Tagged / event

The excellent HEFCE REF event at BU!

Developing and Assessing Impact for the REF

Last week BU hosted a HEFCE-supported event for universities in the south of England outlining recent changes in how the quality of research in higher education is assessed.

The event, attended by over 150 delegates from 39 institutions, outlined the new Research Excellence Framework (REF) which includes a new assessment element focusing on research impact.

As Chris Taylor, Deputy REF Manager for HEFCE, explained: “REF will provide accountability for public investment in research and demonstrate its benefits.” He continued:

“Impact is defined as any contribution the research makes outside of academia. It is the higher education sector’s opportunity to shout about what it contributes to society.”

Professor Peter Taylor-Gooby (University of Kent), Professor Roy Harrison (University of Birmingham), Professor James Goodwin (Age UK), Dr Kathryn Monk (Environment Agency Wales) and Dr Mari Williams (RCUK) presented their experiences of assessing impact case studies in the REF pilot exercise. Professor Jim Griffiths (University of Plymouth) presented his experience of identifying and submitting impact case studies to the pilot exercise in the hope that others would learn from his experience.

Prevalent themes emerging from the pilot included the importance of a demonstrable chain of evidence from impact claim through to outcome, high quality research underpinning the impact claim and fostering the crucial relationship between academic and user.

Professor James Goodwin explained how research can change society for people’s benefit, stessing the importance of “converting research into a message that will influence people’s thinking”. He gave the recent removal of the default retirement age as an example of how this can influence policy.

The event closed with a Q&A session with all speakers, giving delegates the chance to obtain further clarity on the REF that will undoubtedly change the future of higher education research.

Matthew Bennett (BU’s PVC for Research, Enterprise and Internationalisation) said: “There has been sector-wide concern about how impact will be defined, collated and assessed in the REF, and this event provided excellent advice and guidance for academic staff likely to be submitting to the REF and those leading the submissions.”

The deadline for submitting submissions is November 2013 and the assesment will be made in 2014.

We will be adding further posts to the Research Blog focusing on the good practice shared at the event (such as defining impact, what makes a strong impact case study, etc) over the next few weeks.

Workshop on Information Discovery and Data Analytics Made Easy

DEC are hosting a workshop on Information Discovery and Data Analytics Made Easy facilitated by Prof. Michael R. Berthold, Konstanz University, Germany on 18 May.

TIME: 18th May 2011, 10.00 am – 1.00 pm,

PLACE: PG10, Poole House, Talbot Campus

The purpose of the event is to present methods and tools that can be used in processing large datasets and how to discover knowledge from them. Michael Berthold is a coordinator of the project BISON that is a research project funded by EC under the 7FP. He is also one of the founders of KNIME which is a user-friendly and comprehensive open-source data integration, processing, analysis, and exploration platform. So the goal of the workshop is also to start collaboration with Konstanz University and find out more about EC 7FP projects.

The workshop is open to all BU staff and PhD students as well. It will be of interest to all people who are involved in intelligent data processing. For sure it will be of interest for DEC staff: SMART Technology Research Centre, Creative Technology Research Centre and Software Systems Research Centre. I bielieve also that people from School of Applied Sciences will be interested.

Research areas that it covers include: intelligent data analysis, predictive modelling, complexity science, complex adaptive systems, knowledge discovery from data.

SCHEDULE:
10.00-11.00 – From Pattern Discovery to Discovery Support: Creativity and Heterogeneous Information Networks
11.00-11.30 – coffee break
11.30-12.30 – KNIME. Integrating Data, Tools, and Science
12.30-13.00 – Q&A Session
13.00-14.00 – Lunch

