Category / Technology & Design

Call for entries for fifth UK Energy Innovation Awards

Research news

Innovators from across the energy industry and SME community are being invited to enter the UK’s leading energy innovation awards which showcase and celebrate outstanding projects, technologies and talent making a real impact in the energy sector.

Now in its fifth year, the UK Energy Innovation Awards 2015, will unite figureheads of the energy industry and the innovation community in a high profile event to celebrate the best innovations across the electricity and gas networks including the renewables sector.

Following an unprecedented number of high calibre entries last year, the awards, organised by the Energy Innovation Centre and supported by leaders from the major energy companies, has been refreshed and extended to include new categories which reflect the diversity of entries in previous years.

These updated categories include:

  • Best Offshore Renewable Energy Innovation sponsored by the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult
  • Best Electricity Network Improvement
  • Best Gas Network Improvement
  • Best Innovation Contributing to Quality and Reliability of Electricity Supply
  • Best Innovation Contributing to Quality and Reliability of Gas Supply

Altogether there will be 14 categories with the closing date for entries on Friday, December 12th. A black tie awards ceremony will be held in Manchester on April 30th featuring leaders from across the energy networks. Entries can be made online by visiting www.energyinnovationcentre.com

Chief executives from across the energy industry will be on the judging panel including Northern Gas Network’s chief executive and Energy Innovation Centre chairman Mark Horsley.

Last year, the awards attracted more than 370 guests from the electricity, gas and offshore renewables sectors along with innovators from a wide range of small businesses, start-up companies and academia.

Amongst the winners were Open Grid Systems which won the ‘International Trade Award’ in recognition of strong overseas sales of its tablet application which gives network operators an augmented reality view of assets out in the field, the first tool of its kind. Other technologies recognised included a robotic system which internally repairs leaking cast iron mains, the UK’s first ‘smart grid’ in Orkney and a unique technology to allow keyhole excavations on highways and roads.

Denise Massey, managing director of the Energy Innovation Centre, said: “The UK innovation scene has continued to grow and develop so much since the awards began back in 2010 and we are proud to have been able to contribute to this. With this in mind, we look forward to seeing a diverse and exciting range of entries representing the continued improvements happening in the sector.

 “The Energy Innovation Centre exists to encourage this important collaboration between external innovators and the energy industry by modernising the networks and revolutionising the way electricity and gas is delivered. It’s clear the industry is alive with an incredible number of talented, creative and forward thinking problem solvers, engineers, technologists, and academics so we look forward to seeing the entries.”

The full list of categories includes:

For category sponsorship opportunities, please contact Out There Events on 0161 946 6262 or email ellie@outthereevents.com.

Cyber Security seminars for 2014-2015 start with a bang

BU research, Fusion

Yesterday, we held the first of this academic year’s cyber security seminars.  We hosted Dr John Lyle from Facebook, who spoke to a packed audience in the Barnes Lecture Theatre about some of the challenges fighting spam at Facebook.  After his talk, John described how impressed he was with some of the thought provoking questions raised by audience.

Our next seminar will be on Tuesday, 25th November and will be delivered by Dr Andrea Atzeni from the Computer and Network Security group at Politecnico di Torino.  Andrea will be visiting us that week as part of our Fusion funded Bournemouth European Network in Interdisciplinary Cyber Security (BENICS) project.  Watch this space for more details about  Andrea’s talk.

Our interdisciplinary seminar series on Cyber Security is a wonderful opportunity to hear interesting, thought-provoking talks on a variety of topics related to security and privacy.  Although some of these speakers will be academic, their talks will be approachable and require nothing more than a general interest in security, and an enquiring mind.  We’re also interested in ideas about possible speakers or seminar topics, so please get in touch if you have any suggestions.

