Brunel Research Festival 2024

Brunel is leading a £2.6 m research grant, Park Royal Net Zero, to transform the food supply systems operating within West London’s Park Royal Industrial Estate.

This event will be aimed primarily at Brunel academic staff, but also at stakeholders within the Park Royal estate that may have interest in participating in the programme. The event will raise awareness of the programme and inform both academics, business, public sector and communities how they can get involved to undertake collaborative research projects, that will generate both research income and impact for Brunel. The session will help develop links that may add to REF2028 Impact case studies and enhance BUL KEF outcomes.

The event will also highlight some of the existing research and innovation projects that Brunel is undertaking within the food sector. We also look to facilitate where other research areas of Brunel could be applied to food sector, through sandpit discussions amongst interdisciplinary researchers.

Join us at Brunel University London's Research Festival for the exciting launch of our new User Groups: the Youth Action Group (YAG) and the Global Ethnic Majorities Action Group (GEMAG).

Discover how we're bringing diverse communities into the heart of research, fostering collaboration, and driving social change.
This interactive session will introduce you to the groups’ leads, showcase ongoing projects, and explore how you can contribute to shaping future research. Be part of the conversation and help set the agenda for impactful community-driven research.

You are invited to participate in an open forum seeking to examine and discuss issues faced by technical staff at Brunel and beyond. The session’s aim is to identify strategies borne out of discussion to support our vision of an inclusive research culture at Brunel. We look forward to hearing your ideas and perspectives.

We are delighted to invite you for the inaugural Brunel Annual Health Economics and Policy Forum, to be held on 14th May 2024, at Brunel University London. This esteemed event, in collaboration with the University of Oxford, represents a significant gathering of expert healthcare thought leaders, practitioners, public health professionals, and health policymakers.

Hosted by Brunel Business School's Healthcare and Wellbeing Management Area of Excellence, under the leadership of Prof Francesco Moscone this event provides a platform for meaningful knowledge exchange to inform and lead developments in the healthcare sector.

The healthcare sector dedicates substantial resources to addressing prevalent high-risk behaviours, from smoking and excessive alcohol consumption to sedentary lifestyles and digital addiction. Yet, envisioning a paradigm shift towards healthier habits presents a compelling vision for the future of healthcare.

The Brunel First Annual Health Economics and Policy Forum serves as a pivotal platform for leading experts and policymakers to engage in substantive discourse, exploring innovative strategies to optimise resource allocation and address critical health needs, particularly in the context of transitioning to reduced-risk products. 

Key Topics on the Agenda

Prepare to engage with an array of pertinent topics, including:

Evaluating the Economic Impact of Reduced-Risk Products

Delve into the nuanced economic implications of transitioning towards safer alternatives, examining potential ramifications for both healthcare expenditures and societal well-being.

Policy Frameworks for Promoting Public Health and Harm Reduction

Explore the development of robust policy frameworks aimed at promoting public health initiatives while mitigating the harmful effects of high-risk behaviours.

Healthcare System Resilience and Adaptation

Amidst a backdrop of perpetual change, delve into strategies for enhancing the resilience and adaptability of healthcare systems to meet evolving challenges.

Addressing Health Inequalities and Disparities

Engage in dialogue surrounding innovative solutions to mitigate health disparities, ensuring equitable access to healthcare resources and services for all individuals and communities.

This session is for all those who organise events as part of their role. 

Drop in to this surgery hosted by the Brunel Events Team.

• How to manage registrations - choice of platforms available.
• How to organise event logistics
• Brunel processes - forms, risk assessments, and more
• Top tips to promote your event and make sure it goes well

 You may wish to bring a laptop and details of any events you are currently working on. This session will be informal. For maximum benefit we suggest arriving at the advertised start time; feel free to drop in and out according to your availability.

Many researchers (and others in the Brunel community) do not have a good quality profile picture. This session will provide a convenient opportunity for people to get an up to date photo and make good use of the photographer's time compared with responding to ad-hoc requests.

Good quality images of Brunel researchers helps present a positive image of Brunel to the outside world.

More than half of the world's population faces elections in 2024.

What is likely to happen in the UK and US elections in 2024? A discussion of what to look out for and what to expect, with presentations and discussion from Brunel's leading election specialists.

Featuring:

Professor Justin Fisher, Director of Brunel Public Policy, Brunel University London

Professor Jeffrey Karp, Professor of Comparative Politics, Brunel University London

Join us and be part of the conversation.
A livestream option will be made available for those unable to travel.

Youtube Video

This is a new network - B-STAR (Brunel Space Travel Applied Research) Network that brings together, from across the university, all staff and researchers interested in and working on aspects of Space Research, Travel and Habitation.

