Research Active Vol 09 Issue 1 Oct 2014

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Research Active The Newsletter of University of Kent Research Services, Vol 9, Issue 1 Oct 2014

RESEARCH PRIZES LAUNCHED A new scheme to recognise outstanding research achievements will be launched this term.

Whilst the University has, for some time, recognised outstanding imagination, commitment and achievement in teaching by awarding Teaching Prizes, there has been no similar system for research.

The new scheme is open to all research-active staff at the University, and there will be separate prizes for early career researchers. In addition, there will be recognition for outstanding doctoral projects.

Highest Ever Value of Research Grants The value of awards was up 47% last year to a record high of £17.6m. This is an increase of £5.6m on the year before, and up £3.8m on the current five year average.

‘This is a great achievement, and shows a clear direction of travel’ said the Vice Chancellor, Prof Dame Julia Goodfellow. ‘The substantial recent investment in new staff, together with dedicated central support and excellent mentoring by colleagues has led to this step change in award value. I congratulate all those who have played a part in achieving this.

All should take heart from these figures, and I would encourage all academics to consider drafting bids.’

Total value by School is given on the right, and a full list of recent awards is given on pages 5-8.

‘I am very pleased to endorse this new scheme,’ said the PVC Research and Innovation, Prof Philippe De Wilde. ‘Talking to Directors of Research and individual academics since I arrived in the summer, it is clear that Kent is home to some excellent research. We should do more to celebrate and publicise it. I would encourage all to think about nominating colleagues who have produced outstanding work in the last year.’

Nominations should be based on a range of exceptional achievements, Total Grant Value 2013-14 SSPSSR £2,791,896 Biosciences £2,523,364 Anthropology £2,407,223 EDA £2,271,068 CMP £1,846,519 SPS £1,479,090 Computing £991,505 History £951,583 SECL £398,696 Pol/IR £391,972 KLS £284,448 English £186,547 Pharmacy £182,787 SMSAS £156,590 Economics £155,659 Sports £134,294 Music & Fine Art £129,400 KBS £127,733 Psychology £74,468 Arts £74,181 Architecture £33,782

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which could include but not be limited to: publications in highly ranked journals, number of citations, grants awarded, influence beyond the immediate peer group, and impact.

Nominations should be made using the form available from Research Services, and should be submitted by 19 January 2015.

Awards will be announced at a gala dinner on 27 March 2015.

A dedicated webpage is being developed; in the meantime contact Phil Ward for more detail (p.ward@kent.ac.uk, xtn 7748)

INSIDE THIS EDITION EU Partnerships Fund KRIMSON Eastern ARC Fellows Getting Advice on EU Bids Update on H2020 Being Human Festival Figures behind the Figures Overview of Funding New Awards Researchfish MedFest’14 Wellcome SSH Schemes Grants Factory/ECRN Upcoming Soc Sci Funding Researcher Development Working Group New Starters Choice Cuts from the Blog

2 2 3 3 4 4 4 5 6 9 9 10 10 10 10 11 12

EU PARTNERSHIPS FUND The Research & Innovation Board (formerly the Board for Research & Enterprise) has given the go ahead for a new fund for developing European partnerships. The Board agreed that, as the UK’s European university, each of Kent’s research groups should establish a productive partnership with at least one research group in the EU or its Horizon2020-associated countries.

To this end all research-active staff are invited to apply to the fund in order to establish or build on links with European partners.

What should a partnership look like?  The partnership can be purely academic, or a collaboration with enterprise, government or charities.  The partner research group can be as small as one academic with one PhD student, or as large as a Centre of the University.  The partnership will have the generation of income among its aims. Income can be generated via joint grants, joint (fee-paying) PhD supervision, consultancy, directorships, IP licensing etc.

The target income will be proportional to the number of staff involved. If the generation of income is via the production of

KRIMSON The new system for preparing and approving research and enterprise proposals KRIMSON, the Kent Research Information Management System Online, is now live. If you want to submit a research or enterprise funding application, you will need to use the new system.

KRIMSON was piloted throughout

high-quality outputs, the partners will be at a top-200 university.  The partnerships will be active on social media. University of Kent staff will clearly mention their School and the University on all outputs.  Existing efforts to form partnerships that have not yet generated income are also eligible for support.  However, groups that have existing income-generating partnerships inside or outside the EU should continue to focus on these. They should be selffinancing and do not need any further financial stimulus.