£1million in digital healthcare innovation available from Creative England

Funding opportunities

This fund is designed to stimulate creative and digital innovation in This UK healthcare.
Are you working with or know of  small creative and digital businesses (SMEs) with innovative concepts or prototypes using digital technology to improve patient care and health services?
These maybe in areas such as dementia, social care, and cardiovascular and medication management.
The South West is one of the first three regions to benefit from this funding opportunity.
Key information:
  • 5 x £50,000 investments will be made.
  • Companies must be based in the North, Midlands or South West.
  • Examples of projects could be improving quality of care; caring for people with dementia; supporting people with long-term conditions; and data visualisation.
  • Mobile apps, development of a new game for tablet or mobile are also eligible.

Applications will be assessed on a rolling basis and the fund will close on 31 October 2014.

More information can be found here.

Alternatively please feel free to contact

Jayne Codling – Knowledge Exchange Adviser

Ext 61215 jcodling@bournemouth.ac.uk

BU helping to evolve security and privacy by design

On Monday, BU researchers co-organised a workshop on Evolving Security and Privacy Requirements Engineering (ESPRE) at the 22nd IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE 2014) in Karlskrona, Sweden.  The workshop brought together practitioners and researchers from around the world, who shared their thoughts about how security and privacy can be incorporated into the design of software as early as possible, without compromising productivity or sacrificing innovation.  The RE conference series is one of the premier conferences in software engineering, and the ESPRE workshop is the successor of several successful secure software engineering workshops.  Shamal Faily (SciTech) organised this workshop, together with colleagues from Germany (University of Duisberg-Essen), South Korea (Ajou University), and the USA (Carnegie Mellon University).

The workshop began with a keynote talk from Professor Angela Sasse (UCL), who described some recent research examining how companies build security into products they develop, and the need to change the discourse around usability and security.  Three technical paper sessions followed, before the workshop was concluded with an invited talk by Aljosa Pasic (Atos Research & Innovation) on some of the market trends and business challenges in security engineering.  Further information about the workshop itself can be found at http://espre2014.org .

We’re grateful to the Faculty of Science & Technology for co-sponsoring this workshop, and to all the workshop attendees for sharing their work.

Non-intrusive river flow measurement – funding available

Funding opportunities

This SBRI competition is focused on the Environment Agency’s need to measure river flows in challenging locations where existing standard instrumentation cannot be used. However, a solution that could also be deployed in less demanding/normal river conditions would be ideal.

 Over 5.5 million, or one in six, properties are at risk of flooding from all types of floods across England and Wales. The latest UKCP09 climate change projections indicate rising sea levels and increasingly severe and frequent rainstorms mean the risk of floods will increase.
The Environment Agency requires a non intrusive method of river flow measurement which is capable of measuring river flows to “bank full” in rivers with variable backwater, weed growth and with a mobile bed load.
Priority requirements
  • a cost-effective solution
  • minimise the need for in-channel civil engineering works
  • the solution must provide data outputs that can be ported into Environment Agency telemetry systems
  • the solution should be low maintenance
  • it should be able to be supported and maintained by non-specialist staff with moderate technical skills
  • to be able to measure flows in channels that are affected by in channel weed growth and mobile beds
  • to be able to measure flows to local bank full level
  • the solution should measure flows to an accuracy of 6 to 15% or better in the range of flows of interest
  • not affect fish migration, both upstream and downstream
  • have a minimal impact on river fauna and flora and sediment transport
  • meet as many of the aspirational specifications as possible for the proposed new technology (highlighted in the competition brief)
Further details of the challenge are included in the competition brief.
Register for the networking and  briefing event – to be held in London on  Monday 15 September 2014.
Key dates for this call can be found here.

Call for research proposals – Defence Medical Sciences

Funding opportunities

New SBRI call – Up to £500k of funding is available for this Phase 1 competition.

MOD’s Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE) are launching a call for research proposals to identify new and innovative science and technology to enhance the level of military medical care and support to service personnel.

This CDE competition aims to promote military resilience and preparedness through:

Challenge 1. Technologies for health surveillance

Predicting injury, infection or disease in a military population on operations helps maintain fighting ability. This challenge seeks to identify areas of physiology and biochemical pathways that, with new surveillance and analysis technology, can provide novel ways of assessing health and wellbeing.