This session will showcase a range of interdisciplinary projects that are already in progress and those that are being proposed and written. Thus, we will be introducing B-STAR's aims and objectives, highlighting our ideas and expertise in Space to an audience of interested attendees from the wider community, industry, Brunel staff and students.

Research Festival B-STAR speakers:

1.00pm Emmanouil Karteris - The effect of space travel on human placentation and pregnancy 

1.20pm David Smith - B4 Moon

1.40pm Pin Lean Lau - Biopunk Babies & Mars: Ethico-Legal Challenges of Ectogenesis in Extra-terrestrial Environments

2.00pm Sibylle Ermler – Space L(a)unch: the future of food production in space

2.20pm Hridyanshu Aatreya and Marzia Ghorbani - Simulation Exploration Experience: A Frontier for Distributed Simulations in Space.

2.40pm – 3.00pm BREAK – 20 mins 

3.00pm James Campbell – Space Debris and Impact on Spacecraft.

3.20pm Alessandro Esposito – How to lose weight on Earth. 

3.40pm Sean Cullen - Can space flight be inclusive for everyone?

4.00pm Joanna Bridger – BSTAR, projects, plans and potential

4.20pm Carly Randall - Brunel’s Space Archive of Brunel Institute for Bioengineering’s work

4.30pm Peter Jelfs and Gerard Conway - Ostrom’s Institutional Grammar and Categorising Legal Rules about Outer Space

4.50pm Questions and Chat

5.00pm END

This masterclass will take you through the various mechanisms and methods for external engagement with industry; developing your knowledge of how to find partners, undertake collaborative research, entrepreneurial training, commercialise research and create impact.

Join is to see how the university works with businesses large and small to bring cutting edge research to the development of new products and services.

Open Research, sometimes called Open Science or Open Scholarship, is about making research easy to find, transparent, re-usable and accessible to the public. It's a set of values and practices related to openness and transparency throughout the whole research cycle. 

Winners will be invited to present their examples of Open Research at our awards ceremony to celebrate the excellent work taking place across campus by our academics, research staff and Doctoral Researchers. 

Underground space development is a solution for the net-zero emission future. Underground space is more sustainable and resilient than above-ground buildings. 

For cities such as London, above-ground space is very limited and expensive, while underground space has a great potential to reach the balance between the distance and cost.Join this webinar to learn more about this research collaboration between Brunel University London and partners: Imperial College London, NCUT, Norwegian University of Science and Technology - NTNU.

Academic Hybrid Managers: Supporting those caught between a rock and a hard place

Funded by the BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants fund, this project investigates hybrid managers in higher education, specifically academic heads of department and the motivations and challenges of their role. 

This presentation will convey the findings to get views on our proposed model / typology of hybrid managers motivations.  We will also discuss leadership development provided for hybrid managers in higher education.   

This session enables us to engage with key members of the population who ultimately will benefit from our research.

Youtube Video

This event is designed to celebrate Brunel success in EU funding and to show advantages of working internationally.

Brunel has a long history of successful bidding for European funding and of managing EU projects. In the current Workprogramme, Horizon Europe, Brunel has so far secured 36 projects with a total value to Brunel of over €14€ M.

Our three distinguished speakers from CBASS, CHMLS and CEDPS will share their experience of working in EU funded collaborative projects and will give some tips for success.

The programme:

12.00 – 12.10 Funding as the route for internalisation of your research and boosting your career   Professor Simon Taylor (CEDPS Vice Dean Research)

12.10 – 12.15 Brunel success in EU funding programmes (Dr Yulia Matskevich, RSDO)

12.15 – 12.45  Dr Eujin Pei (CEDPS)

12.45 - 13.10 Professor  Afshin Mansouri (CBASS)

13.10 – 13.35 Mr  Martin Scholze (CHMLS)

13.35 – 14.00   Professor Xiangming Zhou  (MSCA, CEDPS)

Youtube Video

The online session, aligned with the research agenda of the Brunel Centre for AI and of the Brunel Institute of Digital Futures, will showcase interdisciplinary Brunel research on applications of artificial intelligence to improve health and wellbeing. Everyone interested in digital health and wellbeing technology along dimensions of technology development, human-centred design, ethics, and regulation is welcome to attend.

The introduction of ChatGPT has changed the Higher Education landscape. Whilst it is important to adapt to this, we need to know what students understand and know about these tools before we develop guides and teaching sessions for them. 

Despite much work the term "authentic assessment" lacks an agreed definition, leading to ambiguity and controversy over the utility of the term. Our work aims to increase transparency and consistency in evaluating authenticity of assessments using a standardised measure of authenticity based on previously published frameworks. We have developed a tool to measure authenticity in two dimensions, product and process, via a user-friendly survey whose results are displayed graphically.