What costs are covered?  Incoming and outgoing travel and subsistence for the first two years of the partnership. There is no upper limit to funding requested.  The grant will be provided via a reimbursement to Schools.

How do I apply?  Applications (2 pages max) will be made to the PVC Research & Innovation by email (p.dewilde@kent.ac.uk)  Applications will contain a title, abstract, details of prospective partners, estimated expenditure on travel and subsistence, and a plan for income generation. the summer by EDA, SECL and KLS. Prof Dermot Walsh, Director of Research in KLS, said that PIs had had a steep learning curve when submitting their first application but were now fine with the process.

Research Services recognises that the new system can take some getting used to, and is therefore offering training and support.

They have been working with research support administrators in each school to ensure that there is support close at hand, and are offering training sessions on Wednes2

EXAMPLES OF POTENTIAL PROJECTS A visit by a Kent researcher to two research groups, with the aim to partner in a future Horizon 2020 application. Estimate the income to Kent of the grant.

A visit by members of an EUbased organisation to learn about your research and increase the impact of your research. Estimate the increase in QR income, per year and per staff member (ask DoR to help).

A visit to an EU company to propose a consultancy, with a follow up visit by an associate.

Estimate the income of the consultancy over the lifetime of the contract.

A visit to a top EU academic that will result in co-authorship on a publication that will be among your best four in the next six years. Estimate increase in QR income.

day afternoons to all interested staff.

Further Information  For general information on KRIMSON, go to http://www.kent.ac.uk/researc hservices/krimson/index.html  To take part in any of the training, contact krimson@kent.ac.uk  For specific help and support, contact Renata McDonnell on r.mcdonnell@kent.ac.uk, xtn 3190.

Eastern ARC Research Fellows Following the launch of the Eastern Academic Research Consortium (ARC) last year (RA, Vol 8, Issues 1 & 2), the University has recruited three Fellows to catalyse interdisciplinary research in the thematic priorities, and facilitate collaboration between Kent, UEA and Essex. Contact them if a) you are interested in building collaborations with UEA and Essex or b) wish to propose events, workshops or novel initiatives that would build collaboration.

Dr Hannah Swift (Quantitative Social Sciences)

Dr Benjamin Vis (Digital Humanities)

Dr Chieh Hsu (Synthetic Biology)

Dr Swift was previously a research assistant working with Prof Dominic Abrams in Psychology, using the Attitudes to Age module in the European Social Survey (ESS) to investigate, compare and contrast people's attitudes to younger and older people across the European region. She has also looked at prejudice in relation to ageism and has explored experiences of age discrimination and their impacts on well-being.

Dr Vis was a visiting researcher working across geography and archaeology at Leeds before coming to Kent. His research interests include GIS mapping and historical GIS, comparative urbanism and method development, built environments, spatial analysis, sociospatial theory, Maya archaeology, urban geography, archaeological prospection and remote sensing, and tropical low-density urban landscapes.

Dr Hsu is a postdoctoral scientist at The Biozentrum, University of Basel, and will join Kent shortly.

He works on deterministic and stochastic factors in transcriptional feedback systems in yeast cells.

His long-term scientific goal is to build up a new level of understanding of the intracellular membrane trafficking based on the knowledge and the techniques in cell biology, molecular systems biology and synthetic biology.

H.J.Swift@kent.ac.uk, xtn 4649

B.N.Vis@kent.ac.uk, xtn 6543

TBC; P.Ward@kent.ac.uk in interim

of government funded National Contact Points (NCPs) available to contact for advice. They provide support on the following:

nancial Matters, for example. They organise and run information and training days on individual work programmes and actions. NCPs can provide call-specific advice at the proposal writing stage and also help with partner search to strengthen a consortium’s expertise .

Getting Advice on EU Research Bids For anyone who is nervous about applying to the European Commission with a research project, help is at hand. As well as a dedicated European Research Officer here at Kent, Research Services has Funding and Contracts Officers responsible for your School who can support you in developing your bid.

Contacts for these are in the box at the end.

In addition, there is also a network

 Guidance on choosing relevant

   

H2020 topics and types of action Advice on administrative procedures and contractual issues Training and assistance on proposal writing Distribution of documentation (forms, guidelines, manuals etc.)