Challenge 2.  Advanced medical systems for field care

Post-Afghanistan, operational medicine will evolve. Future medical capability will rely on smart, innovative, less logistically intense ways of diagnosing and treating medical emergencies. This challenge seeks innovative technologies that can be used routinely by non-specialists in an operational setting to diagnose the cause and severity of injury or illness and assist in providing care.

A free briefing event will take place at the CDE Tuesday 30 September 2014 in Scotland.

Further details can be accessed via the website.

 

 

 

Horizon 2020: Forthcoming Funding Opportunities for Creative Businesses

EU, Research themes

The Horizon 2020 programme is the major funding opportunity for research and innovation initiatives across Europe, and in 2015 there is nearly 600 million Euros available. If this is an area that interests you, it’s worth bookmarking the European Creative Business Network website .

Save the date!

Creative industries will benefit from some of this funding in the next round of calls published on the 15 October 2014, as the topics have already been announced. Here are some of the highlights for creative businesses:

ICT 19: Technologies for creative industries, social media and convergence
This funding aims to support Research and Innovation Actions, or Support for the development of, new or emerging technologies for digital content creation and to unlock complex information and media and interacting with them.

ICT 20: Technologies for better human learning and teaching
The development of digital technologies for learning are crucial to boosting innovation in education. This call will therefore focus on innovative technologies for learning, on underpinning interoperability standards and on the integration of different components into smart learning environments.

ICT 10: Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation – Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies.
By Collective Awareness Platform, the call basically means website or ‘portal’. They are interested in calls that pioneer crowdsourcing/crowdfunding or other forms of social innovation. They want to fund technological solutions to real world problems and are looking beyond the financial impact of the project towards the difference it makes to society.

More details of all of these calls are in the Draft Work Programme.

The virtual and the field: enhancing visualisation in archaeology using serious game technologies

BU research, Fusion, Research news

Forensic Experiemtn Level 1The FIF funded collaborative project between the Creative Technology and Archaeology Frameworks has produced its first output.

 

The aims of the project are to:

  • Initiate collaboration between the Creative Technology and Archaeology and Anthropology academic groups.
  • Enable Games Technology students to perform interdisciplinary projects with Archaeology students (e.g. the creation of virtual 3D environments or 3D artefacts).
  • Provide Archaeology and Anthropology students with 3D research, teaching and learning resources produced with serious game technologies.

 

In the first of a series of projects a Games Technology student has collaborated with a Forensic Archaeology student to produce 3D environments for use in experiments investigating how individuals interpret and respond to features in the environment. We are now looking to participants to perform the experiment. Please email djohn@bournemouth.ac.uk or i7208298@bournemouth.ac.uk if you want to take part in the experiment.

WordCamp comes to BU

This weekend BU has been playing host to a fantastic group of the nation’s best and brightest WordPress Developers for the 7th annual WordCamp UK event. The event is a chance for the community of WordPress developers to come together, share ideas and experiences, and provide each other with support and advice.  Over 100 people attended the event, coming both from the local conurbation, and from further afield – in particular one gentleman had come all the way from Spain!

Arriving Saturday morning I had the basics of WordPress down, having previously developed a free website for a local community event that consists of a few different pages and a blog feed.  Talks have been submitted to the running order by the attendees of the conference in advance, giving people a selection of topics to pick and choose from depending on their interests.  Sessions have been hugely varied, for example: “A beginners guide to web accessibility”, “Learning to sell your services as a web designer”, “Designing with data”, and “How not to launch a startup”.  One of the most helpful sessions from my perspective as a novice WordPress user was a series of 5 minute lightening talks on topics such as the importance of password security (to find out how long it would take a hacker to crack your password head to How big is your haystack?), how to set up a developer event, and a poetic recital of how to problem solve your website issues.

As well as attending the talks I’ve also benefitted from one of one tuition from other attendees on how I can develop sites offline and what plugins I could add to sites to make them more interesting and useful for the end user, all for no extra cost.  Overall this has been a fantastic insight into the power of WordPress and how I can use it to support my own projects and events at a minimal cost.   Considering tickets were just £10, I think there has been fantastic value in the weekend’s activities and I would recommend to anyone with an interest in WordPress (professionally or privately) to consider attending future WordCamps around the country. 

