IAS Annual Review 2023 by University of Surrey

ADVANCING KNOWLEDGE

ANNUAL REVIEW 2023

Contents 4-5

ABOUT THE INSTITUTE

NIGEL GILBERT’S WELCOME

ADVISORY BOARD

WORKSHOP SECTION 8-9

20 YEARS OF SLEEP

THE DATAFIED FAMILY

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP IN THE VISITOR ECONOMY

12-13

PHARMACOLOGICAL POTENTIAL OF HYACINTHACEAE

CELEBRATING THE LIFE AND WORK OF CLAUDIA WULFF

THE DIMENSIONS OF GREAT POWER COMPETITION

BODY CLOCKS: THE EVIDENCE

PREDICTING PREGNANCY LOSS

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FELLOWSHIP SECTION 18-19

20-21

22-23

HANNAH MARY THOMAS

CIBELE CRISPIM

ANNA SCOTT

24-25

26-27

28-29

RENÉ BROUWER GRANT DEVILLY SEBASTIAN SCHLECHT

OINDRILA GHOSH IVAN JABLONKA

SEBASTIAN PFAUTSCH ANWAR ALI KHAN

30-31

32-33

OUTCOMES FROM FELLOWSHIPS AND WORKSHOPS IN 2021-22

NEW FELLOWS 2023-24

Q&AS WITH AMELIA HADFIELD AND ROBERT IZZARD

COMPETITION

Key stats FELLOWSHIPS

300

FELLOWSHIP DAYS

FELLOWS’ TALKS AND EVENTS

COUNTRIES

FELLOWS

FINLAND, INDIA, FRANCE, NETHERLANDS, AUSTRALIA, BRAZIL KEY STATS 03

WORKSHOPS

COUNTRIES

497

ATTENDEES 228 IN PERSON / 269 ONLINE

14 DEPARTMENTS, SCHOOLS AND CENTRES ACROSS SURREY WERE INVOLVED IN HOSTING FELLOWSHIPS AND WORKSHOPS

IAS Annual Review 2023

MULTIDISCIPLINARY WORKSHOPS

It fosters interdisciplinary collaborations and encourages a flow of international scholars, artists, entrepreneurs and public servants to visit, enjoy their stay at Surrey and leave behind excellent ideas and innovations.

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About the Institute

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ABOUT THE INSTITUTE

Established in 2004, the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) at the University of Surrey sponsors workshops and Fellowships at the ‘cutting edge’ of science, engineering, social science and the humanities. Through this scheme the Institute fosters interdisciplinary collaborations and encourages a flow of international scholars, artists, entrepreneurs and public servants to visit, enjoy their stay at Surrey and leave behind excellent ideas and innovations. Over the years our events and Fellowships have resulted in many research grants, new collaborations, journal articles and books, as well as much goodwill from all over the world. The Institute’s Advisory Board advises on the strategy of the Institute and reviews and recommends which bids should be funded in the annual competition. The Institute is a member of the UK Consortium of Institutes of Advanced Studies and the international Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes.

INSTITUTE COORDINATOR

INSTITUTE ADMINISTRATOR

Professor Nigel Gilbert

Mirela Dumić

Louise Jones

Nigel Gilbert has a Distinguished Chair in Computational Social Science at the University of Surrey. He read for a first degree in Engineering and obtained his doctorate on the sociology of scientific knowledge from the University of Cambridge. His main research interests are processual theories of social phenomena, the development of computational sociology, and the methodology of computer simulation, especially agent-based modelling. As Director of the IAS, he is responsible for its development as a centre for international intellectual interchange.

Mirela is responsible for the overall management of the Institute, including its annual grant competition and the Fellowship scheme. She supports the IAS Director in strategic activities and liaises with the Institute’s Advisory Board, the University’s academic community, external Fellows and similar institutes in the UK and abroad. She is also responsible for the Institute’s publicity and dissemination of outcomes from events and Fellowships.

Louise provides general administrative support to the Institute with a particular focus on the workshops that run each year following the Annual Competition. She is the main point of contact for workshop organisers and their administrators, providing support and assistance as required. In addition to her role for the Institute of Advanced Studies, Louise is the Department Administrator and Assistant to the Head of Department of Sociology.

m.dumic@surrey.ac.uk

l.jones@surrey.ac.uk

n.gilbert@surrey.ac.uk

IAS Annual Review 2023

INSTITUTE DIRECTOR

Welcome TO THE IAS ANNUAL REVIEW 2023

The past year has been a highly productive one for the Institute, during which we’ve further extended our vibrant community of international academics and experts, and achieved some excellent outcomes.

Over the past 12 months we’ve hosted eight multidisciplinary workshops attended by nearly 500 delegates from 41 different countries. We’re proud to have helped Surrey Sleep Research Centre to identify priorities for its multidisciplinary international research over the next two decades, while celebrating its 20th anniversary.

WELCOME 06

Eleven years after the first IAS workshop on the topic, we were also delighted to fund a workshop organised by Surrey’s chemistry researchers on the potential of the hyacinthaceae plant family to improve treatments for Age-related Macular Degeneration. Other workshop highlights this year included an event on the ‘Datafied family’ which explored how big data is reshaping how we parent, care, play and interact, and ‘Women in Leadership in the Visitor Economy’, which investigated the barriers that prevent women reaching top leadership positions in the hospitality industry.

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Ten Fellows have visited Surrey this year including the IAS’s first musician artist-in-residence, Dr Anna Scott, who brought a fresh perspective to our music and sound recording students by exposing them to ‘low-fi’ recording techniques and challenging them to reconsider today’s desire for perfectionism.

We also welcomed our first public servant Fellow, Anwar Ali Khan of the Delhi Pollution Control Committee, who worked with Surrey’s Global Centre for Clean Air Research to create a successful tool for modelling air pollution in India’s megacities. Each year our Fellowships and workshops achieve fantastic and far-reaching impacts, and we highlight those from last year’s activities in this Review. The legacy of Anna Dumitriu’s Fellowship, for example, has included her artwork Zenexton being exhibited at the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm. The IAS continues to go from strength to strength thanks to the support of our Advisory Board and members of Surrey’s senior leadership team. I’d like to welcome Professor Lisa Collins who takes up the role of Pro-ViceChancellor, Research and Innovation, with whom we’re very much looking forward to working. I would also like to take the opportunity to remember Professor Patrick Dowling, who was Vice-Chancellor of the University from 1994 to 2005 and a passionate supporter of the IAS, which he saw as contributing to his vision of making Surrey an institution of international standing. I hope that you enjoy reading about the latest IAS Fellowships and workshops, as well as the many exciting outcomes which have been achieved.

Professor Nigel Gilbert IAS Director

Each year our Fellowships and workshops achieve fantastic and far-reaching impacts, and we highlight those from last year’s activities in this Review.

2022-2023 The members of the Advisory Board are senior members of the University Faculty, including the Associate Deans of Research and Innovation from the three Faculties and an external member. T he Institute’s Advisory Board advises on the strategy of the Institute and reviews and recommends which bids should be funded in the annual competition.