Assistance in partner search

Some NCPs are specific to subject areas and actions and mirror the work programmes, whilst others provide expertise in Legal and Fi3

Further Information

 Kent European Research

Officer: Conny Jumel (xtn 3067, k.jumel@kent.ac.uk)  School-specific Funding & Contracts Officers: bit.ly/ RSunikent  NCPs: A list of UK NCPs is available at bit.ly/ListofNCPs  For Enterprise-focused bids, email entfunding@kent.ac.uk

Being Human A Festival of Humanities Being Human is a nine-day festival running from 15-23 November which highlights the richness and vitality of humanities research to actively engage members of the public. It is being led by the University of London’s School of Advanced Study and is backed by the AHRC and BA. More than 100 public events led by over 60 universities will take place across the UK and 3 of them will be led by researchers from the University of Kent.

‘Cracking the Crinoline’ Town Square and Seafront, Margate Saturday 15th November Performance by Stevenson Thompson’s Moving Memory Company (led by Sian Stevenson and Jayne Thompson, School of Arts) ‘White Flags’ Institute of Contemporary Arts London Sunday 16th November A documentary film on rebuilding civil society in Beirut (led by Professor Caroline Rooney & Dr Rita Sakr, School of English) ‘The Genius Of Language’ Venues include the Gulbenkian Cinema; the Beaney; & the University of Kent Sunday 16th NovemberThursday 20 November A week of events in Canterbury and the University of Kent exploring the origins, diversity and creativity of language, a uniquely human faculty. (led by Professor Amalia Arvaniti and staff from English Language and Linguistics, SECL) For More information please contact Lynne Bennett (xtn 4799, l.bennett282@kent.ac.uk) or visit the Being Human website at http:// beinghumanfestival.org/

The Figures behind the Figures A regular look at the work of those who have won grants at Kent

Professor Adrian Podoleanu School of Physical Sciences When I met Adrian Podoleanu in the Gulbenkian he had just come from saying goodbye to a group from NKT, a Danish company that is one of the world’s leading producers of optical equipment. Together they had secured a European Industrial Doctorate (EID) from the EC, which funds five doctoral students. As well as the studentships, there are fringe benefits from such collaboration: NKT are providing Adrian with two £50k lasers to use.

But then Adrian has always seen the benefit of working with others, and collaboration is at the heart of his success in getting funding. ‘Unless you take your research out there, you die,’ he said. ‘I speak to people all the time.’

This has paid off in a number of productive collaborations internally, (with Biosciences, EDA, Computing, Pharmacy and KentHealth), but also in links with a number of hospitals (such as the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, Northwick Park Hospital London and local NHS Trusts in Ashford and Maidstone) that allow him to undertake research with patients, as well as companies and universities across the world.

Such connections are crucial to his work, which focuses on a technology called optical coherence tomography (OCT). Essentially, this is akin to an ‘optical ultrasound’, producing 4

cross-sectional images non-invasively.

He has used OCT predominantly in imaging the eye, but has also had funding from Leverhulme to help in the conservation of priceless paintings.

‘That came about through a meeting at a conference with a researcher at the National Gallery’, he said. The grant that resulted funded an ‘outstanding’ student, who has gone on to work at Imperial and is now a co-investigator on a forthcoming project.

Whilst productive, these collaborations and applications are time consuming. ‘An application easily takes a third of year,’ he said, and the final 5% of the application, in which the style and formatting are honed, takes at least 30% of the time. ‘It doesn’t improve the substance, but it makes the application accessible and readable to the reviewers. And that is crucial.’

Time is an issue for him, and his days are too short. ‘It’s hard to balance my funded research (which accounts for 86% of his time) with the demands of teaching and administration.’ With a team of four RAs and ten PhDs drawn from around the world he continues to forge links, to explore new areas, and to prepare new projects. As I left him he was planning to put the finishing touches on another application for a large grant. ‘I’ve been working on it since March,’ he said. ‘It’s hard work to get it right ’.

It’s hard, but incredibly fruitful.

Over the past decade he has won 28 awards totalling more than £6m.

Despite this, he is very self-effacing.

‘It’s the people I work with,’ he said. ‘they are the ones who move the research forward.’

An Overview of Research Funding, Apr-Aug 2014 Last term saw a particularly large number of awards from ESRC: ten awards, including two Future Leaders in Drs Joy Zhang (SSPSSR) and Judith Bovensiepen (SAC). A Fellowship of a different sort was awarded to Prof Andy Hone (SMSAS): the first EPSRC Fellowship at Kent since the Council revised the scheme three years ago.

Elsewhere it was interesting to note the continuing EC success.

The University normally gets 10% of it’s grant value from the EC; throughout last year it has been between 22-38%.

