-workshop.eventbrite.co.uk

Reminder of BU’s Bridging Fund Scheme for researchers

Research news

Golden gate Bridge wallpaperBack in August we launched the new BU Bridging Fund Scheme which aims to provide additional stability to fixed-term researchers who continue to rely heavily on short-term contracts usually linked to external funding. This situation sometimes impacts negatively on continuity of employment and job security and can result in a costly loss of researcher talent for the institution.

The new Bridging Fund Scheme aims to mitigate these circumstances by redeploying the researcher where possible, or where feasible, by providing ‘bridging funding’ for the continuation of employment for a short-term (maximum three months) between research grants. It is intended to permit the temporary employment, in certain circumstances, of researchers between fixed-term contracts at BU, for whom no other source of funding is available, in order to:

(a) encourage the retention of experienced and skilled staff, and sustain research teams and expertise;

(b) aconcordat to support the career development of researchersvoid the break in employment and career which might otherwise be faced by such staff;

(c) maximise the opportunity for such staff to produce high-quality outputs and/or research impact at the end of funded contracts/grants.

This is a great step forward for BU and for BU’s researchers and is an action from our EC HR Excellence in Research Award which aims to increase BU’s alignment with the national Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers (further information is available here: https://research.bournemouth.ac.uk/research-environment/research-concordat/).

You can read the full guidelines here: BU bridging fund scheme guidelines v1 070815

Responses to Nurse Review of the Research Councils

Research news

Following on from Julie Northam’s synopsis of the Nurse Review of the Research Councils posted last week, you may be interested to see the responses from the many interested parties, such as science lobby groups and learned societies.

sir paul nurseResearch Professional have provided an analysis of the responses that can be read here.  The individual statements are shown below:

Latest Major Funding Opportunities

Funding opportunities, Research news

The following funding opportunities have been announced. Please follow the links for more information.

Cross-platform production in digital mediastruct funds

Innovate UK is investing  £4 million in collaborative R&D projects that stimulate innovation in the UK’s creative industries.

This call is aimed at projects that address convergence in digital media technologies. It covers film, television, online video, animation and video games, and includes pre- production, production and post- production processes, particularly for visual effects technologies.

Projects must be collaborative and led by a business. Small businesses could receive up to 70% of their eligible project costs, medium- sized businesses 60% and large businesses 50%.

Projects are expected to range in size from total costs of £300,000 to £750,000, although projects outside this range might be considered.

This is a two-stage competition that opens for applicants on 9 November 2015. The deadline for expressions of interest is at noon on 6 January 2016.

Call closes @ 23 Dec 2015, 12:00

 

Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship

Royal Society and Leverhulme are inviting applications for Senior Fellows.

The award lasts between one term and one academic year. The applicant’s employing institution will be reimbursed for the full salary cost of a teaching replacement (up to the equivalent of the minimum point on the lectureship scale as paid by the host university). Research expenses up to a maximum of £2,500 are available to cover the costs of consumables, equipment, travel and communicating science.

Applications should be submitted through the Royal Society’s electronic grant application system (e-GAP).

 Call closes @ 11 January 2016

Wellcome Trust PhD programmes for Clinicians

The Trust announced that it would be refreshing its personal support schemes for clinical academics via delivering their PhD training to clinicians exclusively through PhD programmes managed by institutions.

The competition represents a unique opportunity for institutions to be innovative, create and collaborative, and to consider how best to foster the cultural change that will support the next generation of clinical academics, from undergraduate through to senior levels.

important dates for this call:

Preliminary application deadline @25 January 2016,

Assessment of preliminary applications @ 8 March 2016

Full application deadline @ 29 April 2016

Assessment of full applications @ 20 July 2016

 

Wellcome Trust Investigator Awards

The Trust has combined its New Investigator and Senior Investigator Award schemes to create a single type of Investigator Award, providing all who hold established posts in eligible organisations with the same opportunity to obtain funding. Awards are worth a maximum of £3 million for up to seven years.

Next full application closing date@ 26 February 2016

Shortlisting of candidates by Expert Review Group @ April 2016

Shortlisted candidate interviews by Interview Panel @ 5-7 July 2016

 

Innovate UK, China–UK research and innovation bridges competition

Innovate UK, the Research Councils UK (RCUK) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) for the People’s Republic of China are to invest up to £16 million in collaborative research and development projects that propose new commercial solutions to critical challenges impacting the socio-economic growth and development of China in relation to energy, healthcare, urbanisation and agri-food.

Closing Date@  23 Mar 2016, 12:00

 

 

If you are interested in submitting to any of the above calls you must contact RKEO with adequate notice before the deadline.

Please note that some funding bodies specify a time for submission as well as a date. Please confirm this with your RKEO Funding Development Officer

You can set up your own personalised alerts on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in RKEO or view the recent blog post here.

 If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on Research Professional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.

Nurse review of the research councils – key messages:

Research news

sir paul nurseSir Paul Nurse published his review of the UK research councils on 19 November. The full report is available here: Ensuring a Successful Research Endeavour: Review of the UK Research Councils by Paul Nurse. This follows close on the heels of the HE Green Paper (see this blog post for an overview), which stated that it would take the finding of the Nurse review into account alongside feedback received to the consultation.

The key messages of the Nurse review are:

Nurse strongly argues against the merger of the seven research councils.