UNIVERSITY FACULTY

GREVILLE CORBETT

DERK-JAN DIJK

Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean, Research and Innovation Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Professor of Linguistics

Professor of Sleep and Physiology

ADVISORY BOARD

RACHEL BROOKS

DAN HORTON

JOSEF KITTLER

Professor of Sociology

Reader In Veterinary Virology and Associate Dean, Research and Innovation Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences

Professor of Machine Intelligence

MARGARET RAYMAN

DEBRA SKENE

JIN XUAN

Professor of Nutritional Medicine

Professor of Neuroendocrinology

Professor of Ceramic Materials and Associate Dean, Research and Innovation Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences

EXTERNAL MEMBER

KATIE CRITCHLOW CEO, NatureMetrics

IAS Annual Review 2023

NIGEL GILBERT

Looking forward to the next 20 years of multidisciplinary and international collaborative sleep research (19-20 April 2023)

Looking into the future OF SLEEP RESEARCH Surrey Sleep Research Centre (SSRC) has been exploring the impact of sleep on our health and wellbeing for two decades. Marking this milestone, an IAS workshop in April asked what’s next for this fascinating field of research – and how can we maximise its impact on human lives. Sleep is an aspect of life that affects us all. Such a universal subject requires a multidisciplinary approach, and the workshop brought together 45 prominent delegates including sleep specialists, clinicians, technologists, neurologists, mathematicians, psychiatrists, psychologists and industry representatives.

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The workshop addressed some pertinent questions which will help to determine how research into sleep evolves over the next decades. The first session addressed the ‘bedroom of the future’. Increasingly, sleep research will shift from the sleep lab to people’s homes where it can be conducted at scale. Professor Hans-Peter Landolt of the University of Zurich

imagined what this bedroom might look like from a sleep scientist’s perspective: a space with fully integrated physiological, medical, genetic and behavioural monitoring equipment to identify sleep’s role in health and disease. While new technologies such as sleep tracking devices will have a role to play in sleep management – for people living with dementia, for example – the take-home messages from this session included the issue of privacy for individuals, and the potential move away from traditional bedrooms. Professor Malcolm Von Shantz (Northumbria University) raised an interesting multicultural perspective, reminding delegates that many people in developing countries, and children living in poverty, do not have a bedroom to sleep in.

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The workshop addressed some pertinent questions which will help to determine how research into sleep evolves over the next decades.

Surrey Sleep Research Centre was launched in 2003 and we were delighted to be able to recognise 20 years of work with the IAS workshop, welcoming delegates from the UK, Switzerland, Belgium, Singapore, USA and Australia. Professor Derk-Jan Dijk

A second session focused on how in the future, sleep research will be based on simultaneous assessment of multiple types of information – from multi-omics to EEG, behaviour and cognition. Discussing how these dynamics should be modulated, delegates agreed that time-stamping of data will be important in healthcare settings, and that there’s a need to better integrate computational techniques within experiments.

Workshop organiser Professor Derk-Jan Dijk says: “Surrey Sleep Research Centre was launched in 2003 and we were delighted to be able to recognise 20 years of work with the IAS workshop, welcoming delegates from the UK, Switzerland, Belgium, Singapore, USA and Australia. The event has kickstarted various new collaborations and research areas – particularly around policing sleep and transport, and biomarkers for sleep loss. It was an excellent opportunity to recognise how far sleep research has come and map out priorities for the future.”

• Sleep quality not only impacts our mental and physical health but can actually predict mental health • Women’s perception of their sleep quality may be more accurate than men’s • Older people are less, rather than more, sleepy than young people • Insufficient sleep changes the way our genes are expressed, affecting our immune responses, stress responses and cognition • Lack of sleep is costing money: the annual economic cost of insufficient sleep is £40 billion in the UK • Persistent short sleep duration is associated with a 30% increase in dementia risk.

See the full public lecture

IAS Annual Review 2023

Within this session, ‘flash speakers’ focused on particular topics. There was lively discussion about ‘policing sleepiness’: when people are at risk of falling asleep when driving and causing an accident, for example, how should the authorities translate this danger into policy?

At a public lecture on ‘A Future for Sleep’ given by Professor Dijk on 25 May 2023, the audience got an insight into the ground-breaking discoveries that could help us all get a better night’s sleep. He emphasised that:

WORKSHOPS

The third major topic discussed at the workshop was how sleep and circadian (body clock) research is translated into policy, commercial and clinical use – and the changes which need to happen over the next 20 years to make this process more effective.

Public lecture

The Datafied Family – Algorithmic encounters in care, intimacies, routine and play (28 June 2023)

The way WE LIVE NOW Datafication is changing family life, reshaping how we parent, care, play and interact. This year’s only fully virtual IAS workshop brought together over 80 international voices to put the ‘datafied family’ under the spotlight. From DNA and donor conception to parenting apps and family surveillance products, new technologies which translate our lives into data are proliferating at an extraordinary rate. This workshop drew on Surrey’s expertise across communications, technology, sociology and health to consider the effect of products such as digital toys and educational applications on family life. Delegates also discussed how inequalities and injustices are being affected by datafication, and the disparities between the global north and south.

WORKSHOPS

The online format of the event was an enormous benefit, enabling a huge range of delegates to join. These included keynote speakers Professor Sonia Livingston (London School of Economics), Professor Usha Raman (University of Hyderabad, India), Dr Giovanna Mascheroni (Catholic University of Milan, Italy) and Professor Veronica Barassi (University of St Gallen, Switzerland).

Speakers throughout the day touched on topics such as how the ‘troubled family’ is developing as a category within data, the ways datafication can contribute to genealogical research, parents’ literacy with algorithms, and the role of Amazon’s Alexa in caring surveillance. Professor Ranjana Das (Department of Sociology) said: “This workshop was a great opportunity to examine some of the nuances of datafication and listen to a wide variety of perspectives. We also got a good discussion going on social media, with delegates consistently using our #DatafiedFamily hashtag. The virtual format was perfect for cross-national thinking, hearing people’s real lived experiences of technologies from all corners of the world.”

Recordings of the talks are available on the Google Drive

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A well-organised event! The online format was exceptionally well-handled compared to some other events I’ve attended. It was really interesting to see the online chat function used and conversations get going on that. Another bonus was being introduced to people’s work of which I wasn’t previously aware. Delegate feedback

Women in Leadership in the Visitor Economy (10 May 2023)

Upward

Jane Pendlebury, CEO of HOSPA

TRAVEL

An IAS workshop in May, organised by researchers from the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, brought together industry experts to discuss the barriers holding women back – and where we can go from here. We caught up with speakers Jane Pendlebury, CEO of HOSPA (The Hospitality Professionals Association) and Carol Fergus, Director – Global Travel, Meetings and Ground Transportation at Fidelity International, and asked them to share their experience.

How did you get started in the hospitality industry? Jane: I was attracted to hospitality because of the countless opportunities it offers for growth and exploration. The thing I most enjoy about this industry is the people: the vibrant teams, collaborative spirit and the chance to create memorable experiences for guests. Carol: I started in procurement, where travel was one of the categories, and an opportunity to work as an EMEA Travel Manager came up. Why is there a lack of women in top leadership positions? Jane: One significant factor is that historically there are greater expectations on women to prioritise care-giving responsibilities. Women have often found themselves having to be more assertive and push themselves forward for promotions – but the industry is becoming more inclusive and diverse. Carol: Women have to stand out and be bigger, brighter, louder. I think there’s a perception that women can’t combine career and family commitments successfully but with work-life balance now more important for both sexes, hopefully this will change. What positive things helped you reach a leadership position in hospitality? Jane: I’ve been supported by informal mentors and industry colleagues who’ve consistently encouraged me. My family’s unwavering support has also been instrumental in my journey. Carol: Great allies and mentors along the way who saw my worth and encouraged me.