Humanities 13% Social Sciences 29%

Sciences 58%

Total Award Value by Faculty

Largest Individual Awards (titles of projects listed overleaf)

Award Value

Humanities: Prof Jon Williamson (SECL) £222,096 from Leverhulme

EPSRC 23%

Other (<1%) United 6% Wellcome Response BA 3% 2% 3% AHRC 4% Oracl e 5% Darwin 6%

EC 22% ESRC 15%

Sciences: Prof Andy Hone (SMSAS) £687,887 from the EPSRC

12 10 8 6 4

Social Sciences: Dr Jim Groombridge (SAC) £352,913 from the Darwin Initiative (Defra)

2 0

Award Number (>1award)

5

Leverhulme 11%

FULL LIST OF AWARDS: 1 Apr—31 Aug 2014* Humanities History Freaks at the Beach: Freak shows, seaside resorts and twentieth centuAnderson Wellcome ry British Culture

£82,480

Bovey

Giants in the city

BA

£89,362

Johnson

Networks and Actors in the British and French Foreign Ministries

AHRC

£114,143

Sleigh

Metamorphoses: Gaming Art and Science with Ovid

AHRC

£40,763

Whyte

Arvaniti Arvaniti Lynch

Fostering Civilization: Liberians, imperialism and the family home, 1822Leverhulme 1865 European Culture and Languages Academy of Korean An experimental investigation of prominence and rhythm in Korean Studies A common prosody platform for testing theories and models of speech NSF prosody Remembering Britain's Child Migrants: Supporting Public Reflection AHRC through a National Exhibition, Media and Organizational Engagement

£87,000

£5,962 £5,849 £79,977

Sobrevilla The armed forces and state-building in post-colonial Peru 1800-1860 Perea

Leverhulme

£34,958

Williamson Combining Probability and Logic

BSPS

£1,000

Williamson Grading evidence of mechanisms in physics and biology

Leverhulme

£222,096

Sciences Biosciences Brown

PDE4NPD

EC

£642,789

Garrett

Budget from ICR

Institute of Cancer Research

£3,697

Gourlay

Investigating the role of mitochondrial electron transport chain function in fungal pathogenicity and drug resistance.

Wellcome

£97,599

Gourlay

Vacation Scholarship - Pentland, Daniel

Wellcome

£2,000

Griffin

Summer Vacation Studentship - Daniella Waters

Biochemical Society £1,600

Kad Kad

A real-time single molecule approach to understand how DNA repair proteins locate and remove damage Developing a novel single molecule imaging technology for application across disciplines

BBSRC

£10,754

BBSRC

£3,300

Mulvihill

Vacation Scholarship - Helen Grimsley

Wellcome

£2,000

Rossman

Cytoplasmic tail interactions of the influenza M2 protein with lipid and protein

MRC

£38,466

Schroeder Summer Vacation Studentship - Naziyat Khan

Biochemical Society £1,600

Screening Naegleria gruberi, a free-living amoeba, to establish a novel drug discovery platform for identification of anti-microbial compounds

Society for General £1,880 Microbiology

von der Haar von der Haar

Ribosome movement, information processing and the language of life (Full)

Leverhulme

£168,860

Vacation Scholarship - Katie Mayo

Wellcome

£2,000

Warren

Metals in Biology: The elements of Biotechnology and Bioenergy

BBSRC

£18,836

Warren

Vacation Scholarship - Bone, Rachel

Wellcome

£2,000

Tsaousis

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Centre for Molecular Processing Michaelis

Donation for research into macular degeneration

The Frederick Arthur £5,000 Alford Charitable Trust

Computing Chadwick

Fed4FIRE

EC

£112,610

King

Compositional security analysis for binaries

GCHQ

£32,895

Kolling

Programming tools: BlueJ/Greenfoot 3

Oracle

£297,767

Ang Gomes Guest

Engineering and Digital Arts Supporting data-driven urban agriculture with 'Internet of Plants' EPSRC technology NIRVANA: intelligent, heterogeneous virtualised networking infraEPSRC structure A network on integrated approaches to X-ray tomographic image EPSRC processing

£35,092 £455,545 £6,452

Guest

PIDaaS

EC

£145,103

Wang

Next Generation Ultrafast Continuous Running Imaging System for Biomedical Applications

EC

£82,453

Yan

CO2 Flow Metering through Statistical Data Fusion

EPSRC

£131,459

Hone Launois

Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Sciences Cluster algebras with periodicity and discrete dynamics over finite EPSRC fields London Mathematical Kent algebra days postgraduate Society

£687,887 £3,707

Tapadar

Future equity patterns and baby boomer retirements

Society of Actuaries

£5,303

Wang

CO2 Flow Metering through Statistical Data Fusion.