The term Authentic Assessment was coined in the 1990s in direct distinction to traditional, standardised testing in the US school system (Wiggins, 1990). The nature of authenticity is somewhat vague (Ajjawi et al. 2020) and attempts to describe it have been qualitative and subjective. To address these ambiguities, the purpose of this study was to increase the transparency and consistency of the view of levels of authenticity in assessments by defining and quantifying key aspects of it. To achieve this aim, we developed a standardized measure of authenticity based previous studies (Gulikers, Bastiaens, & Kirschner, 2004; Ashford-Rowe et al., 2014). 

This will enable other educators to assess the authenticity of the assessments on their programmes, and to facilitate an open and informed dialogue about what authenticity means in different contexts.

Research has a sustainability issue from the use of single-use plastics through to the generation and storage of huge data files. Brunel has a role to respond to the sector-wide shift to include sustainability criteria as an assessed part of grants. But it is at the benchtop level that every researcher or staff member has a role to play to reduce our environmental impact. This workshop aims to review the work being undertaken using examples drawn from CHMLS (College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences) but often relevant to all disciplines. The workshop aims to be a catalyst for incorporating sustainability measures within all research.

Come along and learn more about artificial intelligence, data, sensors and robotics.

The session will involve keynote speakers from industry and presentations from Brunel researchers talking about the work they have done developing AI/Sensor/Robotic solutions for real-world applications.

The session will support the recent UK/EU drive towards developing safe and trusted physical human-robot interaction. The session will culminate in a facilitated networking discussions regarding future research and direction of travel for the application of AI, Robots and advanced sensing technology for the following industrial applications:

• Agriculture/Agri-tech
• First Responders & Hazardous Environments
• Industrial Robots (maintenance and operation)

Speaker list (subject to confirmation):

• Tatiana Kalganova (Brunel)
• Mingfeng Wang (Brunel)
• Yohan Noh (Brunel)
• Michael Rustell (Brunel)
• External - TBC

The session will close with an optional tour of the Robotics Lab in the Wilfred Brown Building (STEM Centre).

The event is open to industry, public and other external organisations.

You may have read or heard that hydrogen is “the next big thing”, or “the solution to getting to Net Zero”, or various other bold statements. But whether this is the case - or not - most people simply know little about hydrogen. On-line searches provide lots of technical information which is not very helpful if you simply want to understand why hydrogen might be relevant to you and your community. Or not.

Join us for this informal discussion about hydrogen research at Brunel. Learn more about hydrogen and the hydrogen economy.

Ask questions and tell us what you think.

• What actually is hydrogen?
• Why is it 'flavour of the month'?
• Why is it important?
• Where and why might hydrogen be used?
• What might be the benefits?
• What might be the issues?
• Why this might be relevant to you?
• What Brunel is doing

The event will finish with an insight into what Brunel is doing in Hydrogen.

No previous knowledge is required, no technical language is used, and there are demonstrations and real life hands-on examples.

The session will be delivered by Dr Averil Horton, who is the lead for Brunel Hydrogen and has much experience in providing practical understandings and interesting demonstrations.

Listen to experts from industry and academia talking about research on the use of gaming culture in support of education and life-long learning. The session will support the recent publication of the UK government DCMS (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) report on video games and education.

The session will culminate with facilitated discussions regarding future research, CPD and industry response to the DCMS report.

Find out about exciting partnership work between Brunel Unversity London researchers and Checkpoint Magazine to evaluate their learning materials and the supporting pedagogy.

Opportunity to participate in Q&A/discussion.

The session will close with an optional tour of our new Games Design Research Lab. This will involve walking to a different building on the Brunel University London campus.

Come and meet the biomedical sciences research teams at Brunel University London, including our talented Doctoral Researchers and Early Career Researchers. Highlights of the day include:

Poster exhibition where you can meet the scientists working at the cutting edge of medical research, seeking to bring real benefits to prevent, treat and cure illness, showcasing the work of the Centre for Genome Engineering and Maintenance and the Centre for Inflammation Research and Translational MedicineOral Presentations (also available online) showcasing the work of the Centre for Inflammation Research and Translational MedicineMeet our exceptional technical team, who will take you on behind the scenes tours of our life sciences laboratories and facilities (sign up on the day, multiple time slots available) - including biomedical sciences and environmental sciences

Brought to you by:

• Centre for Inflammation Research and Translational Medicine (CIRTM) | Brunel University London
• Centre for Genome Engineering and Maintenance | Brunel University London
• Specialist Technician Teams

Light refreshments will be provided.

