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Funding Development Briefing – Spotlight on: British Academy Post Doc Fellowships

Funding opportunities

The RDS Funding Development Briefings now occur weekly, on a Wednesday at 12 noon.

Each session covers the latest major funding opportunities, followed by a brief Q&A session. Some sessions also include a spotlight on a particular funding opportunity of strategic importance to BU.

Next Wednesday 3rd March, there will be a spotlight on British Academy Post Doc Fellowships.

We will cover:

  • Aims and scope of the programme
  • Eligibility criteria
  • Q & A

For those unable to attend, the session will be recorded and shared on the Teams site under the ‘Files’ section, and also saved on the I Drive at I:\RDS\Public\Funding Pipeline\Funding Development Briefings.

Please email RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk to receive the Teams invite for these sessions.

Authentibility Pass – Innovative Solution for People with Disabilities

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion themes

Dr Huseyin Dogan (Principal Investigator) and Co-Investigators: Dr Paul Whittington, Professor Keith Phalp, Dr Nan Jiang and Dr Benjamin Gorman from the Faculty of Science & Technology have recently completed a 9 month, £90,000 externally funded project to develop the Authentibility Pass Proof of Concept. Authentibility Pass (www.authentibility.com) is an Android application for people with disabilities to communicate their authentication and accessibility requirements to organisations, including higher education institutions, non-profit organisations and financial institutions. On 18th February, the team had the opportunity to demonstrate the solution to potential investors. Our team was one of the four teams to be selected for a 20 minutes discussion with Matt Warmen MP, Minister of Digital Infrastructure.

The funding was awarded through the Cyber Academic Startup Accelerator Programme (CyberASAP) from the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, in collaboration with Innovate UK and the Knowledge Transfer Network. The programme assists academics in UK Universities to commercialise cyber security ideas, by providing expertise knowledge and support. Lesley Hutchins (Research Commercialisation Manager, RDS) has provided us with valuable commercialisation support throughout the project.

During the initial 4 months, we developed our value proposition and conducted market validation. We identified that people with disabilities can encounter barriers due to web security and privacy technologies, preventing them from registering for services and leading to frustration. We also found that they often need to repeatedly inform organisations of their authentication and accessibility requirements.

Requirements only need to be entered once into the application, which can then be sent securely to multiple organisations via token-based authentication to an organisation’s database. Authentibility Pass also comprises a database system, web interface and an Application Programming Interface for organisations with existing databases. We believe that Authentibility Pass will assist organisations to comply with accessibility and equality regulations, whilst increasing the awareness of customer requirements.

Accessibility requirements can be entered and authentication methods selected using Authentibility Pass Application

A demonstration video is available at: https://vimeo.com/513400390/351c35f6c4 and further information about Authentibility can be found at: www.authentibility.com.

Authentibility Pass builds on the knowledge obtained during Dr Paul Whittington’s PhD and Postdoctoral Research (supervised by Dr Huseyin Dogan and Professor Keith Phalp) and the development of the SmartAbility Framework. This CyberASAP project supports the BU2025 Assistive Technology Strategic Investment Area. The CyberASAP events are usually held in London, but due to COVID-19 we have participated in Zoom bootcamps and workshops during the past 9 months, organised by the Knowledge Transfer Network.

We are planning to develop the Proof of Concept into a commercial product, customised to suit specific organisations. It will be a ‘Software as a Service’ with annual subscriptions for the application and API. In the future, we anticipate adopting volume licensing for financial institutions and forming a spin-out company from BU to disseminate Authentibility Pass.

The dissemination of Authentibility Pass and potential adoption by higher education institutions, schools, non-profit organisations, SMEs and financial institutions, will generate impact for our assistive technology research.

ERC Confirms Upcoming Call Deadlines

Funding opportunities

The ERC Executive Agency has confirmed the publication dates and deadlines for its 2021 calls for proposals.

