Brunel Research Festival 2023

This roundtable panel discussion aims to draw from recent events, cases, theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches for the achievement of climate justice, taking into consideration issues such as sustainability, engineering, conservation, indigenous rights, general human rights approaches and ecocentrism. We aim to engage in a vibrant discussion as to the best methods to deal with the injustices caused by environmental damage and degradation, and how to achieve a fairer and more sustainable future.

Our proposed panelists are members of a variety of research groups and centres, from the International Law Research Group and the Human Rights, Arts & Society Research Group (both of them based in the Brunel Law School), as well the Global Lives Research Centre, IEF, Economics & Finance, and the Centre for Flood Risk and Resilience.

A special session to officially launch this year's Research Festival, join us in the Atrium of the Eastern Gateway for a celebratory networking lunch, teasers from the month's many event leads, spotlights from our five challenge-led Institutes, the unveiling of our Picturing Research competition and exhibition, and the launch of a new exhibition celebrating Brunel's diverse heritage.

Celebrating Brunel is the new exhibition in the Eastern Gateway Atrium, curated by the Archives and Special Collections team. It looks at our journey to become the university we know today, celebrating our international and diverse community, and showcasing a snippet of our rich research history and its wider impacts.

In 2022 a new BSc Criminology programme was launched at Brunel. This session aims to showcase the exciting range of research in criminology being undertaken by university staff. Come along to hear more about the criminal justice system, marginalised communities, criminalisation of addiction, desistance from offending, psychosocial understandings of street crime, and much more!

Do you like solving wicked problems? Do you worry about climate change?

The UK throws away 7 million tonnes of food per year, and if worldwide food waste were a country, it would be the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses after the USA and China. Food waste can be tackled but it requires interdisciplinary thinking and solutions.

As part of the Research Festival, this workshop will focus on the sustainability challenges posed by food waste and the potential for systems thinking to find solutions. Attendees will learn about the causes and consequences of food waste on a local and global level, and will be supported in the development of practical systems thinking skills through interactive activities and discussions. 

Attendees will also hear from those with experience in the food industry, and will have the opportunity to network with other professionals working to address the challenge of food waste and climate change. 

Join this workshop to learn more about the challenge of food waste and take part in a peer-to-peer learning environment using systems thinking to co-create practical solutions for reducing food waste.

This seminar will give you details of the latest round of funding calls as well as useful tips about the application process, what they are looking for and their vision for research funding over the next few years. With more UKRI-wide funding calls available, this is a chance to hear more about the cross council opportunities available for interdisciplinary projects.

Prof Trevor Hoey, Vice-Chancellor - International and Sustainability will Chair this session and also talk about his recent NERC grants.

Prof Susan Waldron, Director, Research and Skills at the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) will provide insight into the research funding schemes and opportunities available to researchers NERC specific areas as well as the latest cross-research council schemes.

This is an opportunity to hear directly from the funding council, and to network with colleagues from around the University. This is the latest in our funder seminar series, designed to give you the chance to ask questions about the funding schemes and gain useful tips on how to be successful.

It is extremely common in science and engineering to design algorithms to perform various tasks. In data-driven decision making in any field, one needs to ascertain the quality of an algorithm. Therefore, a robust assessment of algorithms is essential in deciding the best algorithm as well as in improving algorithms. To perform such an assessment objectively is obvious in the case of a single performance metric, but it is unclear in the case of multiple metrics.

In multiple-metric cases, ranking may appear to be rather subjective. Indeed, all current measures are subjective. That said, we will re-examine the single metric case and demonstrate how this seemingly subjective issue can be transformed into an objective issue.

Following on from there, we will offer a new measure that is the best among existing measures at the higher performance levels. This has many applications in the work of all the colleges and research institutes of Brunel. Moreover, it may be applicable in "any" decision making based on "numbers", including “league tables”.

To coincide with the coronation of King Charles III, this roundtable considers two important aspects related to the monarchy – public approval and the role of the monarchy in questions of identity. In the discussion, the panellists will examine trends in public opinion, how monarchies can become symbols of shared identity in multi-ethnic societies, and how monarchies can be used as indicators of identity through the currency that we use.

Join us to hear about an initiative designed to influence a cultural change at both student and staff level. AWE: The Art of Wellbeing in Education introduces creative, embodied, and collective approaches to participation, facilitating improvements to wellbeing by developing creative approaches to increasing awareness about community development, personal wellbeing, and collective social systems.
 