The sandpit event will be an opportunity to come up with creative interdisciplinary projects based on Brunel experts in different departments. It is an exciting chance to think outside of the box!

This event will be open to all interested members of the University (staff and doctoral researchers), and we welcome contributions from other departments!

A research sandpit brought to you by the Smart Technology Advancements for Health and Rehabilitation Centre (STAHR) to promote collaboration and develop research ideas with the NHS, businesses and academics.  Seed topic areas for the event will be:

• Theme 1: Novel digital interventions for under-served groups.
• Theme 2: Health and Rehabilitation in the virtual world. 
• Theme 3: Generative AI interventions for health and social care.
• Theme 4: Virtual clinical training technologies for workforce development.
• Theme 5: Realising the value of clinical data collections with AI.

This session will be facilitated by Dr David Bell and Professor Joy Conway

BRAMNet is Brunel's network of professional staff who support research. Our first full in-person networking event was in the 2023 Research Festival and this is now an annual fixture.

This year we are proposing a fuller programme of activities with internal and external speakers to support our knowledge of the wider research space and improve our network. 

Following on from the success of last year's “Qualitative Research Masterclass” event at the Research Festival, this year the team are launching the Qualitative Research Café.

The Qualitative Research Café is a collaborative, creative and community space for anyone with an interest in qualitative research.  At this launch event, we invite attendees to co-create a vision for the Qualitative Research Café in terms of its purpose, potential, and organisation. Attendees are welcome to bring their initial ideas, plans or results of qualitative/mixed methods research and/or grants for discussion.

This event aims to bring together different stakeholders to discuss critical issues pertinent to unlocking social impact for sustainable development. Academics, businesses, organisations and policy makers are welcome to attend to share knowledge and best practice on creating, capturing and measuring social impact, as well as investing in social impact.

• Social impact is of considerable significance to businesses and organisations to meet the UN's SDG goals.
• Unlocking social impact to balance economic value-adding with social and environmental outcomes is on the agenda of many organisations. This event offers an opportunity for different stakeholders to share knowledge. 
• This event will build on the expertise of the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Sustainability, and provide a platform for academics, businesses, organisations and policy makers to work together on critical issues surrounding social impact. 

This year’s PGR symposium will be held in hybrid mode; in-person talks will be delivered in Lecture Theatres LC063 and LC065 and the event will also be live streamed online. Please register to attend the Symposium.

Details of the Zoom link will be provided post registration.
 
Thursday 23rd May

Morning Session.

Chair: Alexander

10:00 - 10:15 Arrival
10:15 - 10:25 Welcome note from Head of the Department of Mathematics
10:30 - 11:25 Talk by Jessica Hawthorne (Earth Sc, Oxford)
11:25 - 11:50 Talk by Brunel Mathematics Doctoral Researcher: Kane Warrior
11:50 - 12:05 Coffee break
12:05 - 12:55 Talks by Brunel Mathematics Doctoral Researchers: Joe Zhang; Mykolas Grublys.
 
Afternoon Session.

Chair: Joe

14:30 - 15:25 Talk by George Rayment (a DR in Essex)
15:30 - 15:55 Talk by Brunel Mathematics Doctoral Researcher: Steven Ball
15:55 - 16:10 Coffee break
16:10 - 17:25 Talks by Brunel Mathematics Doctoral Researchers: Alexander Gladilin; Jugraj Deol; Vittorio Penco.

What forms has decolonisation adopted and how have processes of decolonisation shaped contemporary societies? How might we incorporate concepts of decolonisation into our research and pedagogical practice? How does the past shape the present? And is decolonisation always the best word to use? This roundtable brings into conversation historians, scholars of film and of education to discuss these questions in the context of their own experiences- as researchers, as teachers, in community engagement and as activists.

SPEAKERS:

DR INGE DORNAN

Inge Dornan is a historian of race and gender in Britain and the Americas. Her most recent public engagement project 'Unlocking the Secrets of Britain's Slave Past' has included walking tours to uncover the hidden narratives of British slavery in the built landscape of Hillingdon and Uxbridge; a specially curated exhibition with Brunel University London Archives on the British and Foreign School Society and the education of enslaved children in the British Caribbean; and an award-winning heritage production on the British slave trade, Breaking the Silence, (co-written with theatre director and academic, Dr Holly Maples). These events led to the award for Public Engagement at Brunel University London's inaugural Research Impact Awards and were followed by a sell-out tour in 2021 and a further tour in 2023.

