Tagged / training

More events at the IRW

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

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

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

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, 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.

BRAD: Career Trajectory 20th Novemeber 2015

Training

Prof Matt Bentley, SciTech Deputy Dean – Research and Professional Practice, will give an insight into the management of the career trajectory of an academic. Far from being down to chance, Matt will explore the activities, which can career trajectorybe undertaken to direct your academic career and how to make the most of opportunities and challenges along the journey. This session is open to academics at all stages of their career. Perhaps you are just starting out and need advice on how to move to the next stage or, perhaps, you have reached a plateau and wish to reflect upon the need to change direction to achieve your career aspirations.

This session will include career management advice, responsiveness to opportunities, reputation, and esteem. It will finish with a Q & A session and a networking lunch.

You may also be interested in the following online resources:

For more information about the above workshops and to book – CLICK HERE

BRAD – Upcoming Opportunities

impact

For more information about the above workshops and to book – CLICK HERE

Impact – 18th November 2015, 09:00-12:00
This session will explore what we mean by impact and why it is an increasingly important part of your research career. Through this exploration, the session will highlight examples of impact and the perspective of research funders with regards to impact. There will also be dedicated time for you to explore the types of impact your research could lead to and suitable pathways to do so.
Working with Business – Business Engagement and Networking – 19th November 2015, 14:00-16:00
For both early career researchers and experienced academics alike this session will include tips and information on how to develop and make the most of building relationships and networks with businesses. Led by Jayne Codling and Rachel Clarke – Knowledge Exchange Advisers within RKEO, there will be a chance to hear from different speakers on their own experiences of C4NPMKbusiness and university collaboration. This session will also involve discussion on networking and hints and tips, useful information sources on business funding, communicating your research to a business audience and an opportunity to provide ideas as to what as academics you would like help or more information on to assist you with developing business relationships.

 

For more information about the above workshops and to book – CLICK HERE

BRAD: Upcoming Opportunities – 17th November 2015

Training

European IPR webinarsIntroductory EU Participant Portal session – 17th November 2015, 13:30-14:30

  • Very short introduction to Horizon 2020 and EU funding
  • Registering on the Participant Portal
  • How to find a call
  • Looking at the call documents
  • Reference documents – work programmes
  • Getting help – using the manual, European Horizon 2020 helpdesk and National Contact Points

 

Introductory Research Professional session- 17th November 2015, 14:45-16:00

  • Registering for an account
  • How to search for funding calls
  • How to search for articles
  • How to set up searches and personal alerts
  • Using the Expression of Interest feature
  • Using the pre-set BU workgroups

 

Bid Writing with Martin Pickard – 17th November 2015, 9:30-16:00

writing and editing

This workshop includes writing grant proposals, and writing effective applications. Bring along a copy of bid writing for constructive group feedback.
*Please bring a laptop with you to this session


For more information about the above workshops and to book – CLICK HERE

 

NVivo Introduction

student research, Training

Nvivological_model_diagramNVivo Indtroduction offers focuses on the requisite management decisions one should make at the beginning of one’s project such as what is my data?

Should I code audio or transcripts and what are the advantages and limitations of either approach? How does the software work?

Why should I integrate my background information or demographics and what is auto-coding and how might it help to better understand my data and prepare it for the cycles of manual interpretive coding to follow?

How do I integrate my chosen methodological approach in using NVivo and reconcile it with the philosophical underpinnings to apply such methods as Grounded Theory, Discourse Analysis, Content Analysis, Thematic Analysis or Narrative Interpretive Methods as just some examples.

Day 1 has an emphasis on the conceptual although the afternoon session is more rooted in the practical. By the end of day 1, participants should be able to set-up an NVivo database, back it up, import their data, setup a coding structure and code their data to it and set up and integrate their demographics.

We have hired the services of an external facilitator to offer support in this for academic staff as part of the BRAD programme. Ben Meehan worked in industry for twenty six years. For the past thirteen years he has worked as an independent consultant in support of computer aided qualitative data analysis projects (CAQDAS). He is a QSR approved trainer and consultant. He has worked in all of the major universities and Institutes of Technology in Ireland and Northern Ireland. His work outside of the educational sector includes major global companies such as Intel where he consults in support of their on-going ethnographic research and the Centre for Global Health where he has recently worked in Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique (2009) and in Ghana, Burkina Faso and Tanzania with the University of Heidelberg (2010) and Ethiopia for the Ethiopian Public Health Association (2011) and the Population Council, Zambia (2012). Apart from Africa, Ben regularly conducts workshops in Germany, France, UK, Northern Ireland, the US (Maryland, 2011, Yale, 2012) and Australia.

The session is on Wed 18th Novemeber 2015 09:00 – 16:00 on Talbot campus. There are limited spaces so please do ensure you get one by booking on the Organisational and Staff Development webpages.