EPSRC

£7,267

Sports and Exercise Sciences Davison

SunChlorella study

Sun Chlorella Corpora£3,896 tion

Marcora

Brain Endurance Training to Enhance Elite Performance

GlaxoSmithKline

£32,000

Physical Sciences Blight

Research Fund for International Young Scientists

National Natural Science Foundation of

£2,885

Podoleanu

Advanced Snapshot Swept-Source Mueller Polarimeter

EC

£256,220

ESRC

£143,183

Social Sciences Economics Heady

Collaborative tax administration research centre

Leite Lopez de Leon

The role of conferences on Academic Research: evidence from a Leverhulme natural experiment Kent Business School

Fearne

Smart Data Analytics for Business and local Government

Gilman Liu

ESRC

HE as "Institutional Anchors" through research-led business supESRC port Emotion and knowledge transfer in Chinese overseas mergers BA and acquisitions

£46,402

£79,179 £4,000 £9,982

Panopoulou The New Financial Reality

ESRC

£29,913

Wu

ESRC

£44,554

Smart Data Analytics for Business and local Government 7

Continued over

Bellido

Kent Law School Evolution in music publishing: economic strategies, business models and copyright Politics and International Relations

AHRC

£12,616

Loizides

The way home: peaceful return of victims of forced displacement

BA

£64,763

Loizides

The Return of Refugees and the Restoration of Multicultural SocieLeverhulme ties

Sakwa

New architectures of Europe

£44,605

James Madison Trust £3,000 Psychology

Gannon

Fire Intervention Programme for Mentally Distrdered Offenders (FIP-MO)

Kent and Medway NHS Social Care

Anthropology and Conservation Anticipating Prosperity: A Study of Community Expectations and the Bovensiepen ESRC Petroleum Industry in Timor-Leste Griffiths Groombridge Roberts

Agile Frog Data Analysis Project

States of Jersey

2013: Reconnecting poverty-alleviation to biodiversity conservation Darwin Initiative in Kenya's Eastern Arc Mountains Con Proj – Advanced photo-analysis for fast automated identifcation Chester Zoo of elephant ivory online illegal Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research

£24,748

£231,056 £5,000 £352,913 £2,410

BeadleBrown

Promoting the continued development of person-centred support United Response and quality of life for people with intellectual and developmental dis-

Beecham

Unit Costs of child care

Department of Educa£15,854 tion

Beecham

Additional analysis of ALIGN trial data

Metanoia Institute

£13,000

Billings

Accuracy of glomerular filtration rate (GFR) estimation using ceratinine and crystatin C and albuminuria for monitoring disease pro-

NIHR

£25,912

Billings

Evaluating and analysing integrated service development

NHS South Kent Coast CCG

£15,000

Billings

Evaluating and analysing integrated service development

NHS Thanet CCG

£15,000

Chatwin

New Psychoactive Substances and Human Enhancement Drugs:

ESRC

£28,488

Forder

Smart Data Analytics for Business and Local Government

ESRC

£56,790

ForresterJones

Memories, moments and mannequins: the changing world of LearnHeritage Lottery Fund £4,131 ing Disability Alternatives to residential school placements for transition-aged chilNIHR £10,000 dren who display behaviour that challenges Volunteers who ask: unpaid fundraisers in Kent: unpaid fundraisers ESRC £1,110 in Kent

Gore Hogg Matthews Stevens Zhang

Immigration and the Decrease in Crime in the UK REducing Drug-Related Harms through Decriminalisation, Regulation and Education Governing Accountability in China's Life Sciences: A comparative Study of Stem Cell and GM.

£90,050

BA

£6,340

Beckley Foundation

£8,000

ESRC

£232,137

*The list given above are for all awards of £1,000 or more. They do not include extensions or supplements ResearchActive is edited by Phil Ward. Contact him for more information or clarification on any of the items in this edition.

For the latest from the world of research funding, go to fundermental.blogspot.com, or Twitter @unikentresearch 8

RESEARCHFISH A new way to report outcomes of RCUK funded projects The Research Councils have introduced a new way of recording the outputs of its funded research.

The ‘Researchfish’ system had formerly been used by the MRC, but it has now been rolled out to all of the Research Councils (RCUK).

It is important for RCUK to have an up to date and accurate record of outputs in order to demonstrate the value and impact of the research they fund.