DR GEETA LUDHRA

Geeta is a Lecturer in Education and Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) at Brunel University. She has a background in school teaching and leadership, and is very committed to issues around social justice, anti-racism and inclusion in educational and nature spaces. Alongside her academic work, Geeta leads a registered community social enterprise called Dadima’s CIC, where she organises free monthly nature events, with a particular focus on the inclusion of people of colour in rural spaces, building on personal experiences of (un)belonging. These monthly walks include a casual educational dimension, with guest speakers and nature ‘experts’, to include members of the community. Geeta’s grassroots community work has led her on an exciting EDI journey in the nature sector, where she works for and volunteers with various nature organisations, to critically reflect on their EDI approaches, embeddedness and impact. Geeta enjoys reading nature books of all kinds and has thoroughly enjoyed Corinne Fowler’s ‘Our Island Stories’.

PROFESSOR DANIELE RUGO

Daniele is an award-winning filmmaker and scholar. His main interests are in documentary and conflict, world cinema and film-philosophy. His most recent film The Soil and The Sea (2023) - with a text by writer Elias Khoury - unveils the violence lying beneath a garden, a school, a cafe, a hotel, and other unremarkable landscapes, in a search for mass graves from Lebanon's Civil War. His previous film About a War (2018) explored violence and change through the testimonies of former fighters from the same conflict. He also works on landscape and environmental films.

DR STEVEN WAGNER

Steven is an historian of intelligence, security, empire and the modern Middle East. His work is based on records in the UK, USA, and Israel and he has published widely on the story of the Palestine

The Royal Historical Society presents a public lecture from Professor Corinne Fowler exploring British countryside and colonialism

The countryside is cherished by many Britons. There is a depth of feeling about rural places: moors and lochs, valleys and mountains, cottages and country houses. Yet the British countryside, so integral to narratives of nationhood and belonging (and also exclusion), is rarely seen as having anything to do with colonialism. Focusing on the many connections between imperial wealth and British landscapes, this lecture explores how empire affected rural labour and country life. The profits of overseas colonial activities, and the select few who benefited, heralded change which was not merely expressed in the designed landscapes of country estates but also by enclosure, landownership and dispossession. Generally considered separately, this talk considers how these intertwined histories continue to shape lives across Britain today.

Click here for more information and registration

Youtube Video

This presentation will unveil the preliminary findings of the second edition of "UK Immigration After Brexit," a publication commissioned by the Brunel Centre of Law, Economics, and Finance. These results will lay the groundwork for a comprehensive discussion on recent trends in work-related, student, and irregular immigration. A particular focus will be placed on understanding how changes in migration rules will impact the higher education sector, along with the externalization policies for asylum seekers. The report will be presented by Federico Filauri, with Matteo Pazzona serving as the moderator for the roundtable discussion. Other panel members include Matilde Rosina and Ermioni Xanthopoulou, both academics at Brunel. Additionally, an external migration expert will be part of the panel. Nevertheless, there will be ample space for discussion with the audience.

Youtube Video

This Grant ‘Writing Bootcamp’ is designed to support two areas of grant writing in small group or 1:1 clinics (online). Attendees will need to sign up to one session outlined below and engage in suggested pre-session activities

1.      Grant Writing - Early Scoping

This session is for those who have not written and submitted a grant before. Discussions will focus on developing ideas, identifying internal and external collaborations, securing and presenting the best team, and scoping grant application opportunities.

Attendees will need to complete and bring the following to the session

 

• At least one potential research question, project or area of research for which funding can be sought
• List of existing and/or potential internal and external collaborators
• Outline of project team including roles and responsibilities
• Identification of at least one relevant funding body and opportunity for grant submission

 

2.      Grant Writing – Developing Grants

This session is for those who have written and submitted a grant before and currently have an idea for a grant application. Discussions, feedback and support will be offered in this session and will focus on developing key written components of a grant application. Attendees will be at different stages of grant writing but must be able to share the following information in written form with workshop leads by 17^th May midday (to louise.mansfield@brunel.ac.uk):

 

• Project aims & objectives (max 200 words)
• Background and justification for the project (max 350 words)
• Outline of potential project team (max 200 words)

This year’s PGR symposium will be held in hybrid mode; in-person talks will be delivered in Lecture Theatres LC063 and LC065 and the event will also be live streamed online. Please register to attend the Symposium.

Details of the Zoom link will be provided post registration.

Friday 24th May

Morning Session.

Chair: Kane

10:30 - 11:25 Talk by Alejandro Diaz (Applied Maths, UCL)
11:30 - 11:55 Talk by Brunel Mathematics Doctoral Researcher: Gargi Roy
11:55 - 12:10 Coffee break
12:10 - 13:30 Talks by Brunel Mathematics Doctoral Researchers: Anisa Hassan; Qikang Liao; Sanna Soomro.
 
