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HE Policy Update

Monday

Immigration

Theresa May has signalled that she would lead a cross-Whitehall crackdown this autumn to stop foreign students staying in the UK at the end of their courses, unless they have graduate-level jobs to go into. May demands ban on jobless EU migrants. (The Sunday Times).

Tuesday

Outreach

A survey has revealed that universities’ efforts to improve access for students from disadvantaged backgrounds are being weakened by over-reliance on data about where applicants live, rather than their individual circumstances. Focus on poor areas for outreach ‘may miss individuals’ (THE).

Wednesday

Drop-out rate

University drop-out rates fell sharply after tuition fees were increased, according to a report from Lancaster University Management School. It examined the impact of the 2006 round of fee increases, when they rose to about £3,000, indicating that drop-out rates had fallen by 16% with the biggest reduction in Russell Group universities. Higher fees ‘cut drop-out rate’ (BBC News).

Thursday

HEPI

A new report by HEPI that compares the UK and Germany’s higher education systems concludes that that the abolition of tuition fees in Germany cannot be a model for the UK because the two countries’ higher education systems are so different. German abolition of tuition fees ‘cannot be model for UK universities’ (THE).

NUS

The National Union of Students is calling for a boycott of the government’s counter-radicalisation strategy to monitor students. The NUS has launched a national tour (Students Not Suspects) in five cities to oppose it. NUS fights back against government’s ‘chilling’ counter-radicalisation strategy (The Guardian).

Friday

International Students

Max Conze, CEO of Dyson has said that the company would like more skilled foreign graduates who are educated at British universities, to be allowed to stay in the UK. Rugs to riches: Dyson announces record profits of £367m (The Guardian).

Funding available to support R&D – science, engineering and technology

Business Engagement, Funding opportunities, innovation, Knowledge Exchange

Technology in the hands
SMART is a grant scheme which offers funding to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to engage in R&D projects in the strategically important areas of science, engineering and technology, from which successful new products, processes and services could emerge.
The scheme supports SMEs carrying out R&D which offers potentially significant rewards and that could stimulate UK economic growth.
Three types of grant are available:
  • Proof of market
  • Proof of concept
  • Development of prototype.
Any UK SME undertaking research and development may apply; applications are accepted on a rolling basis for assessment by independent experts.

NERC update to submission rules

Funding opportunities, Guidance

Following feedback from the community NERC have strengthened the guidance on their submission rules. Please refer to the NERC website for more details.  In addition the research grants and fellowships handbook has also been updated.nerc-logo-50th

Please note that these rules will apply for all future closing dates including the forthcoming Highlight Topic, Independent Research Fellowship and Large Grant closing dates. This includes international calls where applicants might be based at an overseas organisation, so Principal Investigators should ensure that all component proposals are aware and meeting the requirements.

The main changes are:

Applicants to a standard, large or knowledge exchange grant call may submit up to one proposal as the Principal or as a Co-Investigator, and one further proposal as a non-lead Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator. Involvement of a UK investigator in a submission to NSF (under the NSF-NERC Lead Agency agreement) counts as a submission as non-lead PI/Co-I to the July NERC standard grant round.  However, the submission rules are also in line with the demand management cap on institutional submission numbers to the standard grant rounds and so you must contact the RKEO Funding Development Team if you are considering applying to this NERC call.

Large grant proposals will only be accepted if an outline proposal has previously been submitted and invited to proceed to the full proposal stage.

There is further information on the NERC website confirming submission deadlines, proposal attachments, font sizes and margins.

New journal RIO to publish research proposals

Research Ideas & Outcomes (RIO) is the latest scholarly journal seeking to fix the broken scientific publishing system. It has been created specifically to enable and encourage the entire research cycle to be published, including research proposals and ideas.

RIO journal will be open for submissions for any and all parts of your research cycle from 1st November 2015. Official Website: http://riojournal.com/ Twitter: @RIOJournal

This post originally appeared on the LSE Impact Blog. See here for the full post and more information on the RIO Journal.