The information that the new system will gather will be used to report to both the Government and the public so that RCUK can make the case for continuing to priortise the funding of research in the UK, Staff and research students from the three universities that share the Medway Campus came together on 10 September for the second annual Medway Research Festival.

Over a hundred people from Kent, Greenwich and Canterbury Christ Church took part. It was an opportunity to hear about the research going on across the Medway Campus, to foster collaborations within and between the universities, and to further develop the research culture on the site.

Prof Philippe de Wilde, Prof Andrew Westby (Greenwich) and Prof Tony Lavender (CCCU) opened the event, all confirming their commitment to furthering the research links across the Medway Campus.

as well as helping to foster a longer term relationship with award holders.

All principal and co-investigators should now be registered on the system, and should start entering information about the outputs and outcomes of their projects as soon as they occur. Their records can be updated at any time; however, there will now be an annual ‘submission period’, during which grant holders have to formally confirm that the information is accurate and up to date. If no outputs have been created, they will still need to enter a ‘nil submission’.

This year the submission period will be 16th October to 13th November 2014.

If this submission is not made, individuals and institutions are at risk of incurring sanctions.

MRC and STFC will apply sanctions to any grant holders who do not submit information in 2014; The other Research Councils will apply sanctions from 2015.

More information on the system, http://www.kent.ac.uk/ researchservices/researchfish/ index.html, or contact Sue Prout (S.C.Prout@kent.ac.uk) for more info.

‘The Medway Research Festival was a great success,’ commented Prof de Wilde. ’All the work I have seen, without exception, has great potential for impact outside the academic community.

‘It’s good for researchers to come out of their labs and exchange ideas with their peers. There is no doubt the Medway Research Festival will have expanded the social and peer networks of our researchers.’

Thanks to all those who took part—and in particular to Helen Leech for organising it—and we look forward to seeing even more people next year.

MEDFEST’14

The rest of the event was a mix of demonstrations, posters and conversation, and the research interests ranged from Music and Fine Art to Engineering, via Journalism and Medical Sciences.

It concluded with a wine reception, which further helped foster interdisciplinary—and interinstitutional– discussions.

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For more information on future events at Medway, or the research on the Campus more broadly, contact Helen Leech on h.leech@kent.ac.uk

A Wellcome Alternative for the Social Sciences & Humanities The Wellcome Trust is best known for funding Biomedical Research, but in the last few years has opened new funding streams for “Medical Humanities” and “Society and Ethics”, covering the cultural, social and ethical aspects of biomedical science and healthcare.

We’ve recently had two successes in the Society and Ethics Small Grant Scheme (worth up to £5,000), and the successful applicants aren’t perhaps from the schools that you would expect – Professor Sally Sheldon from the Law School (“The Abortion Act 1967: a historical review”) and Dr Pak Lee from Politics and International Relations (“China’s AIDS NGOs: A Vehicle of Norm Changes?”).

As you can see, it’s a flexible scheme that’s worth considering if your research has a health flavour.

NEW GRANTS FACTORY AND ECR NETWORK PROGRAMME The finishing touches are being put to this year’s programme as Research Active goes to press.

As well as rerunning popular workshops of the past, including ‘Getting Published’, Essential Elements of a Good Application’, and the mock panels, we will be running a number of externally– led sessions including:  Engaging with Politicians and Policy Makers, run by the Parliamentary Outreach Office;  Using Research Professional to Find the Best Funding Scheme for You;  Overcoming ‘Imposter Syndrome’;  Using Social Media to Support your Career;  How to Win Postdoctoral Funding.

The full programme will be available shortly. For more information contact Phil Ward (p.ward@kent.ac.uk)

Researcher Development Working Group Professor Philippe De Wilde joined the September meeting of RDWG and spoke about the importance of providing a well-rounded researcher development programme. Researcher representatives on RDWG have been working closely with research colleagues across the University to hear directly from them about the additional development support they would find most helpful and relevant.

If you would like to get involved please contact:  Humanities – Benjamin Vis: B.N.Vis@kent.ac.uk ;  Sciences – Stefanie Frank: S.Frank@kent.ac.uk ;  Social Sciences – Karen Jones: K.C.Jones@kent.ac.uk .

For information on researcher training and development currently available through the University please see http://www.kent.ac.uk/hrl e a r n i n ga n d d e v e l o p me n t / r e s e a rc h e r d e v .h tm l o r c o n t a c t s.richards@kent.ac.uk . Extensive resources to support researcher career development and training are also available from www.vitae.ac.uk .