Understanding that the university is not only an extension of schooling but is also a transition into social and global employment contexts requires implementation of teaching strategies that build models applicable to both employer environments and learner environments. Bridging productivity with social motivational values is integral to the longer-term success for the student.  If we look at industries where there is high productivity and ethical approaches to social awareness, we also find higher levels of psychological safety, because employees feel safe to make mistakes, innovate, learn from one another and speak up about misconduct (Baer & Frese, 2003).
 
Psychological safety is developed through several mechanisms of change. Firstly, the sense of narrative, personal, social and organisational history supporting the formation of individual and group identity. Secondly, emotional awareness increases the sense of empathic attunement and responsiveness. Thirdly, increasing organisational bonding improves commitment to the tasks and holding the peer context in mind. Lastly, the collective awareness of requirements to meet the learning outcomes. These factors combined mean that students can live in a healthy learning environment that develops beyond their time at university and ultimately provides the foundations for developing wellbeing beyond their learning environment. These values are integral to a healthy organisation. A university environment should be where a sense of safety for the purposes of learning are prioritised above the marketisation of knowledge (Holmwood & Marcuello Servós, 2019).

BUL is a signatory to the Technician commitment, a national initiative led by the Science Council, to address key challenges facing technical staff working in higher education and research.

Establishing a network for Brunel’s technicians – Technet members take you on the journey to find a voice for technical staff in line with the aims of the national Technician Commitment initiative. Ahead of the inaugural Technical symposium July 12th, you are invited to join a discussion with Technet members to examine the challenges faced, share your thoughts/ideas, join the network and help grow our voice.

Are you an academic, researcher or PhD candidate who would like to build a media profile and take your research to a global public audience by writing for The Conversation?

The Conversation is a news analysis and opinion website with content written by academics working with professional journalists. It is an open access, independent media charity funded by more than 80 UK and European universities.

 In this session we'll take you through what The Conversation is - our origins and aims; what we do and why.

 We’ll look at why you should communicate your research to the public and take you through The Conversation’s unique, collaborative editorial process.

 We’ll give you tips on style, tone and structure (with examples), look at how to pitch (with examples) and look at different approaches and article types.

 Benefits of attending:

●      Find out how to join a community of academic authors taking their expertise outside the academy
●      Understand what makes a good story and the types of articles your expertise could generate
●      Learn the skills of journalistic writing and how to make your writing accessible and engaging to a diverse general audience
●      Meet one of The Conversation’s editors and learn how we commission articles 

Brunel has an excellent team of professional staff that support research across the University. This session will bring them together in person for the first time in years to hear more about a key area of research support and network with one another.

The Global Lives Research Centre and the Decolonising Coalition of the Department of Social and Political Sciences present: A roundtable discussion on the coloniality of research. This event stages a critical dialogue among colleagues from different disciplines about the ways our research practices can perpetuate colonial power imbalances, with a focus on epistemic exploitation and epistemic injustice, and suggestions of how we can work to counteract these tendencies. 

The 1980 Hague Convention, which has been implemented by over 100 countries including the UK, enables the speedy return to the state of habitual residence of children under 16 who have been taken to another contracting state. Contrary to the situation envisaged by the drafters of the Convention, around 75% of the parents who are brought before the courts are mothers with primary care of their children, many of whom are fleeing domestic abuse. There are very limited options for mothers to oppose orders for the return of their children and in most cases the courts decide that the child must return. Mothers fleeing domestic abuse across borders are left in the invidious position of having to choose whether to return with their children or send their children back on their own. Most mothers return, and face continued or worse abuse, destitution, homelessness, isolation or even criminal proceedings.

Dr Adrienne Barnett, Reader in Law at Brunel University London, and Dr Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson, Lecturer in Policy, Intersectionality and Violence at UCL, will be joined by Kim Fawcett, a Hague mother herself, and Teaching Fellow at Durhma University and Co-Director of the Durham Gender and Law Research Centre.

Our three experts are members of the UK Steering Group of Hague Mothers, a FiliA legacy project, that aims to end the injustices that arise from implementation of the Hague Convention. In this session our panel explain the implications of the Hague Convention for mothers who want to escape domestic abuse across borders, and explore options for change. 

