Tagged / training

Introduction to Research Professional – 5 April 2016

BU research, Funding opportunities, Research Training

Research-Professional-logoResearch Professional will be delivering training at Bournemouth University between 12.30 – 2.00pm on 5/4/16 as part of Bournemouth Researcher Academic Development (BRAD) week.

Research Professional is a search engine designed to help researchers find potential funding calls, keep researchers up to date with developments in the higher education sector and can bring researchers together to compete for a funding call.

From this session you will be able to:

  • Register an account
  • Learn how to search for funding calls
  • Understand to search for articles
  • How to set up searches and personal alerts
  • How to use the Expression of Interest feature
  • How to find and use the pre-set BU workgroups

To book onto this session, please follow the link here.

BRAD 2016 starts in April – don’t miss out – get yourself booked in!

BU research, Research Training

The BU Researcher/Academic Development (BRAD) events programme will run 4th of April – 11th of April 2016.BRAD

With less than one month to go until our BRAD events programme begins – there is still time to book yourself into one or more of our exciting events through Organisational Development under the following themes.

Introduction and Basics

BRAD wordle

Fusion in Action: Clinical Academic PhD scholarships jointly funded with NHS

BU research, Fusion, PG research, Research communication, Research Training, student research, Uncategorized

Fusion Diagram Doing a PhD may appeal to midwives and other NHS health professionals, but it often involves having to make difficult choices. Undertaking a part-time PhD means studying on top of a busy clinical position, but starting full-time study involves stepping away from practice, which may lead to a loss of clinical skills and confidence. The Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) at Bournemouth University has come up with a novel solution making it easier for midwives to undertake a doctorate while still maintaining their clinical skills. This approach is highlighted in the latest publication by Dr. Susan Way and colleagues, describing a process where CMMPH collaborate with NHS partners to apply for a match-funded PhD. [1]  The first partnership was with Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (PHT), with later partners expanded to cover the Isle of Wight and Southampton. Currently there are negotiations with Dorset Country Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Non NHS organisations have also showed an interest with the Anglo European Chiropractic College (AECC) our likely next collaborator.

Dr. Know 2016

This jointly funded clinical academic doctorate allows midwives to combine clinical practice with a research role, working across BU and their NHS Trust. The studentships runs for four years and PhD students will spend two days per week working as a midwife in clinical practice and three days per week working on their thesis. This set up facilitates the co-creation of knowledge. Anybody interested in developing a joint clinical academic PhD with us please contact Dr. Susan Way (sueway@bournemouth.ac.uk), Prof. Vanora Hundley (vhundley@bournemouth.ac.uk), or Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (evteijlingen@bournemouth.ac.uk) .

In addition to providing the individual midwives with excellent education, these studentships are designed to examine an area of clinical practice identified by the collaborating organisation where the evidence is lacking and research is needed. As a consequence the research studies will be directly relevant to practice and will have a demonstrable impact in the future. Hence BU will be able to show that its research and education have a direct benefit to the wider society. Moreover, the studentships currently benefit midwifery practice by building a critical mass of research-focus practitioners, who will translate research findings into practice and so create a culture of evidence-based practice. At BU the model has also been adopted by other professional groups such as nursing, physiotherapy and occupational therapy (OT).

 

The result is a clinical academic doctoral studentship is probably the best practical example of BU’s concept of FUSION, since it truly fuses research, education and practice.

 

Susan Way, Vanora Hundley & Edwin van Teijlingen.

CMMPH

 

 

References:

  1. Way. S., Hundley, V., van Teijlingen, E., Walton, G., Westwood, G. (2016). Dr Know. Midwives (Spring Issue): 66-67.

Challenges in Research Event

Info Days, Research news, Research Training, Training

Challenges in Research

Wednesday 24th February, 12pm-2pm

Second Floor, Executive Business Centre, Lansdowne Campus

Open to all Research Staff from across the Faculties, this event will aim to enlighten you about some of the issues you might encounter as a researcher. There will be two sets of parallel sessions running for 1 hour per session covering the following topics:

  • Predatory publishing/Fake conference and editorial board
    1. Jenny Hall, Emma Crowley and Edwin van Teijlingen will be addressing the exponential growth in commercial (predatory) journals and ‘academic conferences’ over the past few years.
      • They will be highlighting some of the available information/ resources to help the confused researcher in finding the most appropriate journal for their academic paper.
      • The presenters between them have a wealth of experience in academic publishing, editing international journals, reviewing journal submissions as well as advising junior colleagues on developing  their publication strategies.
  • IP and Patents – Traps to avoid
  • Contractual complications
  • Sponsorship  
    1. “How to navigate the BU process and sponsorship” by Jason Edwards
    2. “Lots of people think that sponsorship and funding is the same think” – Laura Purandare will talk about what sponsorship is and the main issues you  might encounter and how to overcome them
  • A Brief Introduction to Open Research Data and Research Data Management by Michael Board. The talk will cover:
    1. Open Research Data – BU researchers are increasingly expected to share their research data with other stakeholders.  Find out about: the benefits of research data sharing, funder RDM requirements and the measures that can be taken to embargo research data if it is ethically or commercially sensitive.
    2. Research Data Management –  BU is in the process of implementing a RDM system to enable its researchers to share their research data.  Find out about: the key components of the RDM system that enables the deposition of research data into a data repository, and the features that make the data outputs accessible.

The sessions will be run by legal services along with library and research staff.

Further information about the timing of particular sessions will be posted closer to the time, as well as emailed out to anyone who has already pre-registered.

To register your place please click here

IRW training with Professor Matt Bentley

BU research, Research communication, Research Training

Who: Interdisciplinary Research Training Session with Professor Matt Bentley, Deputy Dean for Research and Professional Practice, Faculty of Science and TechnologyMatt Bentley

Where and when: Talbot Campus, Thursday, 28 January – 09:30-11:00

What: This 90 minute training session will give attendees the opportunity to find out more about interdisciplinary research including:

  • What is interdisciplinary research
  • What counts as a discipline
  • The reasons why it is becoming increasingly important both inside and outside the university (e.g. by funders, policy makers etc.).
  • How it might impact on your research practice?
  • The potential and the challenges of this type of work.
  • The role it has in institutions and careers.
Book your placeInterdisResWeek2

Introduction to Education Practice: A Programme for Research Students

Training, Uncategorized

The next session of our ‘Introduction to Education Practice‘ course will run from the 24th to the 26th of February.

This is a research-driven, practice-based course, aimed at doctoral students who are or will be supporting teaching activities.

The course has three main aims:
• To introduce students to theoretical and practical knowledge on adult learning, with special emphasis on the UK context.
• To familiarise students with BU’s services and schemes for teaching and learning, as well as with leaning technology tools.
• To provide students with opportunities to discuss and reflect about their particular teaching goals, and to offer a collegial space where they can receive feedback on their teaching practice.

IMG_20151207_100926Topics covered in the course include:
• The student experience of learning.
• Planning student-centred learning.
• Working in large and small groups.
• Assessment for learning.
• The potential of learning technology.

On the last day we celebrate our students’ learning by engaging them in a micro-teaching task, where they receive feedback and recommendations to improve their teaching practice.

The course is supported through materials in myBU.

To see images and resources shared by previous cohorts, check out out #TeachBU on Twitter.

Programme organiser: Dr Jaccqueline Priego (CEL).

To book a place please contact Organisational Development od@bournemouth.ac.uk

 

This post was previously published on the BU’s Centre for Excellence in Learning (CEL) Blog and is reproduced here with permission.

More events at the IRW

BU research, Research communication, Uncategorized

As well as the lectures, debates, films and music at the Interdisciplinary Research Week 2016, we have even more events that are of interest to all. These include:InterdisResWeek2

Monday 25 January 2016

Ashley Woodfall

Researching with Children and Young People: Method and Mayhem

EB708, Executive Business Centre, 16:00-18:00

This ‘catalyst’ event is an opportunity for anyone with an interest in research with children and young people to:

  • meet BU researchers from across the university
  • share experiences and future research ambitions; and
  • develop future research partnerships

Operating in a ‘bring and buy’ spirit, this event recognises the benefits of sharing knowledge and expertise across different disciplines. The event is open to all those interested in research with children and young people whatever their research interests, affiliation or tradition.