IAS Annual Review 2023

Despite more than 50 per cent of hospitality, tourism and events employees being female, there’s a persistent lack of women in top leadership positions.

WORKSHOPS

Delegates at the workshop

I was attracted to hospitality because of the countless opportunities it offers for growth and exploration.

Pharmacological potential of hyacinthaceae (28-29 June 2023)

Eye opener Eleven years after an initial IAS workshop on the subject, chemists, botanists, pharmacologists and clinicians came together again in June 2023 for a two day event to share the latest research into how plant derived compounds can be used to treat macular degeneration. Wet Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is one of the leading causes of blindness worldwide, and Surrey’s chemistry researchers have demonstrated that homoisoflavonoids – a class of compounds from the Hyacinthaceae plant family – show great potential for treating this condition.

WORKSHOPS 12

Professor Dulcie Mulholland, who led the recent IAS workshop, explains: “At the moment, patients with wet AMD have to go to hospital for eye injections but, as chemists, we can synthesise the naturally occurring compounds and make derivatives to create a large library of compounds, enabling us to choose the most active and most specific for clinical studies. These have the potential for development as an eye drop treatment which would be far less intrusive.”

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The in-person workshop gathered over 30 experts – including chemists, botanists, pharmacologists and clinical practitioners – from countries across the world including the USA, Spain, Austria, Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia and South Africa. Opening the workshop, Professor Neil Crouch from the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) set the scene with a talk on the ethnobotany of the Hyacinthaceae.

It is so important for us at the Macular Society to get out and meet the researchers and be able to discuss the work we are funding with the teams. The workshop was an ideal opportunity to do this and get a more in-depth understanding of the work underway and what it could achieve for people with macular disease. Geraldine Hoad, Macular Society, UK

Wine tasting at Albury Vineyard

Developing synthetic methods for producing homoisoflavonoids was a key topic for discussion because many of the plant species producing these compounds are endangered in the wild. Arising from this, Surrey PhD students will be using computer modelling docking studies of compounds which have been synthesised at Surrey and screened for activity at Professor Tim Corson’s laboratory at the Indiana University School of Medicine, USA, on a placement at Paracelsus University, Salzburg. Another highlight was the presentation of natural products research into Madagascan and African members of the Hyacinthaceae by Dr Eduard Mas-Claret (Kew Gardens) and Dr Linda Langat and PhD student Hannah Jefford (Surrey). Dr Langat revealed her promising results on anti-cancer screening of compounds from the Hyacinthaceae – a collaboration with the National Cancer Institute (USA). Delegates agreed that the potential of these compounds to treat cardiovascular conditions is another exciting area of continuing research. Two of the challenges highlighted by the event were the lack of funding for taxonomical research and the need for more collaboration between botanists, chemists and pharmacologists.

A trip to RHS Garden Wisley

My experience of enhanced collaborations following the last workshop organised at Surrey in 2012 was a prime motivation in participation this year, and I wasn’t disappointed. The recent event has cemented existing collaborations and opened up new ones. Professor Neil Crouch, South African National Biodiversity Institute, South Africa

I have rarely experienced such a stimulating and successful meeting that immediately led to new interdisciplinary scientific cooperation! Professor Martin Prosser, Biocenter Linz of the Museum of Upper Austria

Outcomes • A review, ‘The Ethnobotany, Phytochemistry

and Pharmacology of Eucomis (Hyacinthaceae)’ is due to appear in a special issue of the Journal of Ethnopharmacology

• Students from Surrey to spend a month in Salzburg, Austria, undertaking computer docking studies • Professor Dulcie Mulholland and Professor Tim Corson to visit Gachon University in South Korea to discuss developing further synthetic methodology of homoisoflavonoids.

IAS Annual Review 2023

Dr John David, Head of Horticultural Taxonomy at the Royal Horticultural Society, comments: “The Hyacinthaceae contains many plants of importance for gardeners – for instance the RHS has just run a trial of hyacinths and is planning another for Muscari. The taxonomy and identification of these plants are still in many cases unresolved, and this is a key area of research for the RHS. The workshop presented a perfect opportunity for all those interested in the Hyacinthaceae to share their research and explore new opportunities for collaboration.”

Professor Tim Corson, Indiana University School of Medicine, USA

WORKSHOPS

The workshop was also a great opportunity for networking and social interaction – and to see some of Surrey’s most interesting botanical attractions at first hand. Delegates enjoyed a dinner at Albury Vineyard during which the owner gave a fascinating talk on biodynamic grape farming, a trip to RHS Garden Wisley, and a historic tour of Guildford.

The discussion was excellent and will enhance existing collaborations and spur new ones.

Dynamics bifurcations and numerics (4-7 July 2023)

A life in IN NUMBERS

Mathematician Dr Claudia Wulff joined Surrey in 2002 and achieved huge success in the course of her career. An IAS workshop in July celebrated her life and achievements – and explored new mathematical approaches inspired by Claudia’s work. Claudia is internationally recognised for her work in partial differential equations (PDEs), hydrodynamics and numerical analysis, which are the building blocks used to model physical phenomena such as fluid dynamics and heat transfer. She retired from Surrey as an Emerita Reader in 2020 and sadly died in 2021. The workshop celebrating her memory attracted 30 in-person and over 60 online participants from all over the world and provided a platform for intensive discussion on key areas of her work.

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These included the validity and nature of finite-dimensional reduction in dissipative systems. Although modern theory offers a number of alternative ways to build up a reduction, their nature remains a mystery which has prevented their wide use. The workshop enabled leading experts in the fields of dynamical systems, analysis of PDEs and numerical analysis to share their insights and shed light on this problem.

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As well as discussing key open problems, prominent mathematicians were able to share their experience with young mathematicians, while the workshop also served to disseminate Claudia Wulff’s original work to the mathematical community.

Claudia

Claudia was passionate about whatever she did – whether that was maths or dancing or interacting with people. She was meticulous, with great attention to detail, but also insightful and had brilliant ideas, and this shines through in her papers. She wasn’t satisfied with incremental increases of knowledge: she wanted to make a real difference. Professor Gianne Derks, opening address.

Workshop outcomes:

• Recordings of the contributed talks are available on the Panapto website. The workshop brought together prominent members of the mathematics community

• Conference proceedings are due to appear in the LMS Lecture Note Series.

Global POWER PLAY

The dimensions of Great Power Competition

When?

16 June 2023

Who?

Led by Dr Nicholas Kitchen and Dr Joshua Andresen (Centre for the Study of Great Power Competition (CGPC), Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences)

WORKSHOPS

What?

To evaluate how Great Power Competition (GPC) is being explored in contemporary research, integrating perspectives from diverse disciplines including international relations, political theory, law, business studies, political science, economics, sociology, psychology and history.

What happened?

Four panels were organised on international order, technological competition, periphery dynamics, and great power strategies. Notable talking points were: • Systemic competition is a multi-faceted phenomena in which relationships between two powers are subsumed within wider structures and networks • The multi-dimensional character of systemic competition requires sustained, multidisciplinary research – particularly less state-centric work which focuses on the perspectives of political elite and military networks, cities and financial centres, material and digital infrastructure, and epistemic communities • Emerging technologies and spheres of competition may mean that dimensions of power that matter structurally are being augmented or replaced by other dimensions of power.

What next?