The Computer Science for Social Good Research Group is organising a “Hacking the Digital Health” Hackathon on May 12 and May 18 (running over two days, day one online; day two in-person, at Brunel University), funded by the 2022-23 seminar series. On the 2nd day of the hackathon, the prototypes developed and future plans for research grant applications will be presented to a panel. The winning teams will receive research seed funding awards:

First prize: £600
Two runner-up prizes: £200

The main aim of the proposed hackathon is to create a platform of collaboration on digital healthcare solutions for ‘Transforming Health and Care Beyond the Hospital’ – one of the key themes set by UKRI.

Smart healthcare is a socio-technical challenge, and therefore, this hackathon aims to foster collaboration within an interdisciplinary community to enable co-creation in the area of digital health.

The hackathon will aim to create a free-thinking and collaborative environment involving 25-30 participants using a mix of online collaboration and communication tools and face-to-face meetings, talks, and panels.

Academics of all career stages are increasingly encouraged to share their research outside academia. This allows academic research to reach wider audiences and to inform policy and public understandings.

Public engagement enhances the research process and raises fresh questions and ways of thinking. But, how to start talking to non-academic audiences is not always clear, especially for early career researchers.

This techne training session held at Brunel University London aims to equip doctoral and early career researchers with some of the skills and understandings required to help them begin the process of sharing their research with audiences outside academia. It is open to all, but spaces are limited and registration is required.

The purpose of this session is to draw together academics and researchers from across Brunel University to capture the diversity of our ageing research. In the last decade research in ageing has become increasingly participatory, diverse and interdisciplinary in nature. This has led to key developments in knowledge with novel approaches to our research in ageing, data collection, topics and perspectives.

In particular, ageing research has engaged with and been informed by the involvement of older people throughout the research process, including our own Brunel Older People’s Reference Group (BORG). This session will be an opportunity to share and enhance these novel approaches and promote dialogue from a diversity of perspectives. 

This project reviewed how feedback is delivered by ensuring that feedback is inclusive, clear, feeding-forward and useful for students. The aim of this session is to present research findings from interview and survey studies with students about their experience with feedback and rubrics used in the UG Psychology programmes. 

We are using the results of these studies to work with students to improve the way feedback is delivered for 2023-24. This includes a discussion about implications and best practise moving forward.

Join our public open day, spotlighting Brunel’s ageing-related research excellence and contributions to Health and Wellbeing across the Lifecourse.

Highlights include:

• Research participation opportunities: Design for ageing, Social health across the life course, ‘beat the heat’ - heat stress and ageing, Understanding the ageing brain
• Health MOT - Back by popular demand!
• Test your balance and co-ordination!
• Happy to Chat project
• Nuclear veterans research
• Poster exhibition - meet the researchers (12:45-13:30), research updates exhibition, using animation to bring research to life!
• Unlocking the cell: Bio-imaging Suite tours (book on the day)

Sit down for a cuppa and a chat any time you would like. There will be no sitting down for lectures or formal talks during the day. There will be plenty to inform and entertain you; stay for as long as you like.

Lunch will be provided

A rapid spread of digitalisation in economic activities presents a major challenge for governments and tax authorities around the world. In this session, a panel of experts give an overview of the issues and discuss the solutions proposed in the policy papers and in the academic literature.

Our panel of experts:
Dr. Elizabeth Morton (RMIT) - Tax & Crypto: Reflections for Australian Tax Practitioners
Dr. Manohar Samal (Ratan Samal & Associates) - Unveiling the Challenges and Formulating Solutions for the Levy and Collection of Goods and Services Tax on Cryptoassets in India
Dr. Vincent Ooi (Singapore Management University) - Emerging Issues in Crypto Taxation
Dr. Andreas Thiemann - Cryptocurrencies: An Empirical View from a Tax Perspective

The British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust offer separate and joint funding opportunities for researchers at all levels. This seminar will give you details of their latest rounds of funding calls as well as useful tips about the application process, what they are looking for, and, as important, what they do not fund.

Our speakers are:

Prof Christina Victor (chair)
Ken Emond and Lesley Talbot (Head and Deputy Head of Research Funding) from the British Academy
Dr Tracey Henshaw, Assistant Director at the Leverhulme Trust
Prof Fiona Denny and Dr Daniele Rugo will talk about their personal experiences as successful grant holders from these funders.

If you have any questions for our speakers, in advance, please let us know so we can ensure they are answered during the morning. Additional questions will be taken at the end of the event, if time allows.