BRAD Upcoming Opportunities – 16th November 2015

Training

BRAD

 

 

 

For more information about the above workshops and to book – CLICK HERE

Research Application Process- 16th November 2015, 9:30- 10:30.
This session will provide a presentation on the process of costing your research at BU and the research application process. Additionally, Q & A session and the opportunity for a one on one discussion with the facilitators.

Justifying your funding request workshop – 16th November 2015, 10:45-13:00 (including Lunch)
Many funders require you to justify the funding you are requesting in a research bid. But how can you best approach this? This session will outline how to structure a justification for funding for the major funders (research councils, other government funders, main charities) and provide some examples of good and bad practice.

Financial Management Workshop – 16th November 2015, 12:00 -14:30 (including Lunch)Finance for smes
This workshop will cover several topics ranging from; financial management, income and funding budgeting, financial resourcing and strategic financial planning.

 

For more information about the above workshops and to book – CLICK HERE

 

 

 

European IPR Helpdesk – slides from 30/09/15

Training

Academic and RKEO staff enjoyed the recent webinar regarding IP Management in EU-funded Projects /Horizon 2020, presented by Jörg Scherer, Managing Director of the European Research and Project Office (Eurice)
The webinar covered:

  • The importance of considering Intellectual Property from day oneeurope
  • How to embed IP within the project submission and agreement documents
  • Definitions, ownership and access rights
  • Obligations to disseminate, protect and exploit
  • The IP landscape and implementation

The slides are available to BU staff along with other publications from the European IPR Helpdesk.

Although the slides are instructional, it is not the same experience as attending the webinar. Why not come along to the next events:

02/11/15  IP Management in H2020 – with a special focus on MSCA

02/12/15   Impact and Innovation in H2020 – a Guide for Proposers

16/12/15   Maximising the impact of H2020 projects

They will all take place in the Casterbridge Room, starting promptly at 9:30. Please contact Dianne Goodman to reserve your place.

 

Research Professional visit 3rd Nov and set up your personal account and searches!

Funding opportunities, Info Days

Research-Professional-logoEvery BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. Jordan Graham from Research Professional is visiting BU on the 3rd of November 2015 to demonstrate to academics and staff how to make the most of their Research Professional account.

This will include:

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

Location and the session timings are:

Talbot campus P424

10.15 – 11.15 – Research Professional presentation

11.15 – 11.45 – RKEO interactive session setting up searches

Lansdowne campus S103

13.30 – 14.30 – Research Professional presentation

14.30 – 15.00 – RKEO interactive session setting up searches

After the presentation, the RKEO Funding Development Team will be on hand for an interactive session where they will help you set up your Research Professional account, searches and offer advice from a BU perspective.

This is a great opportunity to learn more about funding opportunities and to meet the Funding Development Team, particularly if you are new to BU.

Please reserve your place now at a BU Campus to suit through Organisational Development

 

Workshop on Falls (Older People) 01/10/15 – Purpose to develop multidisciplinary bids!

Funding opportunities

diagram fallsFrom recent discussions with BU colleagues it is clear that many staff across all four BU faculties are involved in research and practice that is connected to the prevention and reduction of falls occurring in the older population.

It is also recognised that communications between BU researchers in this subject area can be greatly improved and cross faculty, multi-disciplinary bids developed to meet future research challenges (RCUK and European Horizon 2020, UK Charities etc) and the improvement of falls services provided by the NHS.

RKEO is organising a 1 day Catalyst Workshop on Falls (older people) to be held on the 01/10/15 in the Executive Business Centre (EBC), Lansdowne. The workshop will be facilitated by an external company Knowinnovation.  This workshop is open to ALL BU academics whose research could be applied to falls, indeed emphasis is now on recruiting non-medical related academics to the workshop, to grow the multi-disciplinary content of future bids.

If you think that your research can add to a multidisciplinary approach and you are able to attend the full day workshop then please contact Mike Board or Dianne Goodman or Emily Cieciura for further information and book your place (dependent on remaining spaces!).

Media training for ESRC-funded researchers

Guidance

Media training is changing at the ESRC.ESRC

Having taken on board extensive feedback from their delegates they are moving their media training forward to focus on the practical elements of working with the media.

They now offer a one day-long media training session that provides the opportunity to develop practical media skills in a safe environment.

They believe by concentrating their resources this way they will be able to give maximum opportunity for researchers, no matter what stage of their career, to develop their skills and feel comfortable handling media interviews. Whether a PhD student, postdoctoral researcher or senior fellow, the new practical media training session provides the guidance needed to engage the media with confidence – and plenty of opportunity to practice.

For more information, please see the article here.

The course will be taking place in different locations throughout the year. The forthcoming course dates are:

  • 17 September 2015 – London
  • 15 October 2015 – Cambridge
  • 30 October 2015 – London
  • 12 November 2015 – London

Book a place on a media training course.

For further information on any aspect of ESRC media training days please contact esrcmediatraining@esrc.ac.uk