• A digest from the workshop was produced for the Secretary of State’s Office for Net Assessment and Challenge within the Ministry of Defence • Papers will be published individually by the authors, and the outputs highlighted on the CGPC website.

IAS Annual Review 2023

Why?

Body clocks: THE EVIDENCE

The speakers were excellent and really added to the broad approach. I learned a lot! Delegate feedback

What? Assessing evidence in translational chronobiology

WORKSHOPS 16

The information on working with stakeholders was very valuable. Delegate feedback

Delegates assemble!

When? 12-13 June 2023

Who? Led by Professor Sara Montagnese and Professor Debra J Skene (Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences)

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Why? To address the challenge of evaluating available evidence to translate research in chronobiology (circadian rhythms) into clinical practice and public policy, with a focus on two key questions.

What happened? Delegates evaluated the available evidence on the relationship between Daylight Saving Time and road traffic accidents, and that between school lessons time and sleep duration in children. Such evidence was analysed from a number of different perspectives (neurobiologist/clinician/chronobiologist/evidence-based) and the audience then discussed and voted on pertinent standards and recommendations.

It was really interesting to have experts from various fields explain their perspectives on chrono research topics. Delegate feedback

What next? • Publication of a meta-analysis on the relationship between school starting times and sleep duration (the evidence was found to be solid) • Engagement with experts to develop practical strategies to turn available knowledge on the effects of Daylight Saving Time into relevant public health campaigns.

Predicting PREGNANCY LOSS What? AI, big data and pregnancy loss

When? 12 July 2023

Who? Led by Professor Inga Prokopenko (Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences)

Why?

The workshop explored how machine learning and other AI approaches can be combined with multiple individual health data characteristics, genomic, metabolomic, blood biochemistry and other data to predict women’s reproductive outcomes. Talks focused on: • Clinical and genetic prediction of gestational diabetes and its relationship to pregnancy outcomes

I was attracted by the opportunity to learn how modern data processing methods can help us understand and potentially minimise the factors that cause pregnancy loss. Delegate feedback

• Using Estonian BioBank’s MyGenome Portal (which has covered 20% of the adult population over the past 20 years) in health risk prediction • The benefits and pitfalls of using generative AI (such as ChatGPT) and the need to apply foundation AI models to big data, including patients’ clinical records.

What next? • Planned collaboration with the UK’s Medway Foetal and Maternal Medicine Centre to analyse data to identify the relationships between potential risk factors and pregnancy outcome • Collaborative project with the University of Ferrara looking at genetic causes and the relationship between nausea symptoms and pregnancy loss • New PhD position starting in September 2023, supported by Surrey’s AI Institute, for research on pregnancy loss.

The workshop provided me with valuable insights that will significantly benefit my future work in the field of maternal-foetal health. It shed light on a range of comprehensive analytical tools that I can integrate into my research endeavours. Delegate feedback

IAS Annual Review 2023

What happened?

WORKSHOPS

To explore the relationship between pregnancy loss (including miscarriage, recurrent pregnancy loss and still birth) and genetic or other potential risk factors, investigating the potential of combining data from three large-scale European biobanks with machine learning techniques to predict women’s reproductive health outcomes and develop prevention strategies.

The hidden meaning IN IMAGES

Head and neck cancer (HNC) is the most common type of cancer in India and has a very low survival rate. But a successful collaboration between Dr Hannah Mary Thomas and Surrey’s Professor Philip Evans could hold the key to improving early diagnosis through AI-based medical imaging. Dr Thomas and Professor Evans’ joint research interest is textural radiomics: analysing medical images of tumours in a way that reveals vital clues about the severity of the cancer. “The classic way the medical profession uses an image of a tumour would be to look at the shape of its outline,” says Hannah, an imaging scientist from the Christian Medical College Vellore, India. “But there’s evidence that inside that shape there are clues which tell us much more.

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“HNC is very common in India because of a high incidence of smoking and chewing tobacco, along with poor oral hygiene in certain sections of the community – which are known risk factors for this cancer. Sadly in 60 per cent of cases, the disease comes back despite treatment, and patients tend to be young: 40 to 45 on average.”

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Hannah was keen to explore the potential of radiomics to improve outcomes for patients with HNC but, in India, getting funding for biomedical scientific research (as opposed to clinical research) is difficult. She successfully secured international competitive funding for her research programme from the DBT Wellcome Trust Indian Alliance. Having met Philip, now Emeritus Professor of Medical Radiation Imaging in Surrey’s Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing, while he was working at the Institute of Cancer Research over a decade ago, the two kept in touch and looked for chances to collaborate. The IAS scheme proved to be the perfect opportunity. Hannah visited Surrey from September to December 2022 with the aim of combining her expertise with Philip’s knowledge of AI to train a computer to extract relevant information. Using a wealth of publicly-available data on HNCs from India, she used Python coding language to create an AI-based program which can measure the texture of thousands of images – information that could help clinicians to predict patient outcomes.

We’ve greatly valued Hannah’s knowledge about HNC, and what that brings to particular cancers in the UK. Professor Evans Hannah Thomas in Guildford

The work has already been published in the international peer reviewed journal Applied Sciences and Hannah and Philip’s shared focus has moved on to applying their approach to different sets of data, this time for lung cancer (a disease with poor outcomes in the UK) and for HNC data from the Netherlands. During her time at Surrey, Hannah gave talks to CVSSP and Surrey’s People-Centred AI Institute, and externally at the Royal Marsden Hospital, The Christie Hospital in Manchester, and the National Physical Laboratory. Several new collaborations and opportunities have sprung up as a result of Hannah’s Fellowship including a project with the Christie Hospital, and an opportunity to speak at the British Nuclear Medicine Society with Dr Vineet Prakash, Head of Nuclear Medicine at the Royal Surrey County Hospital.

The research is now being applied to lung cancer

FELLOWSHIPS

The work has already been published in the international peer reviewed journal Applied Sciences.

IAS Annual Review 2023

Dr Hannah Thomas gave a talk to Surrey colleagues and PhD students She says: “Globally there are different groups looking at HNC and what we’re now trying to do is connect the groups to build a consortium and address the issue collectively. Even within a single country like India you get a lot of differences between the north and the south, so we need to train our model for other geographic areas.” Philip comments: “It’s been a pleasure and a joy to have Hannah with us at Surrey. As a clinical medical physicist, she’s one of the few people who has made the transition between clinic and research. We’ve greatly valued her knowledge about HNC, and what that brings to particular cancers in the UK – but also her expertise in studies and her exceptional professional insight.”

When timing IS EVERYTHING

When Professor Cibele Crispim first visited Surrey in August 2022 as an IAS Fellow it was the beginning of an exciting journey – which has seen her relocating to the UK for a year with her family. There’s a growing hypothesis that when we eat can be as important as what we eat, with the rising popularity of time-restricted diets such as the 5:2. But what’s the relationship between meal timing and weight gain, and why is this so?

FELLOWSHIPS

Cibele, a nutritionist from Federal University of Uberlândia in Brazil, believed that chronobiology (the science of circadian rhythms and how they impact the way the body functions) could provide the answer to this question.