The Institute of Digital Futures (IDF) invites you to its Research Festival networking lunch and open day, including a tour of our state of the art "digital" interdisciplinary facilities, poster showcase and networking lunch.

12:00  Arrivals & Welcome
12:15  Lab Tours and Live Demos
13:15  Networking Lunch & Posters
13:45  Future directions and priorities for Digital Futures, with Institute Director, Professor Abdul H. Sadka

Lab tours include:
Digital Games Lab; 5G Lab; Wireless Computer Communication Networks Lab; Computer Communications lab

The Institute of Digital Futures are proud to host a special session on Digital Construction that will showcase the latest digital smart innovations from industry as well as from academia, demonstrating novel AI solutions to important but routine as well as complex and large-scale problems and pathways toward digitisation in the sector.

Speakers:

• Alexandra Bolton
• Davide Alessandro Meucci
• Doug Morton
• Jonathan Ng

 Following plenary sessions there will be smaller focused breakout sessions, targeted at collective thinking to develop potential solutions to industrial problems in the multidisciplinary area of emerging AI technologies coupled with Digital Construction. There’ll also be a special lab tour with live demos during our networking reception.

This session is organised by the department of Civil Engineering and the AI: Social and Digital Innovation Research Centre

When we think about avatars, we think of James Cameron’s blue creatures on Pandora, or orcs and elves in fantasy online games. They could not be further from our everyday lives. But we all have digital representations of ourselves, not only in online games, but also on social media, and increasingly in many areas of our day-to-day lives, in those digital spaces in which we spend increasing amounts of time.

But how do we relate to these avatars? Are they us? Are they part of us, better versions of us, not us at all? Do we own them? What about other people’s avatars?

In an increasingly digital world, in which AI-generated avatars can become influencers, and the promises of the Metaverse may not be as far-fetched as they seem, this panel aims to address these questions from a variety of perspectives including psychology, games studies, and law, before we endanger the way we perceive ourselves and lose track of how power is mirrored and created throughout digital platforms.

Brunel’s Engagement Team welcomes you to this free event which will provide an opportunity to network and to discuss views on how Brunel can support the local community and business needs in Hillingdon.

There will be plenty of networking opportunities and the chance to discuss your views on how Brunel can best engage with local community groups and businesses. A number of our partner organisations will also be running networking stalls to showcase their activities.

The main aim of the proposed hackathon is to create a platform of collaboration on digital healthcare solutions for ‘Transforming Health and Care Beyond the Hospital’ – one of the key themes set by UKRI.

Smart healthcare is a socio-technical challenge, and therefore, this hackathon aims to foster collaboration within an interdisciplinary community to enable co-creation in the area of digital health.

The innovation idea developed during the hackathon should aim to meet one (or more) of the following goals:

• Making better use of data in smart homes for improving digital health technologies
• Reduce differences among social classes in terms of access to digital health technologies
• Improve access to and usability of digital health solutions in older age groups
• Eliminate barriers to access to digital health solutions for disabled or differently-abled people

The hackathon will aim to create a free-thinking and collaborative environment involving 25-30 participants using a mix of online collaboration and communication tools and face-to-face meetings, talks, and panels.

Join us during Dementia Action Week for a screening of this fascinating and moving film about using theatre to share findings from research in a way that could make a difference to people’s lives, and how to realistically portray what it is like to live with dementia.

‘The World Turned Upside Down’ was staged in Exeter in January 2022 and explores the difficult situations faced by people with dementia and the people they interact and communicate with. This film invites you to reflect on:

• why and how conversations can go badly or work well
• what helps to maintain good conversations

Following the film screening we will have a panel discussion, unpacking diverse perspectives on dementia and the pivotal role of communication. We will close with an opportunity for informal networking. This event is open to all.

The film is based on the work of the IDEAL research programme which seeks to understand and find ways to improve the experience of living with dementia. The research programme is led by Professor Linda Clare at the University of Exeter and Professor Christina Victor of Brunel is a member of the research team.

SEVENTY-five years on from Indian independence, food security and malnutrition remain key concerns across South Asia. Yet food and drink have also remained highly significant in shaping different regional identities and in marking out differences between and within communities throughout the region. In this workshop, fifteen scholars, over four panels, explore how practices of consumption and commensality have been both shaped by and shaping of wider socio-economic, political and historical changes across South Asia and amongst its diasporas.