  • The 2021 Starting Grant call will open on 25 February and close on 8 April.
  • The 2021 Consolidator Grant call will open on 11 March and close on 20 April.
  • The 2021 Advanced Grant call will open on 20 May and close on 31 August.

The 2021 ERC Work Programme – first one to be adopted under Horizon Europe – is available on the ERC website.

Applicants to the ERC Starting Grant call should note that the Work Programme is still showing the old deadline of 24 March, which has been extended, as explained in the ERC’s announcement.

This information has been provided by UKRO.

UKRO, in its role as the UK ERC National Contact Point, will hold two Information and Proposal Writing webinars on Tuesday 16 March from 10am to 12pm (UK time) and on Friday 19 March from 1pm to 3pm (UK time).

More information and details on registration for these two webinars will be shared in due course.

HEIF Small Fund – Open For Applications

HEIF, Knowledge Exchange

Bournemouth University has a small amount of funding available to facilitate and enhance research and development collaboration with external partners.

The purpose of the funding is to:

  • Enhance external collaborative engagements with industry partners to further the development of innovative projects
  • Increase the amount of available funds for research undertaken collaboratively with external partners to patent innovations, enhance technology readiness levels and/or commercialisation
  • Encourage future funding bids (such as from Innovate UK) with external partners

There is flexibility in the way that the fund can be used, provided that a strong case can be made, and the assessment criteria are met. Funding could be used in various ways, for example for consumables, staff, and for travel/events/meetings, where restrictions allow.

All funding will need to be spent by 31 July 2021.

Eligibility/What we can fund

The HEIF Small Fund is open to all researchers across Bournemouth University, including those who are already working with industry partners and those who would like to build up new networks. In particular, the panel would welcome the following types of applications:

  • Projects of up to £5,000 which will either facilitate new relationships with external partners or build on existing research collaborations with external partners, support initial prototyping, project/product feasibility and/or market research.
  • Subject to the lifting of current restrictions, small travel grants of up to £500 to help facilitate relationship development with organisations. This could be travelling to potential partner sites or networking/funding briefing events Please note, the HEIF Funding Panel will not fund applications relating to conferences.

Due to the nature of this fund, we particularly welcome applications;

  • from Early Career Researchers (ECRs)
  • that incorporate social sciences and humanities
  • that demonstrate research interdisciplinarity

In line with BU2025, we will positively encourage applications from under-represented groups.

Application process

To apply, please read the guidance and complete the application form

Applications must be submitted to heif@bournemouth.ac.uk

Applications will be reviewed by the HEIF Funding Panel (see Panel Information below), with recommendations submitted to the Research Performance and Management Committee (RPMC) monthly. Once a decision has been made, this will be communicated to applicants. We aim to confirm the outcomes within two to three weeks of the closing date for that month.

The closing dates for each monthly assessment are as follows:

  • Wednesday 17 March
  • Wednesday 14 April
  • Wednesday 12 May
  • Wednesday 16 June

BU’s Funding Panels and Research Principles

The following funding panels operate to prioritise applications for funding and make recommendations to the Research Performance and Management Committee (RPMC).

There are eight funding panels:

  1. HEIF Funding Panel
  2. GCRF Funding Panel
  3. Research Impact Funding Panel
  4. Doctoral Studentship Funding Panel
  5. ACORN Funding Panel
  6. Research Fellowships Funding Panel
  7. Charity Impact Funding Panel
  8. SIA Funding panel

These panels align with the BU2025 focus on research, including BU’s Research Principles

The following BU2025 Principles are most relevant to the HEIF Panel:

  • Principle 1 – which recognises the need to develop teams
  • Principle 5 – which sets of the context for such funding panels

If you have any questions please email heif@bournemouth.ac.uk

Early Career Researchers Network Meeting – BU and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals

Guidance

             Wednesday 24th February   15:00 – 16:00

All Early Career Researchers are welcome to join us for this month’s ECR network meeting. There will be short presentation and discussion on how BU uses the UN’s  Sustainable Development Goals. There will also be time for more general queries and networking.