Thursday 28 January 2016

Professor Matt Bentley

Interdisciplinary Research Training Session

KG03, Talbot Campus, 09:30-11:00

This 90-minute training session will give attendees the opportunity to find out more about interdisciplinary research including:

  • What is interdisciplinary research?
  • What counts as a discipline?
  • The reasons why it is becoming increasingly important both inside and outside the university (e.g. by funders, policy makers etc.).
  • How it might impact on your research practice?
  • The potential and the challenges of this type of work.
  • The role it has in institutions and careers.

Click on the links above to book on to the events.

What would Marty McFly need in 25 years’ time? EB705, Executive Business Centre – For BU academics and researchers only, we also have on Tuesday 26th January (10.00 – 17.00) and Wednesday 27th January 2016 (morning only) an interactive workshop session designed to tackle a big question for modern day life – how digital technology affects different aspects of our daily lives. The session will create a collaborative space for researchers to share ideas, challenge assumptions and develop future research proposals.

To take part in this exciting opportunity, BU academic and research staff should complete the Sandpit Application Form and return this to Dianne Goodman by Tuesday 12th January. Places are strictly limited.

More events at the IRW

BU research, Research communication

InterdisResWeek2As well as the lectures, debates, films and music at the Interdisciplinary Research Week 2016, we have even more events that are of interest to all.  These include:

Monday 25 January 2016             

Ashley Woodfall

Researching with Children and Young People: Method and Mayhem

EB708, Executive Business Centre, 16:00-18:00

This ‘catalyst’ event is an opportunity for anyone with an interest in research with children and young people to:

  • meet BU researchers from across the university
  • share experiences and future research ambitions; and
  • develop future research partnerships

Operating in a ‘bring and buy’ spirit, this event recognises the benefits of sharing knowledge and expertise across different disciplines. The event is open to all those interested in research with children and young people whatever their research interests, affiliation or tradition.

Thursday 28 January 2016            

Professor Matt Bentley

Interdisciplinary Research Training Session

KG03, Talbot Campus, 09:30-11:00

This 90-minute training session will give attendees the opportunity to find out more about interdisciplinary research including:

  • What is interdisciplinary research?
  • What counts as a discipline?
  • The reasons why it is becoming increasingly important both inside and outside the university (e.g. by funders, policy makers etc.).
  • How it might impact on your research practice?
  • The potential and the challenges of this type of work.
  • The role it has in institutions and careers.

Click on the links above to book on to the events.

What would Marty McFly need in 25 years’ time? EB705, Executive Business Centre – For BU academics and researchers only, we also have on Tuesday 26th January (10.00 – 17.00) and Wednesday 27th January 2016 (morning only) an interactive workshop session designed to tackle a big question for modern day life – how digital technology affects different aspects of our daily lives.  The session will create a collaborative space for researchers to share ideas, challenge assumptions and develop future research proposals.

To take part in this exciting opportunity, BU academic and research staff should complete the Sandpit Application Form and return this to Dianne Goodman by Tuesday 5th January. Places are strictly limited.

Research Councils announce unconscious bias training for peer reviewers

Research news, Research Training

RCUKlogoThe Research Councils have launched a new programme for all peer reviewers and decision-makers, to raise awareness and reduce the impact of unconscious bias.

Over a period of three years, beginning in January 2016, more than 1,300 people involved in peer review from all seven Research Councils will be given access to high quality training designed and developed by the Research Councils and the consultants Pearn Kandola (www.pearnkandola.com). Together, they will translate this training into an online application and make it available to their geographically dispersed peer reviewers.

Professor Jackie Hunter, Chair of the Research Councils’ Equality and Diversity Group and Chief Executive of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), said: “Raising awareness of unconscious bias strengthens the Research Councils’ commitment to addressing equality and diversity Together, the Research Councils invest £3 billion in research each year, covering all disciplines and sectors, to meet tomorrow’s challenges today. Ensuring that fair decisions are made in peer review and funding is of the utmost importance.”