How has the industrialisation of food production and economic liberalisation—bringing international restaurant chains to the region’s major cities and their imitators to many small towns—affected consumption patterns and what food and drink means to people?

How have state sponsored food subsidy or public distribution programmes influenced food cultures or nutrition?
Why has food become so significant in struggles to assert marginalised identities and to resist oppression?
And how have foodways travelled beyond and within the region?

Collectively, our speakers and discussants address all these questions and more, as well as giving attendees the opportunity to contribute in Q&A and discussion sessions.

This session will showcase recent research on elections by members of the Open Data Analysis in Social and Political Science research group. There will be presentations on what makes voters more or less likely to consider voting online, what explains attitudes towards electoral integrity, and what voters think about reforms to the way elections are run.

Open Data Analysis in Social and Political Science

As a group of experts in theory-driven empirical research in social and political science, we work on understanding how politics and society function, and using this understanding to help improve public life.

We work on a wide range of topics using these methodologies, including institutional analysis, policy analysis, the dynamics of political alliances, the impact of prompts on social and political behaviour, trust between groups, longitudinal analysis, spatial analysis, and the analysis of elections and election campaigns.

This workshop will present new research on loneliness being conducted at Brunel and external colleagues both national and international, including our partners at Tampere University.

Speakers include:

Prof Christina Victor
Prof Akram Khan
Prof Dorothy Yen

This event is open to all and may be of particular interest to academic researchers, health and social care professionals, third sector organisations and the general public.

 Lunch will be served from 12:30 and the workshop will start at 13:00.

The session addresses three important and interrelated gaps in sustainable knowledge and practice in sport. 

• First, it will scrutinise the multitude of extant sustainable measuring tools and methodologies in sport and will offer some clarifications. 
• Second, it will discuss how the teaching and implementation of sustainability by Higher Education institutions and sport organisations cohere. 
• Third, the challenges and economic cost of implementing the sustainable development goals (SDG) by sport organisations nationally and internationally will be addressed.

This will be the first session to scrutinise the design and delivery of sustainable sport curricula, and the implementation of sustainable strategies by sport organisations. This session is open to all and may be of particular interest to academics, students and representatives of sport organisations.

A special showcase exploring the future of Hydrogen and Brunel’s collaborative, innovative approach. To include a panel discussion, short presentations, and lab tours.

An Interactive Journey – Water to Water – traversing every stage of the hydrogen economy, from production through to the end product of combustion.

Interactive Journey

To provide a visual understanding of the Hydrogen Economy, particularly in terms of Production, Gas Transport and Management, and Applications.

To do so through presenting actual equipment and materials, demonstrating a progression from inputs (energy sources, water), through the stages of production, compression, storage, transport, control systems, and through to transport application but also heating and industrial uses.

To illustrate where new technology, research etc is underway or needed to solve problems and improve processes and materials.

To make clear that physical, digital, and social approaches are required, and in an integrated fashion.

Three years in to the Covid pandemic, we have witnessed the largest vaccination drive in history. But even as vaccination rates were lauded in the early stages, and enabled the reopening of economies and communities around the world, we know there were pockets of deep mistrust and resistance to receiving Covid vaccinations.

Drawing on four research projects undertaken in the midst of the pandemic, we investigate the attitudes, ideas, and beliefs of people about the Covid-19 vaccine across seven countries to better understand the root causes of vaccine mistrust and hesitancy.

Our work presents multidisciplinary insights to inform future public health policy and outreach, drawing on anthropology, communications, political science, and sociology; and diverse methods from large-survey statistics to focus groups and in-depth interviews to understand lived experiences.

Speakers:

Dr Manu Savani (Brunel University London )
Dr Billur Ozgul (Brunel University London)
Dr Ozge Ozduzen (University of Sheffield)
Dr Melissa Jogie (University of Roehampton)
Dr Anna Tuckett (Brunel University London)
Dr Moira Nicolson (Cabinet Office)

A roundtable discussion to discuss the impact of Brexit on migration to the UK, especially from European countries. During this event, the preliminary results of the report on this topic, written for the “Centre of Law, Economics, and Finance” will be presented.The roundtable will address one of the key concerns of citizens in the Brexit referendum - immigration -by providing detailed and updated, statistics to evaluate its true impact on various socio-economic outcomes.