See the staff intranet for more details and to book.

Do you have a research in the area of emissions, Climate Change or Transport?

As Guest Editor of the journal Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433, SCIE, IF 2.397), I would like to invite you to submit a paper to the Special Issue ” Transport Emissions: Theoretical and Empirical Considerations in light of COP”.

Details of the Special Issue can be found below:
——————————————————————
Special Issue: Transport Emissions: Theoretical and Empirical Considerations in light of COP

Website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/atmosphere/special_issues/transport_theoretical_empirical_cop

Guest Editor: Dr. Festus Adedoyin (Bournemouth University, UK); Professor Daniel Balsalobre-Lorente (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain); and Dr. Oana Madalina Driha (Universidad de Alicante, Spain)

Deadline for manuscript submissions: *13 August 2021*
——————————————————————

Atmosphere is fully open access. Open access (unlimited and free access by readers) increases publicity and promotes more frequent citations, as indicated by several studies. Atmosphere is indexed by the key research databases; further details may be found at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/atmosphere/indexing. All papers go through a thorough but rapid peer-review process. Papers can be submitted at any time up until the deadline as they will be published on an ongoing basis. The article processing charge (APC) is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs) per accepted paper in 2021. https://www.mdpi.com/journal/atmosphere/apc).

If you are interested in contributing, please send me a short abstract or tentative title in advance for initial checking and the expected submission date for our reference.

We would also appreciate it if you could forward this to your team members and colleagues who may also be interested. Thank you for your consideration and please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or suggestions.

Why research matters at BU – now more than ever

On Monday, I added a post about the role of universities throughout history and how they have played a critical role in the creation and advancement of knowledge. The Government’s R&D Roadmap (June 2020) recognises universities as a crucial part of the UK’s R&D infrastructure, particularly in regard to ensuring the knowledge they create gets into the public domain and has social and economic benefits.

There is no doubt that COVID-19 has had a damaging effect on research across all universities. Some research projects have been suspended or cancelled, there has been a delay in awards being made by funders, and the start dates for some new awards were postponed. Research requiring access to labs and/or fieldwork was impacted, particularly last summer. Some research may even have been rendered unfeasible due to COVID. Furthermore, the move to different models of educational delivery and pastoral support for students reduced time and capacity for research. COVID-19 also impacted university finances, creating additional uncertainty and a lack of stability, resulting in a reticence to commit to long-term projects and/or those considered to be risky. However, although the research process was impacted by COVID-19, the outputs of research are crucial to post-pandemic recovery, as discussed in Dr Rebecca Edwards’ post on Wednesday. This creates all sorts of exciting new opportunities for colleagues to get involved in research and change the direction of their research. Although challenging, it is important that time is carved out for research, now more than ever.

Research is a priority for Bournemouth University. It is central to our institutional strategy and ethos and it is fundamental to Fusion. Our research capacity has grown considerably over the past few years. More staff are now engaging actively in research, as demonstrated through the proportion of staff submitted to the Research Excellence Framework (REF). This has increased from less than a third of staff (REF 2014) to over three quarters of staff (REF 2021). We have invested in the Strategic Investment Areas and new institutes (such as the Institute for the Modelling of Socio-Environmental Transitions, IMSET and the Institute for Medical Imaging and Visualisation, IMIV) to bring research to life through programmes of research and collaborative, multidisciplinary research teams. Research undertaken by Bournemouth University makes a real, tangible difference within our region as well as nationally and internationally, as demonstrated through our plethora of impact case studies due to be submitted to the REF next month. The world needs research to recover from the impact of COVID-19 and our research can help.