Instead he recommends the establishment of a new body to oversee research – Research UK, “evolving out of” RCUK. Governance should include representation from government, HEFCE, Innovate UK as well as the research councils.

It’s functions world include:

  1. – engaging with government on behalf of the research councils
  2. – formulation of the overall research strategy for the UK
  3. – cross-council strategy, including best practice in research funding
  4. – managing cross-cutting funds for multi- and inter-disciplinary research
  5. – development and maintenance of research data management systems
  6. – taking on some shared admin / business support on behalf of the councils

The individual research councils should concentrate on providing “high quality strategic leadership to their research communities” in the shape of international quality peer review; speeding up grant assessments; improving reporting systems; ensuring diversity and strengthening links with their research communities.

The dual support system of research funding should be maintained and government should set up a ministerial committee to coordinate strategic research priorities across government.

He argues strongly for the retention of ring fencing for the science budget.

Research from the Department of Psychology in the New Scientist

BU research, HEIF, Knowledge Exchange, open access, Research news, student research

Research resulting from a BU-funded PhD studentship is featured in this week’s edition of the New Scientist, and was also recently covered by the Independent. Under the supervision of Dr Sarah Bate from the Department of Psychology (Faculty of Science and Technology), Anna Bobak has spent the last three years investigating so-called “super recognisers”, or people with extraordinary face recognition skills. It appears that only a small proportion of the general population have these skills, yet they may be incredibly useful in forensic and security tasks, such as the identification of perpetrators from CCTV footage or in passport control. While super-recognisers have previously been identified via laboratory tests of face recognition, Anna’s work demonstrates that only some of these individuals also excel at more applied face recognition tasks. In a recent paper published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, she demonstrates that more real-world tasks are required to identify the super recognisers who can truly be of value to the Police Force and in national security settings.

Anna has recently moved into a PDRA position where she continues to work with Sarah in the field of super recognition. Her post is part of a HEIF5+1 initiative that aims to generate knowledge exchange with the Police. The team are currently working directly with Dorset Police to create screening tools that can identify officers who may be particularly suited to certain face recognition tasks, and to make a series of recommendations for best practice that are extracted from excellent performance. They are also creating resources that educate officers about the limitations and biases that act upon the human face recognition system, and how these may influence core policing activities.

Royal Academy of Engineering – Visit to the Funder

BU research, Funding opportunities, Research news

RAEng logo

On 2 November 2015, I attended a ‘Study Tour’ at the Royal Academy of Engineering, organised by ARMA (Association of Research Managers & Administrators).

During the Study Tour, I was welcomed into the funder’s stronghold, met the Programme Managers and spoke with the Head of Research & University Programmes. All mysteries regarding their Programmes/grants, call rules and peer review processes were slowly revealed.

The Programmes that were detailed on the day were:

  1. Ingenious – Public Engagement Awards Scheme;
  2. Research & University Programmes:
  • Research Chairs / Senior Research Fellowships – the funder’s flagship programme;
  • Newton Research Collaboration Programme – travel/network grant;
  • Research Fellowships
  • Distinguishing Visiting Fellowships – funding for overseas Fellow to visit UK institution;
  • Industrial Secondments;
  • Visiting Professors;
  • Engineering Leadership Advanced Awards;
  1. The Enterprise Hub – connecting HEIs, investors, Hub members and the corporate sector:
  • Launchpad Competition;
  • RAEng-ERA Foundation Award;
  • Enterprise Fellowships;
  • Pathways to Growth;
  • Growth Phase Silver Medal & MacRobert Award.

The day’s presentations are attached here.

Besides for the highlights on the above Programmes, there are also key points about peer review/evaluation processes for different Programmes, common mistakes by applicants and the funder’s online grants application system.

An important message was that because the funder is a ‘small’ organisation compared with the Research Councils and other major charities, awareness of its funding activities is relatively low. The funder noted that across the range of its Programmes, it received comparatively low numbers of applications and hence, success rates for applicants could be quite high. For those Programmes where it received a larger proportion of applications, the funder observed that they received applications from the same HEIs every year and it was keen to receive applications from a broader cross-section of the HE sector.

In short, that encouragement together with the fact that the funder holds a broad and loose definition of ‘engineering’ means that all relevant academics in BU should seriously consider applying!

Their website is found at: http://www.raeng.org.uk/.

If you are interested in submitting to any of the calls by this funder, you must contact your  RKEO Funding Development Officer with adequate notice before the deadline. We look forward to hearing from you!

If you have any problems accessing the funder’s presentation slides, please email me at browna@bournemouth.ac.uk.

EPSRC report on REF case studies

Research assessment, Research news, Uncategorized

EPSRC logoThe EPSRC have issued a report ‘Investing in excellence, delivering impact for the UK‘, which analysed 1,226 case studies submitted to the REF, which covered a timespan of two decades.  This enabled the EPSRC to explore and understand how their investments have delivered benefits across many areas of the UK economy and society.

They found that over 85% of the impact case studies in engineering and physical sciences involved research and/or researchers who were funded by EPSRC, demonstrating the critical role of the council in supporting excellent research that delivers impact. The impact case studies cite over £1 billion of EPSRC funding coupled with a similar level of funding from other sources including government, EU and industry and provide strong evidence of the high levels of additional investment that EPSRC support can attract.

Please click on the link above to read the full report.