“If you work in chrononutrition or chronobiology, then you know of Debra Skene (leader of Surrey’s Chronobiology Section in the School of Biosciences),” she says. “Having met Debra at a scientific conference in Brazil, we made a plan with another colleague, Professor Claudia Moreno of São Paulo University, to investigate our hypothesis that eating late at night is associated with obesity, using a large database from Brazil.” The data Cibele brought to Surrey was a publicly-available, comprehensive study

of 80,000 citizens across all ages, social groups and locations, conducted in 2008-9 and 2017-18. In Brazil, around 20 per cent of the population live with obesity and a further 60 per cent have excess weight: statistics which have increased a lot over the past decade.“We found that our hypothesis was correct,” says Cibele. “This was a very important finding because when you talk about obesity, you usually think about the amount of food consumed and people’s level of physical activity, rather than food timing.”

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Professor Cibele Crispim in Guildford

On a personal level, the funding has been life-changing for Cibele, giving her the opportunity to bring her husband (a medical doctor involved in healthcare economics) and three children over to the UK for a year. “This has been a fantastic experience for us all,” says Cibele. “We are loving living in Guildford, close to so much nature and yet near to London. My younger son – who spoke little English before coming here – is enjoying school and speaking fluently.

Late night eating is associated with obesity

“Coming back to Surrey was also a pleasure. During my Fellowship I quickly got to know my colleagues by immersing myself in the Chronobiology Section (School of Biosciences) and attending lectures, chronobiology seminars and Journal Clubs. This time I felt completely at home right from day one.” For Debra, hosting Cibele and working as a trio with Claudia of São Paulo has moved her chrononutrition research on apace. The Brazil database has given the team the chance to analyse people across diverse latitudes – and therefore a variety of sunrise and sunset times across seasons – as well as those in communities that don’t have electricity. “We already knew that as humans our metabolism is optimised for daytime eating, and that our bodies aren’t used to processing food late at night,” says Debra. “But our latest research is throwing light on the factors which are compounding this such as whether we live in cities or rural areas, how much daylight we have, and what kind of foods we are eating. Ultimately, this information will help clinicians to develop guidelines which enable people to make healthier choices.”

IAS Annual Review 2023

The next stage of research for Cibele and Debra – enabled by a year’s funding from the Brazilian government – explores why this relationship between meal timing and obesity exists and has found that people who have a later intake of food tend to consume more ultra-processed foods.

FELLOWSHIPS

Coming back to Surrey was also a pleasure. During my Fellowship I quickly got to know my colleagues by immersing myself in the Chronobiology Section (School of Biosciences) and attending lectures, chronobiology seminars and Journal Clubs. This time I felt completely at home right from day one.

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Dr Anna Scott delivered a Symposium Recital

Aiming for

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IMPERFECTION The IAS’s first musician artist-in-residence, Dr Anna Scott, brought a fresh perspective to Surrey’s Department of Music and Media, challenging students to escape the restrictions of modern classical performance norms. Anna, an expert in 19th century Austro-German music based at the University of Leiden (The Netherlands), came into contact with her host Professor Jeremy Barham when she presented her ideas at an online conference. During the 20th century, new technologies used in the recording industry have led to a focus on absolute perfection when it comes to performance, which differs from early recordings when the need to capture ‘in one take’ gave a far greater freedom of expression. Anna has studied recordings made by students of Johannes Brahms which often departed from the score and included mistakes – which would be seen as unacceptable now. In striving for perfection, she argues, we’ve sometimes lost the human element, with recordings of the same music now sounding almost identical. During her three visits to Surrey, Anna worked with students and staff to explore these ideas. She ran performance workshops with music undergraduates, during which she encouraged them to ‘loosen up’ and find different ways of interpreting the score, dynamics and speed. She says: “They found it a bit bewildering at first because performing students are taught that you’ve got to get it right. It’s a new way of thinking for them.”

During her second visit Anna also worked with sound recording students on Surrey’s unique Tonmeister™ course to explore ‘low-fi’ recording techniques, and brought in sound engineer Geoff Miles of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, an expert in using vintage recording technologies. During Anna’s third visit, her research was at the centre of a symposium held at Surrey in collaboration with the Institute of Austrian and German Music Research on ‘Music and Conflict: The Politics and Escapism of War-Time Culture’. Anna gave a very impactful keynote speech – featuring performance and six spoken vignettes – to investigate how music can be used as a propaganda tool, particularly focusing on composers such as Brahms, and exclusionary ultra-nationalist movements of the late 19th century, early 20th century, and today. “Brahms was full of contradictions,” explains Anna. “He was born in 1833 and the centenary of his birth in 1933 coincided with a cataclysmic year in Germany, when celebrations for the composer tied into some extremely dark political rhetoric. People held him up as an example of a pure German musician but he actually hated nationalistic fervour.”

Following the Fellowship, Anna is progressing her research in a number of ways, including forthcoming publications in collaboration with Surrey staff and external guests she worked with during her visits, and furthering her research on Brahms and socio-political conflict via major funded projects. She comments: “There were so many highlights during my Fellowship. From a teaching point of view, it was touching to see students assimilating things we worked on in the workshops on their own, taking them into a formal performance setting. The results were so much more than I could have imagined. It was also really special to be able to engage with sound recording students.” Jeremy adds: “Anna has been a wonderful catalyst for change, and some of the ideas she’s brought to the table in terms of performance are certainly going to be integrated into our programme. Her performance at the conference was startling and a fantastic end to her residency. My main takeaway from this experience has been how the influence of one dynamic person can make a difference in such a powerful way.”

I had the pleasure of taking part in the lo-fi recording workshop with Anna. It was interesting to see the different aspects of performance that come through with the different types of recording which, in the seminar, made me adapt my playing style and focus on parts of the music that I’d never considered before. Anaïs Willequet, Postgraduate Music and Media student

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IAS Annual Review 2023

Dr Scott shared her research with international delegates, Surrey staff and students

I am very grateful to the IAS for enabling this wide-ranging artistic and intellectual collaboration through the Artist-in-Residence Fellowship, and express my sincere thanks to them and to Mirela Dumić (IAS) for the support they have given throughout. Professor Jeremy Barham

THE INFLUENCE OF

natural law Dr René Brouwer, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands (Surrey host: Professor Francesco Giglio, School of Law) A world-renowned expert in Hellenistic philosophy and its influence on Roman Law, Dr René Brouwer visited Surrey in February and May 2023 to work with Francesco Giglio (School of Law).

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René’s viewpoint is that we can understand legal doctrines better if we approach them from both a historical and philosophical point of view. During his visits he took part in seminars on the theory of excuse, made a workshop presentation on his most recent book (which focuses on the first ever interaction between Roman jurists and Greek philosophers), and contributed to a conference on Ernst Weinrib’s Reciprocal Freedom, organised by the Surrey Centre for Law and Philosophy.

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René says: “I also used the visit to discuss my next project – a follow-up book in which history and philosophy will be combined – with members of the Centre. This project will be on the sources and authority of law, and more precisely the origin of the notion of ‘natural law’, first used by the Roman jurists and taken over by the Greek philosophers in the 1st century BCE. How this relates to contemporary law and the contemporary meaning of natural law are intriguing questions.”

I also used the visit to discuss my next project – a follow-up book in which history and philosophy will be combined – with members of the Centre.