The capacity and responsibility for research are key things that differentiate a university from a college of further education. Research is critical to Bournemouth University’s purpose and it is our research excellence that sets us apart from other universities, giving us our unique identity. It is our research excellence that underpins and influences our educational offering and attracts students to study with us and staff to work with us. Research is fun, exciting and rewarding. It stretches us, challenges our ways of thinking and introduces us to interesting new people. It gives us the power to make a difference in the world.

Bournemouth University researchers are making a difference through their research. Earlier this month we featured some of our global research projects, including:

We’re keen to share more stories about your excellent research and hear about what makes research exciting to you. Email me (Julie Northam) with your thoughts and ideas so we can work together to create a buzz around research at Bournemouth University.

Funding Development Briefing – Horizon Europe

Funding opportunities

The RDS Funding Development Briefings now occur weekly, on a Wednesday at 12 noon.

Each session covers the latest major funding opportunities, followed by a brief Q&A session. Some sessions also include a spotlight on a particular funding opportunity of strategic importance to BU.

Next Wednesday 24th February, there will be a spotlight on Horizon Europe.

We will cover:

  • Aims and scope of Horizon Europe
  • HE Pillars – Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
  • Q & A

For those unable to attend, the session will be recorded and shared on the Teams site under the ‘Files’ section, and also saved on the I Drive at I:\RDS\Public\Funding Pipeline\Funding Development Briefings.

Please email RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk to receive the Teams invite for these sessions.

University research and post-pandemic recovery: a call to action for us all?

Transforming critical thinking and creativity: On Monday’s blog post, we explored the critical role that universities play in the generation of knowledge through research, which in-turn enriches society through myriad mechanisms, including through education, enhanced professional practice, discovery and innovation. As we saw, the Humboldtian model of higher education has persisted, with many attributing the intensification of research – going beyond vocational training – to the paradigm shifts associated with the work of Hegel, Freud and Einstein amongst others. Albert Einstein writes out an equation for the density of the Milky Way on the blackboard in 1931Indeed, the model was adopted by many universities around the world, including Johns Hopkins University through the recognition that through increased research activity came myriad benefits for society.

How has this philosophical understanding of what a university is, made the world a better place? Transforming society, not just through the creation of knowledge – but more fundamentally – through the principles of research that stimulate creativity and critical thinking, has led to immeasurable benefits for us globally. Many readers will have benefited from a transformative education from going to University and we all benefit daily from the research environment which Universities create. There is seldom an item we touch, or an experience we interact with, that does not have some connection to university research.

The Made at Uni campaign highlights just a few of these; providing clean water to rural communities in the developing world, using the arts to transform health and wellbeing, and the development of the MRI scanner. Indeed, for the REF2014 submission, UK Universities submitted thousands of impact case studies, each and every one of them a snapshot of internationally excellent research with a transformative impact. You can search the database for any topic which interests you.

I highly recommend doing so, as they offer a fascinating insight into the trajectory of research careers and how they transform our lives. University of Bristol’s research into reducing cot deaths is one story that stays with me – you cannot help but marvel at the lives that have been transformed as a result of it. The ESRC’s Impact Awards celebrates inspiring colleagues whose fundamental research has contributed to profound social impact. 

Image result for emma renold esrc impact prize

But why does doing research matter, just now? Amid a global pandemic, many of us (whilst cognisant of our privilege) are living a challenging existence, whether that is owing to our caring responsibilities, increased work pressures, the pressure on our mental health, or the daily monotony of lockdown restrictions. Finding space for critical thinking and creativity is hugely challenging. That said, developing research has never been more important. As we have seen, the UK has been a world leader in developing vaccinations and genomic sequencing – all thanks to the world-leading research base we host on our shores.

But in many ways, the challenging research questions are just beginning. I am sure that you, like me, will find yourselves asking seemingly unanswerable questions: “how do we enable the NHS workforce to recover from the relentless pressures they have faced? How can our children successfully re-engage with learning? What the advanced materials of the future that will keep surfaces safe? Which tools that government has to offer will be most transformative to our deprived communities? How have the arts transformed as a result of the pandemic? How will society evolve over the next generation in response to the pandemic? The questions are endless, yet so important to garner insight on, if we are to address them. Future research will unlock these.