Afternoon Session.

Chair: Jugraj

15:00 - 15:55 Talk (online) by Debarghya GhoshDastidar (Theoretical Foundations of AI, Technical University of Munich)
16:00 - 16:30 Talk by Brunel Mathematics Doctoral Researchers: Dongchen Jiao
16:30 - 17:00 Panel discussion. DRs to discuss issues regarding their doctoral experience.
17:00 - 17:15 Prize distribution

The session will demonstrate the multidisciplinary nature of the work fostered and facilitated by BPACHS, the interface with NHS partners that BPACHS offers, and the collaborative research and Innovation projects that have been developed. This will inform colleagues about the possible collaborations that can be formed and the access to clinical expertise that BPACHS enables.

Drawing from our teaching and research in the Global Challenges department, the session will delve into the multifaceted concept of permacrisis and its implications for individuals, communities, and the planet at large. Permacrisis refers to the persistent and interconnected state of crisis, where climate change and biodiversity loss reinforce socioeconomic inequalities and geopolitical instability, each exacerbating the other in a vicious cycle.

The attendees will gain a nuanced understanding of permacrisis, its underlying causes and systemic nature. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives from fields such as ecology, economics, sociology, and political science, we will explore the complex web of factors contributing to permacrisis. That exploration would include coping strategies such as resilience. 

The session will equip attendees with practical strategies and tools for navigating permacrisis at both individual and community levels. Finally, we will reflect upon the need to engage incollective action and systemic change through a culture of dialogue and collaboration.

Brunel Engineers Plus is a networking opportunity for students to showcase their project work to visitors from business and industry.

The showcase features the project work of around 80 students in the Departments of Engineering (Chemical, Civil, Electronic & Electrical, Mechanical & Aerospace) and Mathematics, who are finalists of MEng, BEng or BSc courses. Brunel Engineers Plus is part of the Brunel Research Festival, and will be held in the Wilfred Brown Atrium on campus in Uxbridge.

The outline programme for the evening event is:

17:00 – 17:30     Welcome

18:00 - 19:30     Industry judges will be touring the exhibition (Exhibitors MUST be present for the judging!); networking over a buffet supper

19:30 – 20:00     Judges make final selection

20:00 – 20:30     Announcement of Awards

20:30 – 21:00     Farewells

Join us on our 3rd public open day, where we will be spotlighting Brunel’s ageing-related research excellence and contributions to Health and Wellbeing across the Lifecourse.

Highlights include:

• Research participation opportunities
• Health MOT
• Test your balance and co-ordination!
• Happy to Chat project
• Poster exhibition - meet the researchers, research updates exhibition
• A Sneak Peak into the memory clinic
• Lab/facilities tours (sign up 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

Linked events on the same day (same building):

10am, midday. Knitting Stories pilot workshops: If you are an experienced knitter, with memories of knitting pre 1960, why not read more and sign up for one of our workshops. Places are strictly limited, bring your own needles (3.75-4.5mm recommended).

3-5pm Presentations/workshop. Socially Inclusive Ageing across the Life-course: emerging messages from older minority groups for health, social work and social care practitioners. Book here or sign up on the day (subject to space).

 

We are pleased to invite you to participate in our one-day symposium on ‘Structural Integrity’ to be held at Brunel University London. The Symposium, organized by Brunel’s Institute of Materials & Manufacturing, covers a broad spectrum of topics related to structural durability, fracture mechanics, material processing and simulation. 

Click here for more information and registration

Programme
10.00: Welcome: Professor Hamid Bahai, Director of Brunel Institute of Materials & Manufacturing.
10.10: Professor Hua Zhao, Pro Vice-Chancellor Research: Brunel’s Research
10.20: Dr Giulio Alfano: Experimental testing and numerical modelling of adhesive joints
10.40: Professor Rade Vignjevic:  Main Research Activities at the Centre for Assessment of Structures and Materials under Extreme Conditions (CASMEC)
11.00: Dr James Campbell: High strain rate material behaviour
11.20: Coffee break
11.50: Dr Mian Zhou: Materials process modelling at BCAST
12.10: Dr Marius Gintalas: Treatment of crack-tip constraint in defect assessment procedures
12.30: Dr Rui Cardoso:  Development of finite element techniques for structural integrity and manufacturing
12.50: Lunch break
14.00: Keynote Speech:  Professor John Dear, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London:  Modelling Impact and Repair of Composites for Sustainability
14.30: Dr Farzaneh Ghalamzan:  Hydro-mechanical Modelling of CO2 Injection in Deformable Porous Media  
14.50: Dr Ian Stone: Towards Full Metal Circulation
15.10: Dr Akram Zitoun: Exploring advanced structural Integrity Innovation and solutions at the Brunel Composites Centre
15.30: Tour of Brunel’s facilities
17:00: Professor Simon Shaw - Inaugural Lecture:  From Machine Tools to Machine Learning - via decay, dead poets, heart disease and finite elements.