The sound OF BEING THERE

Professor Sebastian Schlecht, Aalto University, Finland (Surrey host: Dr Enzo De Sena, Department of Music and Media) The focus of Sebastian Schlecht’s IAS Fellowship was using digital signal processing and acoustic modelling to tackle the challenge of creating seamless, immersive audio experiences – such as zoom meetings which feel as natural as if you are present.

violence Professor Grant Devilly, Griffith University, Australia

(Surrey host: Dr Robert Patton, School of Psychology)

A specialist in violence prevention in NEDs, Professor Devilly visited Surrey in autumn 2022 to work with Dr Patton’s psychological interventions group. In Australia, Grant has liaised with the police, emergency services and support agencies in order to reduce assaults in NEDs and develop interventions for people who preload with drugs and alcohol. Taking a similar approach in the UK, he met with Surrey Police in Guildford to open a conversation about trialling breathalyser testing on people entering the town centre. During his Fellowship Grant also delivered a seminar on his research and established a collaboration with Surrey’s School of Psychology, which has included contributing to its clinical psychology course, particularly in the area of research methods. Grant will be returning to Surrey in 2024 to further develop links and continue his research in violence prevention in entertainment districts, as well as in other areas such as the effects of violent video-gaming and the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Sebastian and collaborators will publish a joint paper at the 31st European Signal Processing Conference 2023 in September, while another paper was published in an IEEE Transactions issue on Audio, Speech and Language Processing in May. Sebastian explains: “This publication provides open-source code which enables many possibilities for various room acoustic simulation frameworks. It was a great accomplishment for our team as IEEE Transactions is the prime publication in our field, and we’re excited to share our findings with the world.”

IAS Annual Review 2023

There is a growing trend of alcohol ‘preloading’ before a night out, resulting in high levels of intoxication in city Night-time Entertainment Districts (NEDs). This leads to violent and antisocial behaviour, blackouts, alcohol poisoning and risky behaviour which put pressure on the police and negatively impact public health.

“The in-person meetings allowed intense discussion, which was fruitful for establishing shared understanding among the group members,” says Sebastian. “We also collaborated with leading researchers at Imperial College London, University of Strathclyde and King’s College London, setting the agenda for future research.”

FELLOWSHIPS

TACKLING ALCOHOL-RELATED

As part of the EPSRC Scalable Room Acoustics Modelling (SCReAM) project, Sebastian made two visits to Surrey, engaging with academics in the Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing and the Institute of Sound Recording. Leveraging Surrey’s excellent machine learning and sound facilities, the collaborative team explored how mathematical tools can be employed to create perceptually-convincing models that feature rich details of reverberation.

New perspectives ON LITERATURE The School of Literature and Languages hosted two fascinating Fellowships in 2022-23 – one focused on the part played by Eastern philosophy in Victorian culture, and the other on the synthesis of literary narrative with the rigorous pursuit of evidence-based knowledge.

Dr Oindrila Ghosh, Diamond Harbour Women’s University, India (Surrey host: Professor Patricia Pulman, School of Literature and Languages)

FELLOWSHIPS

“My Fellowship at Surrey – from April to May 2023 – gave me the opportunity to work with Patricia Pulman, an authority on Late-Victorian literary and cultural studies. Together, we considered the important part played by Eastern philosophy in discourses on animal welfare and vegetarianism that emerged at the Victorian fin-de-siècle, with particular reference to author Thomas Hardy and social reformer Edward Carpenter. “I began my Fellowship by delivering a public lecture at Surrey on my research to the School of Literature and Languages.

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Dr Oindrila Ghosh on campus

I also co-organised an online symposium on ‘Victorians and transnational animal welfare and activism’ which was very well attended and generated some interesting ideas from scholars in the UK and India. “The Fellowship was a great learning experience. While in Guildford I was able to explore rich Victorian resources at Watt’s Gallery and the Wellcome Collection in London. Other highlights of my Fellowship were being taken to lunch by the Victoriographies group at the Lakeside Restaurant on campus – an excellent opportunity to bond with other

people interested in all things Victorian – and getting to know other Fellows at the first IAS Fellows’ coffee meet-up. “Following on from my Fellowship, I’ve been invited to join the editorial board of the Victoriographies Journal and I’m jointly editing a special issue of the Journal with Patricia. My time at Surrey has enriched me and filled me with ideas for future research: it’s a collaboration which will reap benefits for a long time.”

The Fellowship was a great learning experience. While in Guildford I was able to explore rich Victorian resources at Watt’s Gallery and the Wellcome Collection in London.

I am so pleased I got in touch, and still ever so slightly starstruck. Dr Constance Bantman, School of Literature and Languages

Professor Ivan Jablonka with Surrey host Dr Constance Bantman

(Surrey host: Dr Constance Bantman, School of Literature and Languages)

“I’ve also had the opportunity to develop collaborative projects with my host Constance. Following the Mobilities workshop, we are collaborating on a jointly authored publication which explores the place of the researcher’s emotion in the research and writing process. “The second major outcome is the book Constance is currently writing, Femmes de Revolution, due to be published in France in 2024. This brings together Constance’s expertise in the global history of revolutionary politics and women’s history with my own interest in gender justice.

Fellow and host: how we met “Most other IAS Fellows at Surrey seem to have had prior collaborations with their Surrey hosts but for me it was different. I didn’t previously know my host, Professor Patricia Pulham, and was selected as a Fellow because of our shared research interests. This made winning the Fellowship competition even more significant.” – Oindrila Ghosh

“In terms of my own research, the Fellowship was really beneficial as a way of publicising my work to UK audiences, and the talk I gave on Laëtitia was a great opportunity.” Constance says:

The collaborative article, with Ivan’s authoritative imprint, is a step forward for the Mobilities Centre and a valuable reflection of its contribution to the School’s research environment.

“I’ve been a fan of Ivan’s books for over a decade: his 2021 book A History of the Grandparents I Never Had resonated very strongly with me as a historian and the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. I decided to invite Ivan to Surrey in 2021 to explore how his work converges with ours and the IAS Fellowship scheme came to my mind. Two years later, I’m finishing a book which Ivan has commissioned for his collection at Le Seuil’s publishing house, just as his latest book Goldman is the talk of France’s media. I am so pleased I got in touch, and still ever so slightly starstruck.” – Constance Bantman

IAS Annual Review 2023

“My Fellowship was based around two central events at Surrey: an interdisciplinary workshop organised by the Mobilities Research Centre focused on the place of subjectivity in research, and a public talk I gave on my 2016 book Laëtitia, which examines gender violence through the highly publicised murder of 18-year-old Laëtitia Perrais.

FELLOWSHIPS

Professor Ivan Jablonka, Sorbon Paris Nord University, France

A breath OF FRESH AIR

Air pollution is a problem all over the world – from the UK to India to Australia. Two Fellows have visited Surrey’s Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE), hosted by founder Professor Prashant Kumar, in a bid to help cities and communities to clean up their act.

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Sebastian’s extensive knowledge and expertise in utilising drones for urban mapping left a lasting impression on our GCARE team, and we gained valuable insights from his experience. Professor Prashant Kumar

Associate Professor Sebastian Pfautsch, Urban Transformations Research Centre, Western Sydney University, Australia

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“I met Prashant two years ago because of our shared interest in heat mitigation and improving microclimates in cities. I run a research programme which uses infrared cameras in schools to raise awareness of urban heat while encouraging children to take an interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). “As is the case in Australia, in the UK there’s been a decline in STEM education in primary and secondary schools. Prashant agreed that it would be good to establish a similar program in the UK. “Fast forward 18 months and a pandemic, and the GCARE team at Surrey had delivered its Heat-Cool initiative in five schools and analysed the results – and I secured an IAS Fellowship to come to the UK. “During my Fellowship there were many highlights. Just a few include having our first research paper accepted by the high impact journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, delivering a webinar on Australia’s largest smart blue-green infrastructure project at Sydney Olympic Park to researchers around the world, and taking part in a Sustainable Business Network event at the WWF Living Plant Centre in Woking. I was also delighted to be able to use my expertise as a professional accredited drone pilot to create a widely-shared aerial video of the Surrey campus.” Associate Professor Sebastian Pfautsch on campus

Dr Anwar Ali Khan in Gu

ildford

Dr Anwar Ali Khan, Delhi Pollution Control Committee, Government of NCT of Delhi, India

• Visiting GCARE projects including ‘Zero’ in Guildford town centre, which encourages the public to learn about sustainability, and Green Cities, which monitors the impact of nature-based solutions in urban parks • Watching King Charles III’s coronation service and procession on a big screen on Stag Hill and celebrating this historic moment with staff, students and local people.