Will the government support research given the pressures on our economy? The current UK government has consistently reiterated that the UK’s recovery from the pandemic – the full impacts of which are far from fully understood – will be predicated on research. For example, the UK’s R&D Roadmap states that: “Research and development will be critical to economic and social recovery from the impacts of COVID-19, enabling us to build a greener, healthier and more resilient UK” which builds on previous policy documentation including the Industrial Strategy (which mentions Universities no less than 100 times).

This is coupled up with the government’s stance on ‘levelling-up’ across the UK, which in research terms, means ensuring that our research base outside of the golden triangle of London, Oxford and Cambridge is strengthened. The Roadmap goes on to articulate that “our R&D system will have a bigger impact on the recovery and long-term economic growth and prosperity if it can unlock the potential found in more areas of the UK”. For areas of lower research intensity, such as Dorset, this offers us the opportunity to grow our capabilities exponentially, especially in existing research bases such as BU. Of course, we do not yet know what details of the opportunities that are coming our way, but the government has already committed £15billion for R&D this year, so there is likely to be funding to make the rhetoric a reality.Image result for bournemouth university research

What does this mean for your average academic? No academic is average. To have become an independent researcher, you will have demonstrated countless times your capabilities for pioneering research. This may only represent a small part of any puzzle, but it is an essential one, as no-one else will have the insight or the abilities that you have to offer. Granted, finding the opportunity to explore your research ideas, alone – and perhaps more crucially with others – can be very challenging at this time.

My lockdown experience is punctuated with the demands of a 5-year-old demanding snacks and refusals to undertake phonics homework, which makes it extremely challenging just to think, let alone act. But knowing how many brilliant minds I work with day in, day out at BU, I urge you to carve out the space that you can and allow yourself to think about how your research capabilities can be harnessed. Image result for bournemouth university research

Isn’t research just going to be about COVID-19 from now on? In summary, no. The pandemic has created new challenges, but all areas of research are critical for the recovery from it. Climate change, as just one example, has not gone away – it is imperative for our researchers to continue their work on this. Research that doesn’t obviously fit a great societal challenge at present is also important; as you see if you’ve read as many impact case studies that I have, it is pursuing the intellectual curiosity and passion for your subject that lays the foundation for what our society needs in future, not just what we think we need now.

In our next blog post, we will explore some of the challenges that we have faced undertaking research in the time of COVID-19 and look to the future of research at BU. In the meantime, as ever, the RDS team are delighted to offer support for you to develop your research trajectory. Next month, I will be launching a call for game-changing research concepts that will enable BU to grow. If you would like to explore this further, or would like to discuss ways in which we can carve out the space to have more discussion around transformative research ideas, please do drop me a line. 

Integrated Research Application System (IRAS) – survey open

NHS, Research Ethics

IRAS, the Integrated Research Application System, is changing.

The Health Research Authority wants to hear from people who’ve used the system about how it should look in the future.

A short anonymous survey https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/5B5X95H is available until 24th February 2021.

IMSET Seminar – Human adaptation and coastal evolution in northern Vietnam

IMSET is delighted to invite you to the second of our 2021 seminar series on long-term human ecodynamics, to be given by Dr. Ryan Rabett (Queen’s University Belfast) on:

“Human adaptation & coastal evolution in northern Vietnam: an overview of outcomes & spin-outs”

Thursday February 18th 16:00 – 17:00

Dr Rabett is a senior lecturer in human palaeoecology and his research interests include early human adaptation and dispersal, as well as biodiversity and conservation. He currently leads research projects in several parts of the world, including Southeast Asia.

IMSET is the BU Institute for Modelling Socio-Environmental Transitions.