Click here for more information and registration

If we aim to provide better health and social care services for older people, we need to get away from one-dimensional approaches that do not look beyond age or illness and disability. At this session we present early findings from a 3-year study on Socially Inclusive Ageing across the Life-course (SIAL).

Our focus is on three groups of older people that are sometimes overlooked:

• People ageing with a lifelong disability or significant health condition
• People from racially minoritised ethnic groups,
• People who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or trans LGBTQ+

We will explain what we can learn about these groups from large-scale surveys. We will also present spoken word, video and text clips from interviews we have carried out with older people about ageing and their experience of health and social care services.

We will explore the complexities of aspects of identity including ethnicity, sexuality, gender identity and age. We want to help practitioners in health, social care and allied professions understand how identity affects inequalities and how we can use this understanding to develop the kinds of services older people from minority groups tell us they want.

This event takes place in the same location as the Ageing Research Showcase, starting at 10am. Please register separately for that event. 

From Machine Tools to Machine Learning - via decay, dead poets, heart disease and finite elements.

Now Professor of Mathematics at Brunel, Simon Shaw's route to academia and to impactful research is unique...

I hated school, studied A levels at home but didn't take the exams, was apprenticed but the factory went bust, finished night school by doing odd jobs, did Mechanical Engineering but treated it as applied maths, became a designer but the business went bust (again), took an Engineering MSc (yet more applied maths) to become a consultant, but a finite element PhD lured me to Brunel.

I loved the research and still do: the approximation of decay and hysteresis. I did as much teaching as I could, and with the help of some Dead Poets forgot the consultancy ambition and decided that teaching and research was my path. Years spent on theorems and coding in research, and then a major application to heart disease gave it all meaning I had never dreamt of...

Simon is joint Head of Department, but also enjoying the mutual benefits of an industry knowledge transfer partnership. Simon's impactful research using computational mathematics and machine learning as a noninvasive means of screening for coronary artery disease is now being commercially spun out.

"I was apprenticed to be - in archaic terms - a journeyman.... It's been some journey!"

 Simon hopes you can join him for a drinks reception after the event.

Click here for more information and registration

Youtube Video

The Doctoral Research Poster Conference, organised by the Graduate School, aims to bring together researchers from all colleges and institutes to showcase the high calibre of doctoral research being carried out across Brunel. 
The conference provides a multidisciplinary platform for researchers to showcase their work, enhance their professional development, and receive expert feedback on their research. 
Importantly, the event also acts as a focal point for the research student community, encouraging collegiality and opportunities for networking and exploring potential interdisciplinary collaboration. 
Doctoral researchers will be required to present their research to a varied audience, including academic judges (some from outside their discipline), your peers, and members of the public from outside of the university .
In addition to judge's prizes, all participants will also be eligible for peer-to-peer prizes voted for by their fellow Doctoral Researchers.

The conference is open for public viewing 11am - 3pm. Please drop in to the Hamilton Centre hospitality suite. The entrance  to the hospitality suite is here. Refreshments will be available. There is no need to book for the daytime viewing.

From 5.30pm - 7.30pm there will be an evening prize giving reception: book your place

Exploring harm and justice research at Brunel: A conversation hosted by the Brunel University Harm and Justice Research Group

The Harm and Justice Research Group (HJRG) is a new and exciting research group created this year. We would like to use the Research Festival as a launch event for our growing group of members to showcase the many ways and approaches we have at Brunel to studying harm and justice. The HJRG was initially created by member of the new Criminology Team to showcase the diversity and elasticity of the work done in the criminology discipline. This has meant growing our research group to include other disciplines to engage in a deeper exploration of the subject of harm and justice.

In this session we aim to engage more broadly with the community in these conversations, to explore different forms of violence, vulnerability, and victimisation in our contemporary society and environment. We believe that the session will provide a valuable conversation that bridges academic silos, whilst engaging the community with discussion on the various ways harm presents itself, what is justice, and how to achieve it. 

Join us for an exciting exploration of the contemporary topics of design research at the Brunel Research Festival!

You will have the opportunity to learn from researchers studying immersive technologies, human-machine interaction, inclusive design, creative industries, 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. International speakers are invited by the Brunel Design Research Centre to share insights. The talks are free and open to all.