EC Info Day – Secure, Clean and Efficient Energy taking place on the 14th-15th Sept

Info Days

EC Info days: relating to Secure, Clean and Efficient Energy are being held on the: 14th-15th September 2015 in Brusselseuflag

Info days and brokerage events run by the EC are an opportunity to get an overview of work programmes covering the 2016 and 2017 calendar years, meet up and hear from others who are interested in the same programme and potentially form links and build consortia for future applications.

Please click on the link below to book or register your interest – please bear in mind places are limited!

http://ec.europa.eu/research/index.cfm?pg=events&eventcode=0B56FA95-AFE0-D63B-DD0527FE301EC26C

Please let Emily or myself know if you intend to go so we can co-ordinate if others also wish to attend.

 

 

 

 

Is the UK good enough at commercialising innovation?

Business Engagement, innovation

Innovate 2011v4A recent edition of the FT (Financial Times) examined a contentious topic: that the UK is not very good at commercialising the innovations that its universities and startups create. A comment from Hanadi Jabado, who directs a start-up accelerator at Cambridge university’s Judge Business School, sums up the issue under debate: “The UK leads the world in terms of research but if you look at the commercialisation of innovation, the UK lags behind. What we seem to be doing is to develop a concept and then sell it to international companies to optimise. We’re preparing the lunch, we’re cooking the lunch, but someone else is eating the lunch.”

Are we doing enough? Are traditional methods of evaluating the commercialisation of innovation no longer valid? And what more could be done? Read the article in full.

Creative, Digital & Design Business Briefing – September 2015

Business Engagement, Funding opportunities, innovation, Knowledge Exchange

theme - creative-digitalThis 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.

Highlights include:

European Funding Guide – Creative Industries

A short KTN guide to help you submit a proposal for the Horizon 2020 funding programme (H2020) & other European funding sources. It provides a brief overview of support, how to apply and useful links.

More information »

Internet of Things Cites Demonstrator

Up to £10 million funding competition to demonstrate the capability of the Internet of Things in a city region. Projects should involve at least one local authority, one local enterprise partnership and several businesses.

More information »

Digital forensics – up to £300K phase 1

The challenge from the Home Office, is to improve the speed, efficiency and effectiveness of recovering and automatically analysing data from the seized digital devices of suspects under investigation. Maximum value of £40K per project.

More information »

EU Stakeholder Partnership Event – Innovating Cities with Nature and Culture

Info Days, Training

The European Commission is organising a Stakeholder Partnership event on 20 October 2015 to facilitate networking, information exchange and cross-border partnerships of actors interested in addressing urban challenges through innoeuropevating with nature or by making innovative use of cultural heritage assets for regenerating cities. More information is available from the website.

In the autumn, under the Horizon 2020 work programme for 2016-17, the European Commission will launch new calls for large-scale demonstration projects in cities as living-labs for nature-based solutions to societal challenges and cultural heritage as a driver for sustainable development. These calls mark a shift from basic and applied research to a novel type of innovation actions based on a systemic approach to solve problems and promote a more resource efficient, greener and competitive economy. The calls will aim at engaging stakeholders in cross-sectoral partnerships and inter-disciplinary activities, which are deemed necessary for co-designing, co-developing and co-implementing innovative solutions, testing them in real-world conditions through demonstration activities and securing their market uptake.

The Stakeholder Partnership Event aims at presenting the strategic orientations and rationale behind the new approach for research and innovation in cities using nature and cultural heritage, and at offering an opportunity for information exchange and networking.

Representatives of public authorities and other stakeholders from cities and regions, industry and businesses, civil society organisations and from the research community are invited to join the event on Tuesday, 20 October 2015, at DG Research and Innovation, Rue du Champs de Mars 21, 1049, Brussels. Around 200 participants are expected.