Find out more and book your place:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/140049388491

Research and the role of the university…

Research is a priority for Bournemouth University and we are proud of the contribution our research makes to society. Ten years ago, I wrote a blog post on the role of universities in the 21st century and the importance of research, inspired by an article in the Guardian – What are universities for? As the pandemic is changing the very fabric and structure of our lives, it seems timely to revisit this and to reflect on what the role of a university such as BU should be during and after the pandemic and the importance of research in this. There will be a handful of blog posts this week exploring this topic.

The role of a university has been debated since the nineteenth century. In 1852 Cardinal Newman wrote that the sole function of a university was to teach universal knowledge, embodying the idea of ‘the learning university’. Newman believed that knowledge is valuable and important for its own sake and not just for its perceived use to society (this is quite different from the current thinking on the importance of research impact, public accountability and the value of research findings to society at large, issues which I imagine Newman would have thought of as irrelevant!). There was not a great deal in Newman’s work about the importance of research in a university, but research was beginning to play the starring role in mainland Europe where Prussian education minister Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote of the concept of ‘the research university’ and eventually set up the Humboldt University of Berlin. After the Napoleonic Wars, von Humboldt’s view was that the research university was a tool for national rebuilding through the prioritisation of graduate research over undergraduate teaching. This model soon became the blueprint for the rest of Europe, the United States and Japan. Arguably the Russell Group universities are today still structured in a similar way to that envisaged by von Humboldt two hundred years ago.

Moving into the twentieth century and we come across American educationalist Abraham Flexner who wrote of ‘the modern university’. In Flexner’s view universities had a responsibility to pursue excellence, with academic staff being able to seamlessly move from the research lab to the classroom and back again. The pursuit of excellence features in many universities strategies and the union and seamless movement between research and education sounds like an early version of BU’s Fusion strategy.

Taking into consideration the complexity of universities in the twenty first century, all of these views are a little too simplistic. Today’s universities have much broader remits and a much greater role in society. Peter McCaffery notes that universities now regularly encompass four roles:

  • Finishing school (the last stage of general education)
  • Professional school (the training of elite workers)
  • Knowledge factory (the production of science, technology and ideology)
  • Cultural institution (the expression of our individual and collective sense of being)

The Government’s R&D Roadmap (published June 2020) sets out the UK’s vision and ambition for science, research and innovation. It recognises universities as a critical part of the R&D infrastructure, particularly in regard to advancing knowledge and knowledge creation and ensuring that research gets into the public domain and has social and economic benefits. This is a significant remit for universities but makes them exciting places to work.

A quick look at the mission statements of a handful of UK universities indicates a common purpose based on the views of all of the aforementioned scholars:

  • “…to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence” (Cambridge)
  • “[The University] contributes to society through scholarship and research, by developing creative graduates and through its cultural, social, economic and environmental activities” (Bristol)
  • “…to be a world-leading, research-excellent, educationally outstanding university, driven by creativity and curiosity, which fulfils its social, cultural and economic obligations to Cardiff, Wales, the UK and the world” (Cardiff)

The creation and sharing of new knowledge and new ideas has become the principal purpose of many modern universities. In Northern and Western Europe and North America the university has become the key producer of knowledge (through research) and the key sharer of knowledge (through teaching).  Professor Eric Thomas (former Vice-Chancellor at University of Bristol) claimed that universities are the knowledge engines of our society having produced the vast majority of society’s breakthroughs and innovations, such as: the computer, the web, the structure of DNA, Dolly the Sheep, and the fibre optic cable. We can now add the COVID vaccine to that list, as developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca. Where would we be without these breakthroughs and would they have come about so quickly without university research?

Being part of an environment in which knowledge creation thrives creates a unique and amazing learning experience for students, both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. BU’s focus on the Fusion of research, education and professional practice enables the creation of this type of environment through the continuous and valuable exchange of knowledge.

In Wednesday’s blog post we’ll look at the role of universities post-pandemic recovery.