Collaboratively developing an airshed approach for mitigating air pollution in developing countries like India was a significant contribution. We are currently working together to publish and implement this airshed approach in cities such as Delhi. Professor Kumar

IAS Annual Review 2023

“Working with Professor Prashant Kumar, a renowned expert in advanced air quality engineering and modelling, was a big boost for me to investigate innovative solutions for air quality tailored for LMICs. He has strengthened the need for future collaboration and idea sharing for air pollution abatement. Together, we identified the best modelling tools to help understand how pollution is transported and dispersed in the atmosphere, and we successfully created a model which can be used across India’s megacities.”

• Making a presentation on ‘Air Quality Management in Indian Megacities’ on 24 May

FELLOWSHIPS

“I’m proud to be the first ever Public Servant Fellow to visit the University of Surrey under the IAS scheme. Under the aegis of my role as senior environmental regulator in various provincial Governments in India, urban air pollution in many cities has been widely assessed and time bound action plans have been implemented, with reasonable success. Within this process, we have realised that the solution to air quality mitigation in Delhi lies in fixing the sources of air pollution beyond the jurisdictional limits of Delhi. My IAS Fellowship has given me a precious opportunity to discuss and strategise the air-shed concept – not only for India, but for all low-or-middleincome countries (LMICs) grappling with similar air quality issues.

Fellowship highlights:

News from ALUMNI FELLOWS FROM 2021-22

Dr Jason Bramburger Concordia University, Canada

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“Since my IAS Fellowship the research paper I’ve written with Dr Dan Hill and Professor David Lloyd, Approximate localised dihedral patterns near a turing instability, has been published in top dynamics journal IOP Science. Based on my work with Surrey academics I’ve put together a textbook on data science and dynamics for the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, with a preprint already available. “Since my Fellowship I’ve won a large five-year grant from Canada’s Natural Science and Engineering Research Council, and I was awarded an Early Career Launch Supplement to kick-start my research programme at Concordia University in Canada. The Fellowship was very good for my career and I’m eternally thankful for it!”

Anna Dumitriu Independent artist, UK

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“The BioArt collection I developed in collaboration with Surrey academics, ‘Unruly Objects: Living Latex’ has been exhibited at the V&A Museum as part of the London Design Festival, at Birmingham Dental Hospital’s Openwide ‘Collateral Effects: Biofilms’ exhibition, at North Wall Oxford, and at the Romanian Science Festival. One of the artworks I created during my artist-in-residency, Zenexton, was part of ‘Life Eternal’ at the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, where I gave a talk on the work, entitled ‘Obsessed with Bacteria’.”

Associate Professor Daniel Avdic Deakin University, Australia “Since my Fellowship, I’ve taken up a position as an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics, Deakin University (Australia). I’ve also won an ARC Discovery Project Grant on the resilience of first responders in Australia, and published two research papers: Providers, peers and patients. How do physicians’ practice environments affect patient outcomes? (ScienceDirect) and Does Healthcare Consolidation Harm Patients? Evidence from Maternity Ward Closures (American Economic Journal).

Q&A with Dr Yevheniya Sharhorodska National Academy of Medical Sciences, Ukraine Dr Yevheniya Sharhorodska visited Surrey as an IAS Fellow in 2021-22 to explore the shared genetics of women suffering from recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL). Having won a fellowship from the British Academy, she’s now spending a further two years here. We asked her how things are going…

What was the main outcome of your IAS Fellowship? We found a relationship between RPL and the shingles (zoster) virus: shingles has a protective effect against RPL. We’re now using UK-based data to try to establish a link with other infections. Ultimately we want to be able to give women a risk score when it comes to RPL.

What’s the current Fellowship enabled you to do? It’s been super-productive. I’ve presented my research to a range of audiences around the world, including at the International Congress of Human Genetics in Cape Town (South Africa), a scientific conference in Kyiv (Ukraine), the European Human Genetics conference in Glasgow, the European Mathematical Genetic Meeting in Guildford, and as an invited speaker at the University of Ferrara (Italy). I’ve also lectured at a five-day online computer workshop, ‘Introduction to the statistical analysis of genome-wide association studies’, and co-organised an IAS Workshop on ‘AI, Big Data and pregnancy loss’.

Tell us about the workshop… The workshop was a great success with around 40 people in-person – from Estonia, Poland and other countries – and others online. It was interesting to get the perspectives of people from different disciplines including medical doctors, practitioners, genecologists and industrial companies. (For a full report on the workshop, turn to page 17.)

How are things going at Surrey? I feel very comfortable at Surrey. I know my supervisor and the whole team well and it’s been great to be able to pursue my research further. We go on nights out – bowling and to celebrate birthdays – and I also meet up with friends from Ukraine who are in London. At the moment, I’m actually back in Ukraine. Although the war still goes on and there have been bombings recently in Lviv, my home city, I’m with my family and friends so, despite everything, I’m very happy.

Outcomes from 2021-22 WORKSHOPS AI for Diabetes “We built a collaboration with Spotlight-AQ – a company that attended the workshop – and published a paper with them, ‘Delivering Biopsychosocial Health Care Within Routine Care: Spotlight-AQ Pivotal Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial Results’, in the National Center for Biotechnology Information. This paper uses AI to predict diabetes type based on a language model and answers to a questionnaire.” – Dr Oscar A Mendez, Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing

“I’m pleased to report that our IAS workshop output was used to feed into part of a recent +£12 million bid which we’re hoping will come to fruition.” – Dr Donya Hajializadeh, School of Sustainability, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Blue Sky Thinking on Computer Networks in Space “We’ve had several excellent outputs following our workshop. We are now involved in a project with NGI Atlantic to improve and enhance our transatlantic connection with a transatlantic testbed. Workshop co-organiser Jon Black (Virginia Tech) has won major funding for a project in collaboration with Surrey and George Mason University. And a collaboration with one of the workshop speakers, Debopam Bhattacharjee (Microsoft Research) has led to development of a global testbed.” – Professor Nishanth Sastry, School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering

“We held a research symposium to support a special issue of the Journal of Business Research which will include six to eight papers related to the workshop. As a key outcome of this, and the workshop itself, I’ve attended a couple of conferences over the summer which have helped to build Surrey Business School’s reputation in the areas of AI and service robots. Three colleagues in our School have also recently started a collaborative research project with scholars in a leading research centre in the field in Europe.” – Dr Nima Heirati, Surrey Business School

FELLOWS GET TOGETHER The IAS held its first informal get-together for Fellows on 18 May at the Lakeside Café. Hosted by IAS Director Professor Nigel Gilbert and Professor Amelia Hadfield (Dean International), this was a lovely occasion which enabled Fellows to talk informally about their research and share their experiences at Surrey. Pictured (l-r): Mirela Dumić (IAS Surrey), Professor Cibele Crispim (Brazil), Professor Ameila Hadfield, Professor Nigel Gilbert, Dr Anwar Ali Khan (India), Dr René Brouwer (The Netherlands) and Dr Oindrila Ghosh (India).