Prof. Michael R. Berthold’s Bio
After receiving his PhD from Karlsruhe University, Germany Michael Berthold spent over seven years in the US, among others at Carnegie Mellon University, Intel Corporation, the University of California at Berkeley and – most recently – as director of an industrial think tank in South San Francisco.
Since August 2003 he holds the Nycomed-Chair for Bioinformatics and Information Mining at Konstanz University, Germany where his research focuses on using machine learning methods for the interactive analysis of large information repositories in the Life Sciences. Most of the research results are made available to the public via the open source data mining platform KNIME.
M. Berthold is Past President of the North American Fuzzy Information  Processing Society, Associate Editor of several journals and the President of the IEEE System, Man, and Cybernetics Society. He has been involved in the organization of various conferences, most notably the IDA-series of symposia on Intelligent Data Analysis and the conference series on Computational Life Science. Together with David Hand he co-edited the successful textbook “Intelligent Data Analysis: An Introduction” which has recently appeared in a completely revised, second edition. He is also co-author of the brand-new “Guide to Intelligent Data Analysis” (Springer Verlag) which appeared in summer 2010.

For more information about workshop or to book a place, please contact: Katarzyna Musial (kmusial@bournemouth.ac.uk)

International Conference on Culinary Arts and Sciences 2011

The International Conference on Culinary Arts and Sciences 2011 was held at BU from 12-14th April. Here Dr Heather Hartwell shares the conference successes…

The very successful International Conference on Culinary Arts and Sciences has just closed and attracted a wide range of international participants from 19 countries. The idea for such a conference was first discussed in late 1993 when the Worshipful Company of Cooks of London established a Centre for Culinary Research at Bournemouth University.  At the time it was felt there was a need for a forum that could bring together culinary artists and scientists who could present their research and generally discuss ideas within multidisciplinary and relaxed surroundings.  These initial thoughts led to the first Conference (ICCAS) which was held at BU in 1996.  It proved to be so successful that further conferences were held at BU in 1998, the University of Cairo, Egypt in 2001, Örebro University, Sweden in 2003, Warsaw Agriculture University, Poland, in 2005 and finally the Norwegian Hotel School, University of Stavanger in 2008.

Since its inception, the conference theme has always been Culinary Arts and Culinary Sciences.  The food and foodservice industries are a large and integral part of most economies but in academia they are invariably treated as separate and distinct disciplines.  These operate in isolation, often blissfully unaware of what each other are doing.  The primary purpose, therefore, has and continues to be to breakdown barriers which might exist and bring talented people together so that each can see, not only what the other is doing, but also to foster a better understanding of some of the issues, problems and concerns they have.  The programme in addition to developing the central thrust of the Conference, that is combining culinary arts and science, also delivered;

Foodservice (Catering and Hospitality)
Topics included: menus, menu planning, food variety and choice, foodservice in society, education, foodservice work and culture.
Food and Cultural Tourism
Topics included: wine and beer tourism and the various interactions between food, drink, culture and identity.
Nutrition, Food Science and Technology
Topics included: foodservice provision particularly with vulnerable groups, wellbeing and food safety.
Food Marketing, Food Habits and Consumer Behaviour
Topics included: eating and drinking habits and the interactions between food, drink and hospitality.

All submissions were subject to peer review by members of the International Scientific Advisory Board and we are grateful for their time and support.

International Scientific Advisory Board:
Prof. John S.A. Edwards, Bournemouth University, UK
Prof. Christina Fjellström, Uppsala University, Sweden
Dr Agnes Giboreau, Institut Paul Bocuse, France
Prof. Barbara Kowrygo, Warsaw Agricultural University, Poland
Prof. Svein Larsen, University of Bergen, Norway, & University of Stavanger, Norwegian School of Hotel Management
Prof. Herbert L. Meiselman, US Military, USA
Prof. Bent Egberg Mikkelsen, Aalborg University, Denmark
Dr Sara S.P. Rodrigues, Oporto University, Portugal
Assoc Prof. Peter Williams, University of Wollongong, Australia

We have always prided ourselves, and others have followed, by being able to publish delegates’ papers to coincide with the start of the conference.  So very often, conference papers never see the light of day until years after the event.  Once again we have published the refereed papers (ISBN 978-1-85899-273-0) and made them available at the time of registration.  Authors of selected papers have also been invited to submit extended versions of their work to Perspectives in Public Health and a special issue highlighting the conference will be published November 2011.