Register now!

 

UKRO Information Event – Innovative Training Networks 7/10/15

Funding opportunities, Info Days, Training

ukro_logo-150x85Information Event: Horizon 2020 Innovative Training Networks (ITN) – Royal Veterinary College, London​​, Wednesday 7 October 2015

​​The current EU funding programme for research and innovation, Horizon 2020, offers exciting opportunities for academia and industry collaboration through European and international partnerships. These include schemes which are completely ‘bottom-up’, in that organisations can initiate projects on topics of their own choice.

The UK Research Office (UKRO), in its capacity as UK National Contact Point for the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), is holding two information events on the 2016 ‘Innovative Training Networks’ (ITN) call for proposal, which will have a deadline in mid-January 2016.

Aim of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks

The ITN scheme supports joint research training and/or doctoral programmes, implemented by European partnerships of universities, research institutions, industry (incl. SMEs) and other non-academic organisations. The research training programmes are intended to provide doctoral students with excellent research skills, coupled with experience outside academia, hence developing their innovation capacities and employability prospects. ​

Aim of the events

The events aim to provide participants with an in-depth overview of the ITN scheme. Participants should gain a clear understanding of the proposal format for each scheme and the key issues relating to planning, writing and submitting proposals.

Event Registration is via the UKRO website.

Attendance for the event is free of charge, but registration is mandatory.

Places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. Further information on the venue will be provided to delegates once they have registered.

BU subscribes to the UK Research Office (UKRO). Please sign up to get updates direct to your inbox. You will also need to register to view the draft programme for this event.

Hackathon Challenge – It’s not too late!

Technology awards sport

I’m still trying to get a team together for the UK’s first sport hackathon. The challenge is to create an app that facilitates social change through sport at the Sport England Sport Technology Awards Hackathon. It will take place over 25 hours on 2-3 October 2015 (3pm start on the Friday) during which time teams will have just 24 hours to develop their concept that will help a particular demographic group become more physically active.

The winning team will be awarded a bursary of £10,000 to help them build the app.

If you’re interested can you please get in touch with me, Clare at: cfarrance@bournemouth.ac.uk

Team registration closes on 7th September. Would be great to have a BU team there!

More details can be found at:

http://www.sportandrecreation.org.uk/news/06-08-2015/uk%E2%80%99s-first-sports-hackathon-launches

BU academic awarded international collaborative research grant from the International Olympic Committee (IOC)

Dr Richard Shipway from the Department of Sport and Physical Activity in the Faculty of Management at Bournemouth University is part of an international collaborative research team that was recently awarded a highly prestigious IOC (International Olympic Committee) Advanced Olympic Research Grant to complete a project evaluating the volunteering infrastructure legacy of two previous Olympic Games, in Sydney 2000 and London 2012 respectively.

In only the second edition of the Advanced Olympic Research Grant Programme, for 2015/2016, the IOC Olympic Studies Centre (OSC) based in Lausanne, Switzerland selected seven research projects, based on their academic quality and significance with respect to the IOC priority fields of research. The main objective of the Advanced Olympic Research Grant Programme is to promote advanced research by established researchers with a humanities or social sciences perspective in priority fields of research, which are identified annually by the IOC. For this round of applications, 41 individual and collective candidature files were submitted from 25 countries, covering all the priority research themes proposed by the IOC.

The successful research team for this project comprises Leonie LOCKSTONE (Victoria University – Australia), Kristen  HOLMES (Curtin University – Australia), Karen SMITH (Victoria University of Wellington – New Zealand) and Richard SHIPWAY (Bournemouth University – UK). The project is entitled Evaluating the volunteering infrastructure legacy of the Olympic Games: Sydney 2000 and London 2012

The project commences in September 2015 and the results of the research must be submitted to the IOC Olympic Studies Centre in June 2016. For further information on either this project or other Olympic and International Sports Events related research at Bournemouth University, please contact Dr Richard Shipway at rshipway@bournemouth.ac.uk

Research Professional – all you need to know

Funding opportunities

Research-Professional-logoEvery BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. To really make the most of your Research Professional account, you should tailor it further by establishing additional alerts based on your specific area of expertise. The Funding Development Team Officers can assist you with this, if required.