Upcoming Funding Calls in the Social Sciences ESRC Transformative Research Due to open in November with a closing date in February. The aim of the call is to provide a stimulus for genuinely transformative research ideas at the frontiers of the social sciences, enabling research which challenges current thinking to be supported and developed. The ESRC regards transformative research as that which involves, for example, pioneering theoretical and methodological innovation. The expectation is that the transformative research call will encourage novel developments of social science enquiry, and support research activity that entails an element of risk.

Funding of up to £250k at 100% FEC. Open Research Area (ORA) in Europe Due to open imminently, with a closing date in January. Call for research projects in any area of the social sciences involving researchers from any combination of two or more of the UK, France, Germany or the Netherlands. Japan can also be included as a partner. Generous funding at Research Council rates.

BA International Partnership and Mobility Awards £10,000 per year for 1-3 years. Due to open in November, deadline in February. Awards are for research partnerships between scholars in the UK and scholars in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, South Asia, East and South-East Asia.

Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship Due to open in January with a closing date in March. Fellowship for Researchers within 5 years of gaining their PhD, who do not have a permanent position. Funds 50% of salary for three years, plus research expenses.

Could be a good scheme to encourage external applicants to come to Kent?

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WELCOME! 29 academics have joined Kent since January. Join with us in welcoming them to Kent, and take a moment to find out about their research interests.

Dr Jose Bellido (KLS,): Intellectual property law; legal theory; Evidence and legal history.

Dr Laura Bocchi (Computing, left): the formal foundations of business processes and their transactional behaviour, the application of Design by Contract to concurrency, and the theory and application of session types.

Adam Chodzko (Music & Fine Art): artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores the interactions and possibilities of human behaviour.

Dr Ewan Clark (SPS): the properties, both chemical and material, of main group elements with unconventional oxidation states or charge Dr Andrew Conio (Music & Fine Art, right): capitalism and its discontents, the nature of art and the question of subjectivity.

Dr Kristof Dhont (Psychology): the role of dispositional and situational factors in intergroup relations and the prediction of prejudice.

Dr Marian Duggan (SSPSSR): how research and theory can inform policy and practice in reducing sexual, gendered and hate-based victimisation.

Dr Luis Eslava (KLS): International Law, International Legal Theory and History, Anthropology of International Law, Public Law, Law and Development, Theory of Property, and Urban Law and Politics.

Prof Yannis Georgellis (KBS): Human resource management, organisational behaviour, happiness, adaptation, and employee well-being.

Dr Ben Goult (Biosciences): Cellextracellular matrix (ECM) adhesion complexes, FERM domains; Structural Biology: NMR Spectroscopy, X -Ray Crystallography and Small Angle X-Ray Scattering (SAXS) Dr Suraksha Gupta (KBS): remote management of international firms

in emerging markets, business sustainability and millennium development goals.

Dr Tao Huang (KBS): market response modelling (Econometric modelling) related to both the FMCG industry and the media industry.

Dr Tina Haux (SSPSSR): family policy, welfare-to-work, social justice, evidence-based policy-making and, increasingly, longitudinal research methods.

Dr Anna Jordanous (Computing,): Computational creativity (particularly with music/language) and its evaluation; Music Informatics; Cognitive modelling, Knowledge Modelling and Information Retrieval; Machine Learning and Data Mining; Natural Language Processing; Digital Humanities; Semantic Web and Linked Data Dr Neil Kad (Biosciences): DNA repair; Single Molecule Biophysics; Muscle Contractility; Amyloid disease and inhibition; Molecular Motors Prof Angelos Kanas (KBS): banking risks, financial market contagion and spillovers, financial forecasting, exchange rate determination, and hedging exchange rate risks Dr Hyo Yoon Kang (KLS): Intellectual property law; law and social theory; historical epistemology; science studies Dr Sara Kendall (KLS): Global Governance, Political Theory, Critical Theory, Politics and PostColonial Theory, Michel Foucault, Socio-legal studies, International Relations, International Criminal Law, Governmentality, and African Politics Dr Fernanda Lopez de Leon (Economics): applied econometrics, political economy and behavioural economics. Her current work focuses on economics of science and 11

market place discrimination.

Ms Eleni Matechou (SMSAS): Applications and Extensions of CaptureRecapture Stop-over Models Prof Roman Matousek (KBS): International Banking and Finance.