IAS Annual Review 2023

Service Robots in the Frontline

FELLOWSHIP AND EVENT OUTCOMES

Acuity and Agility in Infrastructure

New Fellows 2023-24 FELLOWSHIP FOR EXTERNAL ACADEMICS

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR BELINDA ROMÁN St Mary’s University San Antonio, USA Surrey host: Professor Nigel Gilbert, Department of Sociology Fellowship focus: To model and scale up the computational technique of Agent-Based Models (ABMs) to improve the economic status of workers.

PROFESSOR JAKA SODNIK University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

NEW FELLOWS 32

Surrey host: Dr Nikolas Thomopoulos, School of Hospitality and Tourism Management Fellowship focus: Tackling the issue of assessing older and vulnerable people’s proficiency to drive using an advanced driving simulator.

PROFESSOR JIAN XU Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences, China

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Surrey host: Dr Benyi Cao, School of Sustainability, Civil and Environmental Engineering Fellowship focus: Exploring an innovative approach for reducing soil and groundwater pollution caused by pesticide production.

PROFESSOR JONATHAN BLACK Virginia Tech, USA Surrey host: Professor Nishanth Sastry, School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering Fellowship focus: Building a scalable and flexible space network testbed to support the development of communications based on mega-constellations.

DR MELINA BERSTEN Instituto de Astrofisica de La Plata, Argentina Surrey host: Dr Robert Izzard, School of Mathematics and Physics Fellowship focus: Understanding the impact of single and binary stars in state-of-the-art all-sky surveys.

PROFESSOR SARAH O’SHEA Curtin University, Australia Surrey host: Dr Karen Gravett, Surrey Institute of Education Fellowship focus: Investigating how marginalised students’ sense of belonging has been affected by new learning spaces necessitated by the pandemic.

DR ROHAN SHAH KEM Hospital Research Centre (KEMHRC), India Surrey host: Dr Anand Ahankari, School of Health Sciences Fellowship focus: Investigations into the prevalence of anaemia and its risk factors in adolescent girls in rural India.

DR MATTEO PELLEGRINI Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy Surrey host: Professor Erich Round, School of Literature and Languages Fellowship focus: Using cutting-edge computational methods to analyse how Latin diversified into romance languages in just 2000 years.

DR ROSEMARY GIBSON Massey University, New Zealand Fellowship focus: Exploring the sociology of sleep, ageing, disease and caregiving, and how modern society commodifies and commercialises sleep.

PROFESSOR DOMINIC FOO University of Nottingham, Malaysia Fellowship focus: Helping UK industry to adapt to climate change using decarbonisation software for planning of future energy systems.

FELLOWSHIP FOR ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

ALEX MAY Independent artist, UK Surrey host: Dr Youngchan Kim, School of Biosciences Fellowship focus: An artistic expression of quantum biology and time reversibility, and how these relate to the personal and cultural experiences of time and memory.

FELLOWSHIP FOR ENTREPRENEURS

DR ATSUSHI MAKI Hitachi Ltd, Japan Surrey host: Professor Roi Cohen Kadosh, School of Psychology Fellowship focus: Facilitating new opportunities for collaboration and commercialisation using technologies such as AI and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS).

IAS Annual Review 2023

Surrey host: Dr Michael Short, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering

NEW FELLOWS

Surrey host: Professor Robert Meadows, Department of Sociology

Q&A with

Professor Amelia Hadfield Dean International

Dr Robert Izzard IAS host

As Dean International, how are you involved with the IAS?

Surrey astrophysicist Dr Robert Izzard hosted Dr Zhengwei Liu (Chinese Academy of Science, China) in 2018-19 and is now preparing to welcome Dr Melina Bersten (Instituto de Astrofisica de La Plata, Argentina) in 2023-24. We asked him to share his experiences.

I support any work from our academic and professional services staff that has an international component. This includes working with the IAS hosts and engaging with Fellows, ensuring their time here is productive, enjoyable and sustainable.

What value do you feel the IAS delivers for Surrey? Q&AS 34

The IAS is a ‘vital organ’ in Surrey’s goal to be a truly global university – not just fostering interdisciplinary collaborations but supporting a ready flow of international scholars to visit and engage with us.

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Which past Fellowships or workshops have been particularly meaningful for you? This past year has been especially fruitful, and I’ve enjoyed supporting some really cutting-edge showcases such as the enormously interesting workshop on ‘Law and Philosophy in the Late Roman Republic’ organised by Professor Francesco Giglio. I also had the good fortune to participate in the workshop on Great Power Competition (GPC). IAS support has not only been instrumental in helping to launch the new Centre for Great Power Competition but also highlighted the influence of GPC and its strategies and tools – including in my own area of energy security.

What was behind your decision to host an IAS Fellow? I’m part of a large research group but, due to staff changes and the impact of Brexit, I’ve found myself somewhat isolated in terms of scientific collaboration. The chance to host a distinguished colleague with whom I can engage in in-depth scientific discussions and collaborative work is truly a remarkable opportunity.

How was your first experience as an IAS host? My collaboration with Dr Liu bore fruit in the form of a jointly authored paper which has been published in the prestigious Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Despite Covid preventing a second visit, the Fellowship was highly successful because it enriched my scientific network and contributed to valuable research outcomes. Dr Liu also reciprocated by hosting one of our MPhys students in Kunming.

What are you hoping to achieve with your next Fellow, Dr Bersten?

I’m delighted to see artists, public servants and entrepreneurs becoming Fellows but I think we can go further still – welcoming think-tank analysts, for example, and people from industry and media. I’d also like to ensure that all Fellows retain a strong sense of their links with Surrey.

Dr Bersten is a renowned global authority in the field of supernovae with a specific focus on interacting binary stars – a central area of my research. Her exceptional expertise in explosion physics is complemented by my specialisation in the big data science of stellar populations. This convergence of our research interests means we can forge a powerful synergy to unravel the intricate evolution of stars destined for explosive phenomena. It promises to foster ongoing collaboration between our respective institutions, setting the stage for transformative advancements in our field.

What would be lost if there was no IAS at Surrey?

What would be your advice to academics considering hosting a Fellow?

Without the IAS both the collaborative and international aspects of Surrey’s fine research would be materially diminished. IAS scholarship represents a key part of the vital and reciprocal intellectual activity that’s at the heart of our contemporary community of knowledge.

Budget well! Also, encourage your Fellow to give a talk to your Faculty or School if possible – not just to your research institute – sharing the benefit of their experience and expertise with a wider audience. Having such a distinguished researcher here at Surrey is something to be celebrated.

How would you like to see the IAS develop in the future?

IAS Annual Workshop and Fellowship Grant Competition ACADEMIC YEAR 2024–25

SEE FULL APPLICATION DETAILS: ias.surrey.ac.uk

COMPETITION

DEADLINE: Friday 25 October 2024

IAS Annual Review 2023

UNIVERSITY OF SURREY Guildford, Surrey GU2 7XH, UK For more information please contact ias@surrey.ac.uk ias.surrey.ac.uk @IAS_SurreyUni