Unlocking the leadership potential of BME early career academics

Research Training

LF Diversifying Academic LeadershipThe Leadership Foundation has launched a new programme aimed at black and minority ethnic (BME) early career academics who are considering applying for, or aspiring to a senior leadership role in higher education.

Diversifying Academic Leadership has been developed in response to feedback from the LF’s recent BME Leadership in HE Summit, held in partnership with the Equality Challenge Unit in June 2015. Summit participants, drawn from across the UK, said that more could be done to support the career progression of BME staff working in higher education, including development activities aimed at the start of the talent pipeline to encourage more early career academics to consider and apply for leadership roles.

This non-residential programme, designed and delivered by Jannett Morgan, Associate, Leadership Foundation, will run from January to July 2016, with three cohorts (held in Birmingham, Manchester and London respectively).

Participants will explore a range of themes (primarily through face to face workshops, self-organised action learning sets and leadership stories from high profile HE leaders), including:

· Demystifying Leadership

· Increasing Visibility

· Authentic Leadership

· Cultural Identity and Cultural Capital

· Power and Influence

· Sponsors and Mentors

The LF are offering free places on the pilot cohort which starts on 13 January 2016. Delegates on the pilot cohort will co-create the programme and help to establish the programmes strengths.

Places on the pilot will be limited to two people per institution and delegates who take part in the pilot programme play a key role in its co-creation, helping to structure how the programme will work in the future.

Commenting on the programme, Ginnie Willis, Programme Director, Leadership Foundation, said;

“This programme will enable early career academics who are about to apply for, or aspire to a senior role to explore various leadership concepts and help them to identify and develop their leadership style.

Participants will also reflect on the skills necessary to work as an effective leader and have the opportunity to discuss issues relating to their experiences of working in higher education.”

For more information about the programme and to book a place visit www.lfhe.ac.uk/diversifyingacademicleadership.

If you would like discuss the programme content in depth, please contact Sweta Purohit Jina, Business Consultancy Manager.

BRAD: Robust adaptive predictive modelling and data deluge workshop

Research Training, student research, Training

Data-science-history

To book your place on this workshop- CLICK HERE

We are currently experiencing an incredible, explosive growth in digital content and information. According to IDC [11], there currently exists over 2.7 zetabytes of data. It is estimated that the digital universe in 2020 will be 50 times as big as in 2010 and that from now until 2020 it will double every two years. Research in traditionally qualitative disciplines is fundamentally changing due to the availability of such vast amounts of data. In fact, data-intensive computing has been named as the fourth paradigm of scientific discovery [10] and is expected to be key in unifying the theoretical, experimental and simulation based approaches to science. The commercial world has also been transformed by a focus on BIG DATA with companies competing on analytics [12]. Data has become a commodity and in recent years has been referred to as the ‘new oil’.

There has been a lot of work done on the subject of intelligent data analysis, data mining and predictive modelling over the last 50 years with notable improvements which have been possible with both the advancements of the computing equipment as well as with the improvement of the algorithms [1]. However, even in the case of the static, non-changing over time data there are still many hard challenges to be solved which are related to the massive amounts, high dimensionality, sparseness or inhomogeneous nature of the data to name just a few.

What is also very challenging in today’s applications is the non-stationarity of the data which often change very quickly posing a set of new problems related to the need for robust adaptation and learning over time. In scenarios like these, many of the existing, often very powerful, methods are completely inadequate as they are simply not adaptive and require a lot of maintenance attention from highly skilled experts, in turn reducing their areas of applicability.

In order to address these challenging issues and following various inspirations coming from biology coupled with current engineering practices, we propose a major departure from the standard ways of building adaptive, intelligent predictive systems and moving somewhat away from the engineering maxim of “simple is beautiful” to biological statement of “complexity is not a problem” by utilising the biological metaphors of redundant but complementary pathways, interconnected cyclic processes, models that can be created as well as destroyed in easy way, batteries of sensors in form of pools of complementary approaches, hierarchical organisation of constantly optimised and adaptable components.

In order to achieve such high level of adaptability we have proposed a novel flexible architecture [5-6] which encapsulates many of the principles and strategies observed in adaptable biological systems. The main idea of the proposed architecture revolves around a certain degree of redundancy present at each level of processing represented by the pools of methods, multiple competitive paths (individual predictors), their flexible combinations and meta learning managing general population and ensuring both efficiency and accuracy of delivered solution while maintaining diversity for improved robustness of the overall system.