Mr Karthik Muthumayandi (Sports): objective quantification of physical ambulatory behaviour in individual at macro (quantity- community ambulation) and micro level (quality- spatial and temporal gait parameters of gait) Dr Carolyn Pedwell (SSPSSR): the international politics of emotion and affect; embodiment and embodied practices; theories of habit and habituation; digital culture and sociality; transnational and cross-cultural theory and methods; and feminist, postcolonial and queer theory.

Dr Marta Ponari (Psychology): Emotion processing, social perception and embodiment.

Dr Palaniappan Ramaswamy (Computing): Biological signal analysis; biometrics; brain-computer interface; genetic algorithms; neural networks Dr David Redmon (SSPSSR): ethnographically recording experiential encounters and rendering expressivity with audiovisual and written mediums.

Dr Catherine Robinson (KBS): applied economics, working with micro data on issues relating to productivity and performance Dr Joana Vassiliopoulou (KBS, right): diversity management, gender and race inequalities at work, talent management and social and organisational change.

Dr Thanos Zartaloudis (KLS): architectural theory and urban design and the way in which these subjects overlap with history, theory and legal regulation.

CHOICE CUTS FROM THE BLOG

For the latest news and rumours from the world of research funding, log on to http://fundermental.blogspot.com The Sower of Discord 7 April 2014 Last week David Willetts suggested that the Government was considering 'franchising' the REF to countries overseas. Now read on.

A terrorist arms bazaar, somewhere in Afghan/Turkmenistan border, a la Tomorrow Never Dies. In the corner is a small stall piled high with A4 brochures. A bald man in rimless glasses stands behind the stall. He's wearing a Life of Brian style beard.

Willetts (for it is he): Pssst! Are you interested in causing chaos?

Do you want to blow apart civilisation?

Terrorist (suspiciously): Who? Me? Willetts: Yes! Come! I have a wondrous weapon! More powerful than any nuclear warhead!

Terrorist (picking up a brochure) But this is just a...

Willetts: (waving his arms) Don't be fooled my friend! This has the potential to return society to a prehistoric struggle for survival! It will make 'civilised' people claw each other's eyes out, and trample each other into the dirt! The smartest people in your country will spend hours - weeks! - years! in futile bureaucracy!

Terrorist (shaking his head): That will never happen.

Willetts: It will! I have tried it and I know it works! You don't need guns, you don't need tanks. All you need is 'The Sower of Discord'!

Terrorist: 'Sower of Discord'? Is that its name?

Willetts: Yes! It is the Armageddon Machine! But we must move stealthily. In my country it has been codenamed (whispers): 'The Research Excellence Framework'. The errant nonsense continues at bit.ly/discordsower

The Battle of the RCUK Research Ships 25 April 2014 Excitement was palpable in Swindon yesterday as NERC unveiled its plans for a new polar research ship. Painted a bold red, with 'SCIENCE' emblazoned on its side, the ship will send out a positive signal that the UK is serious about scientific research.

Not to be outdone, however, Prof Rick Rylance, head of the AHRC, spoke to a hastily convened press conference elsewhere in the building.

'I'm pleased to announce that the AHRC will be launching a Humanities 'Super Yacht,' he said. To gasps of astonishment, Rylance held up what was clearly a photoshopped image of a speed boat with 'HUMANITIES' written across it.

'The yacht will be fuelled with the redundant words that have been stripped out of research proposals,' claimed Rylance. 'We've built up quite a stock pile of unnecessary padding. It's completely valueless in terms of application content, but we've found that it burns very nicely'.

He went on: 'we believe we have enough 'overarching's and 'lacuna's to power us around the world fifteen times over. But should we ever get through these we have reserves of 'furthermore's and 'step change's.'

In Memoriam 5 June 2014

password.'

Yes, that was your catchphrase.

So farewell then Research Outcomes System Or 'ROS', as you were known By some.

But now your website is 'read only.'

You were beaten by a fish.

'ROS is accessed using Je-S credentials, hence all ROS users must have an active Je-S account to access ROS; log in to ROS using your Je-S username and

But that is better Than being beaten with a fish.

E J Thribb (Apologies to Private Eye)

Lookalike Corner Remember Calvin and Hobbes?

Ever wondered what happened to them all? Well, it turns out that the dad from the series is trying his hand at research and innovation funding. Kevin Baughan (for it is he) took over as Director of Innovation at the InnovateUK (nee Technology Strategy Board). Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hope his award holders are less tricky than Calvin. Or Hobbes.

12

Baughan

Dad