Featuring:

Presentation of the report “UK immigration after Brexit” written for the Centre for Law, Economics and Finance.
Matteo Pazzona (Brunel University London) and Federico Filauri (University of London)

Discussion on the results of the report and other related issues.
Matteo Pazzona (Brunel University London) and Marina Fernandes-Reino, The Migration Observatory (University of Oxford).

Providing students with the right academic support throughout their degree is a crucial element for successful completion of the degree and graduate outcomes. The purpose of this webinar is to provide insights into students' satisfaction with academic support in Psychology from data collected through one-to-one semi-structured interviews.

In addition, we will explore how our first year students understand and prioritise their skill development, particularly in relation to their expectations of their course and previous educational experiences using survey data. This will improve our understanding of the student experience which we can use to further enhance the programme and its provision of academic skills. A further aim of this session is to share good practice in teaching and learning.

A workshop delivered by Dr Daniel Bishop and Professor Simon Taylor focusing on research impact and exploring their journeys in identifying, making and evidencing impact in their work. The workshop will give examples of impact and examine the ways that impact can be supported through the University.

Join us on Tuesday 23 May from 11am to 3pm in the Newton room, where you can talk to our doctoral researchers about the wide range of multidisciplinary research from across all colleges and research institutes.

Whatever you are into, you can find out about new investigations into companion robots, sedentary behaviour and mental health, ethnicity and autism and climate change reporting in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Then return to the Newton room from 5-7pm for our barbecue and prize-giving with Dr Tina Ramkalawan, Director of the Graduate School. To help us manage the catering, please tell us if you’d like to come to the barbecue here.

Doctoral researchers could win:

• five Graduate School prizes of £300
• one Graduate School prize of £250 for the best poster presented by an early-stage researcher (0-12 month into their research or 0-24 months part-time)
• one Equality, Diversity and Inclusion prize of £200
• five Research theme prizes of £100
• two ‘Peer to Peer’ Prizes will be awarded for those who are participating in person which will be for top voted poster of £200 and runner up at £150.

30 years ago, Profs Martin Buxton and Steve Hanney started a pioneering programme assessing the impact of health research. They developed and applied the now widely used Payback Framework.  Later this portfolio of research increasingly turned to identifying the monetary value of the health gained as a result of health research, as well as working with the World Health Organisation (WHO) on how best to organise health research to maximise impacts.

The highly positive findings have been widely used by those trying to defend and expand the funding for health or medical research, and more broadly helped inform development of the REF in the UK. The discussion will include examples of current/recent studies such as on COVID-19 research, and the benefits of healthcare organisations being research active.The session will conclude with the launch of a WHO/Brunel agreement, which aims to form the basis of future impactful research, including in Nepal, in furtherance of the Sustainable Development Goals.

A special awards dinner for those shortlisted for the Reseach Impact Awards 2023.The Research Impact Awards celebrate outstanding achievement in translating research potential into significant academic, economic, social and cultural impact and are an important part of our commitment to our wider communities, locally, nationally and internationally.

This interactive masterclass will showcase the importance and application of qualitative methods in physical activity, health and behaviour change research. Members of the Centre for Physical Activity in Health and Disease (CPAHD) will present on the importance of qualitative research, e.g. for intervention development and understanding participant experiences in research and healthcare.

Attendees will take part in an interactive qualitative data analysis workshop to uncover the value of this methodology and to form ideas about how it can be used to enhance their areas of research. Our experts will demonstrate how qualitative research is central to intervention design and the development of guidelines and digital products to meet user needs.

This session is open to all academics and doctoral researchers who are interested in qualitative research methodology and exploring new collaborations.

Featuring:  Dr Ellen Castle, Dr Rebecca Hings, Dr Claire Nolan, Dr Daniel Bailey

Brunel University London’s Department of Mathematics are delighted to invite you to this year's Doctoral Researcher Symposium, filled with talks from our doctoral researchers and guest speakers, on a variety of topics: from algebraic geometry to quantum entanglement; with real-world applications on predicting credit risks to learning recovery trajectories of stroke survivors.

All talks will be delivered in LC063 within Brunel campus, while the poster session will be held in LC061. For those who cannot join us in person, there is provision for attending online, as the event will also be live streamed online. Details of the zoom log in will provided upon registration.

Learn about the work that is currently being undertaken in the Centre for Inflammation Research and Translational Medicine (CIRTM).
Our Doctoral Researchers, Post-doctoral Researchers and Early Career Researchers will be presenting their research work in the form of posters and oral communications. The oral presentations will be from 13:00-14:30.