SDRC newly appointed visiting professor

Fusion

SDRC has developed significant portfolio of industrially funded research, national and international collaborations and visiting faculty. BU has recently appointed Professor Bob Cripps as visiting professor.

He is currently a Director of Longitude Consulting Engineering part of London Offshore Consultants (LOC) which was established to provide independent, high quality marine and engineering consultancy to the shipping and offshore industries.

Professor Cripps was previously Director Engineering College for BAE Systems Surface Ships responsible for developing and maintaining BAE Systems Surface Ships academic and engineering reputation as being world class and he was responsible for setting up University Technology Partnerships at six key UK universities.

Prior to this, Professor Cripps was Technical Director at VT Halmatic responsible for all technical aspects including boat design/engineering and composite development. He was Engineering Manager at RNLI for 18 years responsible for the design and development of all classes of lifeboat (offshore and inshore), launching equipment and moorings. He was instrumental in the development of the latest generation of lifeboats namely, Severn, Trent, Tamar and Atlantic 85 class lifeboats. He was also responsible for all research and development undertaken by the RNLI and he established the Advanced Technology Partnership between the RNLI and the University of Southampton in 2000.

Professor Cripps is a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor in the Principles of Engineering Design at the University of Southampton. He is well known for his work in the design and development of small craft and the use of composite materials in marine applications and this was recognised with the award of an Honorary Doctor of Engineering from Bournemouth University in 2005. Particular areas of interest and expertise are the development and integration of methods and processes to enable designers to utilise latest technical developments simply at an early stage of the design process.

Professor Cripps was instrumental in introducing different NDE methods into the construction and in-service inspection of composites hulls and this was recognised by The British Institute of Non-Destructive Testing with the 2002 NEMET Award for outstanding examples of effective use of NDT.

He was a Senior Ship Surveyor with Lloyds Register of Shipping for nearly 13 years in the Research and Development Group and the Plan Approval Department. Graduating in 1976 from University of Southampton with a BSc.(Hons) Ship Science, Professor Cripps is also a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects (FRINA), Fellow of the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (FIMarEST), Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute (FCMI), a Chartered Engineer (CEng) and European Engineer (EurIng).

If you would like to know more about the SDRC academic activity, please contact

Dr Zulfiqar Khan (Associate Professor)

Director SDRC

Rich-cores in networks

BU research, Featured

The next of our research seminars will take place on Wednesday the 23rd of July, 14:00 at PG10 (Poole House)

Our guest speaker is Dr Athen Ma, Senior Lecturer at the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London; Invited by our colleague Dr Darius Krol

The title of her exciting talk is “Rich-cores in networks”  a topic which is of wide interest way beyond computing ; for instance in areas such as Social Networks, Biology etc.

Abstract: “A core comprises of a group of central and densely connected nodes which governs the overall behaviour of a network, and it is recognised as one of the key meso-scale structures in complex networks. Profiling this meso-scale structure currently relies on a limited number of methods which are often complex and parameter dependent or require a null model, and as a result, scalability issues are likely to arise when dealing with very large networks together with the need for subjective adjustment of parameters. The notion of a rich-club describes nodes which are essentially the hub of a network, as they play a dominating role in structural and functional properties. The definition of a rich-club naturally emphasises high degree nodes and divides a network into two subgroups. Here, we develop a method to characterise a rich core in networks by theoretically coupling the underlying principle of a rich-club with the escape time of a random walker. The method is fast, scalable to large networks and completely parameter free. In particular, we show that the evolution of the core in World Trade and C. elegans networks correspond to responses to historical events and key stages in the physical development respectively.”

I very much encourage to the persons interested in the topic to attend. Coffee and cakes will be served.

Best wishes, Emili

Emili Balaguer-Ballester, PhD

Faculty of Science and Technology , Bournemouth University

Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, University of Heidelberg