We are extremely grateful to the Worshipful Company of Cooks who have again been the main sponsor of this conference and look forward to 2013 when ICCAS will be held in Portugal and 2015 when it will be held in Auckland, New Zealand.

Conference Secretariat ICCAS 2011:
Dr Heather Hartwell, Assoc Prof
Foodservice and Applied Nutrition Research Group
Bournemouth University
 
Tel: +44 1202 961712
Email: ICCAS2011@bournemouth.ac.uk
Web: www.ICCAS2011.com

Wellbeing and impact

Dr Adrian Dawson, Director of Public Health (Bournemouth and Poole) would like to work with interested academics to translate research into policy, for example a geography masters student has just finished mapping the foodscape around primary schools which has directly impacted on planning policy of fast food outlets near schools. Another area of interest is ‘slow travel’.

He will come to Bournemouth University on Friday May 27th 9.30-10.30 in room PG 142 (Poole House) and would welcome the opportunity to explore with colleagues how the University and Local Authority could form closer research links. Ideally he would like to meet a representative from each School.

If you have any queries about the event, please contact Dr Heather Hartwell.

Writing competitive proposals event (London)

The Training Gateway is offering a ‘Total Proposals’ workshop in London on 15 June 2011.

Course overview:
Success depends on delivering a winning proposal – a strong selling document which the client will want to buy.  The seminar gives institutions not only the practical tools of proposal preparation, such as bidding plans and checklists, but also shows a range of winning techniques and “selling” devices that will positively differentiate your proposal from those of your competitors.

Attendees will:
– Refresh their approaches to the preparation of proposals
– Acquire new presentation techniques
– See how to give proposals a competitive edge
– Learn how to maximise the evaluation scoring of proposals.

This is an excellent opportunity for anyone involved in writing competitive proposals for research and enterprise funding!

Further information, including the booking form, can be found here.

Economic Growth, Business & Higher Education

I am just back from a day in London at a posh briefing event which can be summarised as ‘the lunch not much cop, but the talks were surprisingly good and gave me lots to think about’.  So I thought it was worth sharing some of this while it was fresh in my mind.  David Sweeny (Director of Research, Innovation & Skills, HEFCE) started the day talking about REF and impact amongst other things.  One of the things that interested me was the return on investment from business interaction: £4-7 for every £1 spent which is quite good!  But impact is seen as a way of adding to the value of this investment further and the return on the RAE/REF which has consistently placed the UK ahead of the game.  For example, internationally we produce 5% of all the PhD’s globally, 7.9% of all research publications from just 1% of the World’s population!  Staff at BU play an important part in this.

It was the next talk that really made me sit up.  It was from a guy at Oxford Brookes (Kevin Maynard) talking about their approach to enterprise or to use his jargon ‘Knowledge Exchange’.  He was making the point that what is really crucial is that Knowledge Exchange – enterprise by another name – was not about wealth creation for an institution but about the ‘inflow’ of knowledge to inform it core businesses of research and education.  This is an important concept since he argued that it was central to: (1) employability, (2) course development, (3) ensuring research relevance to business/industry/society, and (4) increasing the breadth and capacity of the academic team and its professional development.  What he didn’t say, but is crucial here, is that it is central to a good student experience and staff motivation around enterprise.  I was really impressed by this since it is about the wider benefits to us as academics in engaging with industry/business rather than about simply generating income.  It is worth saying that they are also ahead of the game on that front too, but it is not the driver or what motivates academics to engage and engage they do.  One other point which also struck a cord was the idea of using CPD provision as a market tester for degree programmes; a dam sight cheaper to run up a couple of CPD courses than a whole degree and see it fail for lack of recruitment!

Paul Mason (Head of Development, Technology Strategy Board) was up next and talked about the re-vamp of their strategy due out later this month, but the bit I liked here was that he was talking about being ‘challenge led’ not ‘product driven’.  You start by finding out what the challenges are and then broker a solution based on the range of products or interventions you have available or can source.  This is basically what I have been talking about around BU  in the context of knowledge brokering as a way forward for us.  It is an important point; instead of working out what products we have to sell – CPD, different flavours of consultancy etc. – we need to first find out what challenges business face and want solving.  This fits with the need to be outward rather than inward facing in our approach in developing our new Research & Enterprise Strategy.  If we are to live the idea of providing a student experience in which employability is written large then links to business, industry and the professions are vital and we will need to up our game in these areas and being seen to provid real business/industry solutions is one way to do this.