The results of extensive testing for many different benchmark problems and various snapshots of interesting results covering the last decade of our research will be shown throughout the presentation and a number of challenging real world problems including pollution/toxicity prediction studies [8-9], building adaptable soft sensors in process industry in collaboration with Evonik Industries [6-7] or forecasting demand for airline tickets covering the results of one of our collaborative research projects with Lufthansa Systems [3-4] will be discussed.

Given our experiences in many different areas we see that truly multidisciplinary teams and a new set of robust, adaptive tools are needed to tackle complex problems with intelligent data analysis, predictive modelling and visualisation already indispensible. It is also clear that complex adaptive systems and complexity science supported and driven by huge amounts of multimodal, multisource data will become a major endeavour in the 21st century.

We will hold discussions surrounding:

  • Rapidly expanding digital universe
  • New decade of advanced/predictive analytics
  • General Fuzzy Min-Max (GFMM) Neural Networks as an example of early realisation of flexible predictive system
  • To combine or not to combine? – Multiple classification and prediction systems
  • Water quality monitoring based on biomarker data – can it be done?
  • Revenue management for airlines – can we forecast anything?
  • Adaptive soft sensors for process industry – here’s a real problem!
  • Self-adapting architecture for predictive modelling
  • Complex adaptive systems and complex networks

Professor. Bogdan Gabrys

To book your place on this workshop- CLICK HERE

Researcher Development Framework

Guidance, Research Training, student research, Training

Vitae_RDF_logo_2011Vitae is an organisation set up to promote career development in both postgraduate researchers and academic staff. Their Researcher Development Framework is intended to help people monitor their skills and plan their personal development. At BU we will be using this framework to format the training on offer for the postgraduate research students and academic staff.

The Vitae website is an excellent resource and the organisation regularly runs free training events for researchers, PGRs and those involved in research development. Upcoming events include Vitae Connections: Supporting Open Researchers.

The Researcher Development Framework (RDF) is the professional development framework to realise the potential of researchers. The RDF is a tool for planning, promoting and supporting the personal, professional and career development of researchers in higher education. It was designed following interviews with many successful researchers across the sector and articulates the knowledge, behaviours and attributes of a successful researcher.

There is a planner available on the Vitae website to help you assess which stage you are at with your skills and a tutorial providing guidance on how to use the framework.

Top 10 tips from researchers on using the Researcher Development Framework (RDF):

1. You might choose to use the RDF for short term as well as long term development. The RDF can be used in planning for your long term career ambitions but also to make a feasible short term plan. It can be useful to imagine your long term ambitions in order to focus your career path however the reality of progressing through to the higher phases may be more difficult to plan. In the short term, making decisions about how to progress to the next phase or what sub-domains are most important for you will be easier. Try to be realistic when setting these short term goals.

2. Use the RDF to highlight your strengths and areas for development and how these might be used to benefit/influence your personal, professional and career development.

3. Use the RDF to highlight your applicable and transferable skills. This is important for career progression within or outside academia.

4. Prioritise those areas which are most relevant. You don’t have to try to develop in all the areas of the RDF at once. There may be some sub-domains/descriptors where there is less relevance in progressing through the phases for you.

5. Draw on experiences outside of work to evidence your capabilities.

6. Progression to the highest phase in a descriptor will not be applicable to everyone but being aware of the possibilities can aid personal and career development.

7. Talk to others to get their views about your strengths and capabilities. Your supervisor, manager, peers, family and friends are a great source of information to find out more about yourself. Talk to them about how they perceive your capabilities. By understanding how others view you, you will be able to make more informed choices about your future.

8. To move from one phase to the next why not explore attending courses. These courses may be run at a local level (within your University) or may only be run nationally or internationally so awareness of opportunities for training is important. Vitae also run a wide range of courses which address many aspects of personal and career development.

9. Some phases may only be reached through experience and practice however good self-awareness and professional development planning will aid the process.

10. Networking is likely to enable you to reach more experienced phases.