The tour of the Environmental Sciences laboratories will focus on our analytical chemistry instrumentation.Our analytical facilities contain a wide range of analytical instrumentation including mass spectrometry, chromatography, and ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy. We are focused mainly on the analysis of environmental samples including water, wastewater, soil, air, plant materials and biota. During the tour, students will talk about their research work using these instruments.

The tour of the Biosciences high end facilities will cover the range of high-end equipment we have for research into various cellular diseases. Our facilities include an array of instrumentation for these purposes including gene expression readers, advanced fluorescent microscopes and flow cytometers. Our students will discuss examples of the results they have obtained from this equipment.

Brunel University London’s Department of Mathematics are delighted to invite you to this year's Doctoral Researcher Symposium, filled with talks from our doctoral researchers and guest speakers, on a variety of topics: from algebraic geometry to quantum entanglement; with real-world applications on predicting credit risks to learning recovery trajectories of stroke survivors.

All talks will be delivered in LC063 within Brunel campus, while the poster session will be held in LC061. For those who cannot join us in person, there is provision for attending online, as the event will also be live streamed online. Details of the zoom log in will provided upon registration.

How do our senses shape our idea of connection?
Join Valeria Perboni, Brunel’s Artist in Residence, for a very special first glimpse of her in-development process of artistic creation, exploring multisensory creativity with elements born from community engagement, in our immersive 360 dome.

Following this exploratory taste, you’re invited to join a very special conversation with Valeria and Professor Akram Khan, Brunel’s Public Engagement Champion and Professor of Experimental Particle Physics and High Performance Computing. Exploring the fundamental themes at the heart of this very special Residency, and the importance of Presence in a digital world, this conversation will bring us together to explore expression, communication and the role of creativity.

CONNECTION has been a keyword for the Residency so far, with sensory connection and connection to self & others as a pathway towards creative exploration. In this conversation, Valeria and Akram will discuss the types of connection that have emerged, their relevance in the context of the university and in the wider arts industry, and how sensory connection is a vital tool for creativity and wellbeing.

Join us for a workshop session, to learn about behaviour change and intervention design, as well as to brainstorm solutions related to a funding opportunity.

Planning models are useful to optimise public health solutions targeting behaviour change. A pragmatic approach informed by Intervention Mapping - in co-creation with the target population – has been successful to design (digital) health communication interventions. Key to this is to systematically map the underlying logic of the desired behavioural outcome, via change matrices and the identification of salient beliefs.

In this session, Dr. Kei Long Cheung will provide an introduction of various determinants and theories to enhance motivation and behaviours, and outline a pragmatic approach of Intervention Mapping to inform research and intervention design.
Then, we will create groups based on themes where we brainstorm solutions related to a funding opportunity. This will be facilitated by Dr. Terry Dovey.

A theatrical sound art performance exploring themes of nighttime synaesthetic psychosis.

Using a mix of both pre-recorded and live electronic sounds (that are manipulated in real-time by using infrared camera tracking), this performance aims to use gesture controlled sound to explore themes of synesthesia around dreams and nighttime thoughts.

The Centre for Entrepreneurship and Sustainability (College of Business, Arts and Social Sciences, Brunel University London) presents a session on ‘Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility’. Please join this free event to hear from our lab leaders, and from distinguished speakers and researchers.

Join us for an exciting exploration of the frontiers of design and technology at Brunel Design School.

Research activities within the Brunel Design School cover a range of topics related to cutting-edge design and technology. You will have the opportunity to learn from researchers studying Metaverse, immersive technologies, human-computer interaction, 4D printing, inclusive design, and sustainable design transitions.

The talks will be a great opportunity to gain insights into the latest developments in these areas and to engage with researchers who are pushing the boundaries of what is possible. The talks are free and open to all.

Do you like playing board games? Do you want to learn more about non-native and invasive species in the UK?

Then come and play "River Invasion". The aim of the game is to use your avatar/species' "specialist skills" to invade all the rivers first. To do this you'll need to answer questions and avoid your "arch enemies".

Lab tours and live demos showcasing different parts of the human brain, brain stimulation, and psychological experiments to understand brain function. Open to all, including children age 12+ accompanied by a responsible adult.

This event is brought to you by The Centre for Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience, which is led by Professor Veena Kumari. Veena and her colleagues are looking forward to meeting you.