There were several other speakers who talked about the importance of innovation and generating economic growth within future allocations of HEIF funding and the importance of promoting our success in applying and exploiting our research.  The importance of engaging with Local Economic Partnerships following the demise of the Regional Development Agency was also a common theme and something for us to reflect on as we develop our regional strategy.

The next speaker to make me sit up after my lunch time disappointment was Neil Bowering (Knowledge Transfer Account Manager, at Glasgow) he was talking about the Easy Access IP scheme which Glasgow have pioneered and received large amounts of fame and glory for.  His job is to exploit the IP in the large EPSRC portfolio at Glasgow.  Basically they give the majority of their IP, over 90%, away for free to any third party who can exploit it, keeping just a very small proportion to develop them selves.  It is a highly streamlined process on the basis that getting IP out and out fast is the key and that there is very rarely much money to be made given the cost of exploiting and developing products/ideas for market.  The real key is to make knowledge useful and work for economic growth and society by freely giving it up rather than developing it slowly/poorly, or trying to negotiate at length a stake in its exploitation.   It is the reputational gain that is the key factor and the ongoing dialogue with companies who take on that IP that counts.  Very streamlined, straight forward with four simple conditions on which the IP is given away. University resources directed were they need to be direct.  A fantastic scheme and model for us to look at; certainly one realistic to the nature and quantity of the IP we generate at BU.

Sir Tim Wilson former VC at Hertfordshire and a big wheel in a range of CBI and Business Engagement committees/reviews made a really nice point about a university education.  It is taken for granted by business/employers that graduates will have the key knowledge and the key technical ability, but what they are looking for more than anything are the intellectual skills that will set a graduate apart in the race for jobs.  The ability to critically think is central.   I am sure that our graduates have this but perhaps we should reflect more on how we develop and promote these vital skills?  This links with something that David Frost, Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce had to say; graduates need work force training.  He particularly was drawing attention to skills of team work, customer service, communications and self management on top of core competency in numeracy, literacy and IT. If you want to become a successful financial advisor, then you should really consider financial advisor life coaching.

The final bit that is worth drawing attention to is from Staffordshire University and their success in producing a ‘one-stop door’ for all business enquires and importance of creating a business sales force within a university that is grounded both in business speak and the culture of academia.  This sales team act as translators projecting a professional sales orientated pitch outwards (based on relationship marketing), while allowing academics to be innovative and creative in their own way.  Effectively they act as the interface between these very different communities and cultures.  There is a lot to learn from this model especially around business relationship marketing and the long lead times involved.  One aside was reference to placements as part of an extended recruitment selection process for graduates which is self evident but worth reflecting on.

So in summary there is lots of good practice out there to learn from and to develop this summer as we evolve BU’s future Research & Enterprise Strategy.

Vice-Chancellor’s Awards – research project winners!

The Vice-Chancellor’s Awards took place last night and the winner’s of the two research awards were:

Collaborative research / enterprise project of the year: Dr Richard Shipway from the School of Tourism

Research / enterprise project of the year: Design Simulation Research Centre led by Professor Siamak Noroozi from the School of Design, Engineering & Computing

Congratulations to all staff involved! 😀

We will be featuring both of the award winners in future blog posts!

REF event 19 & 20 May 2011 – REGISTRATION IS OPEN!!

REF logoBU is hosting a two-day REF event on Thursday 19 and Friday 20 May 2011. All staff are invited to attend.

The event is of interest to BU academic staff and anyone who will be involved in the BU submission to the REF.

There will be three separate sessions:

Session 1
Thursday 19 May 9am-2pm
This session will be open to BU staff and external delegates.
There will be presentations from the REF team at HEFCE, REF impact pilot panel members, and a REF impact pilot institution (University of Plymouth).