Research Professional have created several guides to help introduce users to ResearchProfessional. These can be downloaded here.

Quick Start Guide: Explains to users their first steps with the website, from creating an account to searching for content and setting up email alerts, all in the space of a single page.

User Guide: More detailed information covering all the key aspects of using ResearchProfessional.

Administrator Guide: A detailed description of the administrator functionality.

In addition to the above, there are a set of 2-3 minute videos online, designed to take a user through all the key features of ResearchProfessional. To access the videos, please use the following link: http://www.youtube.com/researchprofessional

Research Professional are running a series of online training broadcasts aimed at introducing users to the basics of creating and configuring their accounts on ResearchProfessional. They are holding monthly sessions, covering everything you need to get started with ResearchProfessional. The broadcast sessions will run for no more than 60 minutes, with the opportunity to ask questions via text chat. Each session will cover:

  • Self registration and logging in
  • Building searches
  • Setting personalised alerts
  • Saving and bookmarking items
  • Subscribing to news alerts
  • Configuring your personal profile

Each session will run between 10.00am and 11.00am (UK) on the fourth Tuesday of each month. You can register here for your preferred date:

22nd September 2015

27th October 2015

24th November 2015

26th January 2016

23rd February 2016

22nd March 2016

26th April 2016

24th May 2016

28th June 2016

These are free and comprehensive training sessions and so this is a good opportunity to get to grips with how Research Professional can work for you.

Fusion Investment Fund – Experience and socialisation in the events sector

Events have been a rapidly developing field of study in recent years, and a growing body of knowledge is consolidating around Event Management. This is a field where BU is a leading university both in terms of education and research.

Although many economic impact studies have been conducted on events, many other related areas of knowledge lack in-depth understanding. Both from the professional field and from academia, there is a clear need to better understand the experiential and sociological dimensions of events. This will allow for improved practices in the field, increasing competitiveness on the long-term.   Although experiential aspects of events are embedded in recent curricula, such as in the Events Management course at BU, the need to provide (future) professionals with update know-how is a pressing matter.

For more information about this project, please contact Lénia Marques (lmarques@bournemouth.ac.uk).

HE Policy Update

Monday

SNP

Scotland’s universities have warned that tens of millions of pounds of their funding is being put at risk by SNP plans giving ministers unprecedented political control over how they are run. SNP political control over universities ‘could cost millions’. (Telegraph).

Tuesday

Mature Students

Since the introduction of the higher tuition fees, the number of mature students has reduced in the UK. This article discusses the need for clearer communication around financial support for mature students as well as the importance of flexible learning spaces. ‘I was worried I wouldn’t fit in’ – how can universities support mature students? (The Guardian Higher Education Network).

Wednesday

University Advertising

A recent survey found that prospective students are most likely to trust information about universities that they perceive to be impartial. The survey also revealed that they place only limited weight on advertising and social media from universities themselves. Applicants put little trust in university advertising (THE).

Thursday

Graduate Unemployment

According to a HESA study, long-term graduate unemployment has returned to pre-recession levels, but more university leavers are working part-time or engaging in further study. Graduate unemployment back to pre-recession levels (THE).

USS Pensions

The prospect of further cuts to the sector’s largest pension scheme has been raised after its deficit rose sharply despite savings from the closure of final salary pensions. USS deficit rises despite savings from end of final salary pensions (THE).

Friday

HEA

The new chair of the Higher Education Academy (HEA), has announced that the HEA should become the professional body for university teaching in a shift that could lead to the introduction of individual subscription fees. New HEA chair: paying members could enshrine it as professional body (THE).