Youtube Video

Join us for the first ever Brunel Research Jamboree! This day will give you the opportunity to tell us what you think and learn more about Brunel research.

There will be a variety of activities for all ages, 0-100+

• River Invasion board game
• Research treasure trail around the Brunel campus - all day
• Ludo Flamenco guitar performance
• Happy to Chat
• Cells & Chromosomes, Genes & Genomes: get stuck in to create the artwork
• Birdhouse soundscapes: location of birdhouses - all day
• And more…

There will be NO:

• Lectures
• Talks
• Panel Discussions
• Or anything else that requires you to sit still and listen

Some activities may be messy (paint!). Some may involve walking around the Brunel campus. All are optional. The day will be based in the marquee on Bishops Green, opposite the Sport Centre, and elsewhere on campus.

An indication of timings on the day:

11:30 Ludo Flamenco Guitar
Dr. B.A. Ferguson performs classic and new video game music on the guitar in the flamenco style.

12:00 Research Café
An opportunity for informal conversations, over a cuppa, with leading expert across a range of areas. Burning questions about the universe? Join a table with our Experimental Particle Physicist! Curious about the human genome? Ask our Professor of Biosciences!

13:00 Cells & Chromosomes, Genes & Genomes: Art Workshop
Get stuck in and help co-create an artwork in this interactive arts workshop, led by Professor Jo Bridger, Director of the Centre for Genome Engineering and Maintenance (cenGEM). This session will run from 1-3pm. Spaces are limited.

14:00 River Invasion: The Board Game
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".

Pop in for an hour or two, or stay all day - it's up to you!

An e-permit for parking is available on request; details will be in your confirmation email.

Click here for more information and registration

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Ageing Research

Online webinar

Friday 31st May

10-12 am

Chair: Dr Wendy Martin

Loneliness and Social Isolation in People with Dementia and Carers: findings from the IDEAL programme

Isla Rippon and Christina Victor (on behalf of IDEAL programme)

Department of Health Sciences

Engaging Older People in Workshop with Robot Prototype

Chuxuan Xu and Hua Dong

Brunel Design School

Fighting Age-Related Changes: Simple Ways to Boost Your Immunity and Reduce Inflammation

Felicity Gavins 

Biosciences Division, Department of Life Sciences. 

Managing sarcopenia and independent living through reductions in sedentary behaviour: The Frail-LESS intervention

Daniel Bailey, Cherry Kilbride and Christina Victor

Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences Division, Department of Life Sciences, and Department of Health Sciences

 
Towards a framework of healthy ageing practices - A consumer-centric approach to understanding how ageing consumers’ day-to-day practices affect their wellbeing

Dorothy Yen, Geraldine Cohen, Liyuan Wei, Yousra Asaad

Brunel Business School

Youtube Video

The dominant knowledge and imagination of the Himalayas have been largely constructed through a colonial-Eurocentric lens, which not only obscures the lived realities of people living therein but also their indigenous histories. Furthermore, traditional research approaches often involves a uni-directional flow of knowledge from 'experts' to the 'public' rather than embedding communities within a participatory process of mutual knowledge creation.

This public-engagement project is aimed at re-defining the public imagination of the Eastern Himalayas through the lens of its indigenous communities located in the UK diaspora. The project is funded by the British Academy under its SHAPE Involve and Engage Grant (2023-2024) in partnership with the Royal Geographical Society- Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG), which houses one of the largest collections of archival materials on the Himalayan regions.

It is partnered with three UK based Himalayan indigenous diaspora community organisations:

• Kirat Yakthung Chumlung (KYC Ashford, UK)
• Kirat Rai Yayokkha (KRY Ashford, UK)
• World Newah Organization UK Chapter (WNOUK).

It also features UK based independent dance artist, Sandhaya Gurung. 

The project is led by Dr Rohini Rai, Lecturer in Sociology of Race at Brunel. The project is supported by the Critical Himalayan Collective as the key promotions and engagement partner.

This project involves two key public engagement activities:

• Reimagining the Himalayas through indigenous storywork: This day-long workshop-style event at the RGS will take place on 31 May 2024, by invitation only, and will include 'storytelling through dancing' workshop involving traditional indigenous dance forms such as 'Silli', 'Chyabrung', 'Lakhey' and ‘Ghatu’ nach from the Himalayan region. This day will also include a walking tour within the RGS' Foyle Reading Room, where the public can directly engage with the displayed archival materials (photos, maps, artefacts, etc.) with the aim to ‘open up’ colonial archives to the communities’.
• Digital exhibition: The stories gathered and archival materials will be curated within a digital exhibition titled, ‘Reimagining the Himalayas’ that will be launched in July 2024.