Session 2
Thursday 19 May 2pm-5pm
This session is only open to BU staff.
This session will provide BU staff with the opportunity for internal networking, followed by a demonstration of BU’s new publications management system and a presentation on preparing a publication profile for the REF.

Session 3
Friday 20 May 9:45am-4:30pm
This session is only open to BU staff.
The focus of this session is the development of the BU impact case studies. There will be presentations of the impact case studies being developed at the moment.

All sessions will take place in Kimmeridge House and Poole House, Talbot Campus.

You must register separately for each session you will be attending.

See our previous REF Event blog post for further details. The provisional programmes are available on the registration forms (see links above).

iNets South West – Environmental (Bristol)

Environmental Technology Roadmap Initiative

Friday 13 May, 9am-4pm, Viridor Room, SS Great Britain, Bristol

What is a Technology Roadmap?

A Technology Roadmap is a plan that matches your short-term and long-term goals with specific technology solutions to help meet those goals. This plan applies to new products, processes, and emerging technologies. Developing a roadmap has three major benefits.

    • It helps reach a consensus about a set of needs and the technologies required to satisfy those needs
    • It provides a forum to help forecast technology developments in the sector
    • It provides a network to help plan and coordinate technology developments 

Who should attend?

Businesses who want to develop new products, processes, technologies or expertise in the following sectors:

  • Renewable Energy
  • Sustainable Transport
  • Waste Management
  • Sustainable Construction

Why should I attend?

Be part of an open innovation community and identify many opportunities for business growth
Opportunity to understand the technology needs of businesses in your sector group
Opportunity to acquire knowledge from local universities and establish a collaborative relationship
Develop on-going relationships with similar communities across the UK, Europe and beyond

Participate in collaborative Research and Development projects in the UK and Europe (possible funding)

This is a fantastic opportunity to be part of an ongoing business community where businesses can influence the universities and wider knowledge base on the technology required to drive the environmental industry forward.

Places are limited for this event, so register early to ensure your place by clicking here  

Missenden Centre research workshops

The Missenden Centre is running a series of workshops this year that may be of interest to BU academics and research support staff:

Successful Bidding: Day Clinic – 2 June 2011, London 

Bidding for Research Funding  for academic staff – 15/16 June 2011, Missenden Centre

Bidding for Research Funding for research support staff – 16/17 June 2011, Missenden Centre

The Missenden Centre courses are highly praised and well respected within the sector.

REF event 19 & 20 May 2011 – SAVE THE DATE!

REF logoBU will be holding a two day Research Excellence Framework (REF) event on 19 and 20 May to which all staff are invited to attend.

Day 1 (open to BU staff and external delegates)
9am-2pm – this will be an external event supported by HEFCE to which all HEIs in the South of England will be invited. The focus will be on developing and assessing impact for the REF. There will be speakers from HEFCE, an academic from one of the impact pilot institutions (University of Plymouth), and some of the impact pilot panel members. The event is aimed primarily at academics likely to be submitted to the REF and UOA Leaders. It will provide a forum for networking and discussion around preparations for the impact element of the REF.

Day 1 (open to BU staff only)
2pm-5pm – There will be an opportunity for internal networking, a demonstration of the publications management system BU will soon be implementing, and a talk by Prof Matthew Bennett on building a publication profile for the REF.

Day 2 (open to BU staff only)
9am-4:30pm – the focus of Day 2 is the development of the BU impact case studies. The day will open with a presentation by Prof Matthew Bennett on what impact actually is, followed by presentations of the impact case studies being developed at the moment (3 per Unit of Assessment). These will run in 9 concurrent sessions with 4 presentations taking place in parallel during each session. The main aims of Day 2 are to get academics thinking about the impact case studies in a structured way, to identify resource requirements to maximise potential impacts, and the engage staff from M&C with the case studies being developed. In addition this is a great opportunity to showcase the excellent research that is undertaken at BU, to meet colleagues from other Schools, and to stimulate ideas for future research collaborations.

The event is free to attend but booking is essential. Booking will open next week – further details to follow!