Tag Archives: interdisciplinary

Call for Proposals: Sustainable Society: Achieving Work-Life Balance in a Digitally Dependent World

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The EPSRC are inviting Expressions of Interest to participate in a virtual workshop (a Creativity Greenhouse) on the topic of Sustainable Society. This will take place in two stages, 04 and 05 July, and 10-13 July. This is a ‘virtual’ remote collaborative workshop, which will take place using 3D collaborative software.

The Research Councils’ Digital Economy Theme invites expressions of interest from eligible individuals to attend a virtual workshop (a Creativity Greenhouse) on the challenge area of ‘Sustainable Society’. The aim of the workshop is to:

  • stimulate new thinking in promising areas of Digital Economy (DE) research
  • bring together researchers to create an integrated vision for future research, both those already working on DE, and others whose research could directly contribute
  • develop highly creative research ideas.

The Digital Economy Theme has allocated up to £1.5M to fund research arising from the workshop, to be taken up by genuinely novel and transformative approaches.

For more information on the virtual aspects of this workshop, please see the section entitled ‘A Virtual Workshop’ towards the end of the full call document.

Sustainable Society: Achieving work-life balance in a digitally dependent world (PDF 107KB)

Creativity Greenhouse: Sustainable Society – Expression of Interest Form (PDF 198KB)

Equal Opportunities form (PDF 95KB)

The closing date for Expressions of Interest is 12 noon on the 28th May 2012. For more information please visit the call page.

Change to the British Academy Email Alerts

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The British Academy has announced that they will be changing the way they manage their bulletin mailings and make bookings for events. If you are already signed up to receive the BA email alerts you will need to register with their new Online Services portal in order to continue receiving updates – and if you are not yet signed up here is a good opportunity to do so!

Please see below for the BA announcement and instructions on how to register with the new system:

We are writing to you as someone who has registered to receive regular email bulletins from the British Academy to let you know of changes we are introducing in 2012.  The Academy has created a new Online Services portal on its website which will be used to manage our bulletin mailings and to allow you to book places for all of our future events which require advance registration. We would therefore like to invite you to register with us now in order to continue to receive our email bulletins and to be able to make bookings for future events through this new system.

IN ORDER TO REGISTER ONTO OUR NEW SYSTEM PLEASE CLICK HERE: 

Once you have registered, please click on Update Details to register for future bulletins. The new system will enable you, as before, to select different categories of bulletin you wish to receive:

  • Information about grant applications
  • Information about forthcoming events
  • BA monthly newsletter (launching later this year)

PLEASE NOTE THAT AFTER 31 MARCH 2012 YOU WILL NO LONGER RECEIVE OUR EMAIL BULLETINS UNLESS YOU HAVE REGISTERED.

Please also note that access for Fellows of the British Academy will be via their existing Fellows-only area password, but registration to receive our bulletins is still required.

If you have difficulty completing the registration process please contact us for assistance. You can email us at onlineservices@britac.ac.uk.


Horticulture and Potato Initiative

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The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) in collaboration with the Scottish Government and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) invites proposals for its horticulture and potato initiative.

This initiative aims to support industrially relevant, high-quality research projects on potato and edible horticulture crops.

Six key ares where research is necessary to help improve food security have been identified through discussions between the funders and industry. These are:

  • Changing Seasons
  • Crop maturity and spoilage
  • Soil, pests and pathogens
  • Seed quality and vigour
  • Resource use efficiency.

Interdisciplinary approaches are particularly encouraged. All projects must have a minimum of one industry collaborator that is expected to have production, manufacturing or research sites in the UK.

£3.5 million is available to support several projects lasting up to five years. Industry partners are not eligible to receive funding and must cover their own costs for participation in the projects.

To aid the development of successful project ideas the BBSRC will be holding a workshop on 28 February to bring together interested companies and researchers. To register, please visit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/C6DLDY9 (external link)

For more information on the call, and outcomes of the meetings with industry, please visit the BBSRC website.

The Vision Works: Lincoln Research Sandpit

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PVC Research, Prof. Paul Stewart, has blogged about The Vision Works, a research “sandpit” to be held in Lincoln in the Spring.

Modelled on the Research Council sandpits, the event is designed to enable Lecturers and Senior Lecturers at Lincoln to work together on innovative and multi-disciplinary research proposals in an exciting, supportive and encouraging environment.

Funding of £100K is available to support the outputs of the Vision Works: this ranges from direct project funding to buying out teaching time.

Application forms will be available soon, with a deadline of 21st December. Participants selected to take part will be notified in early January, and the event itself will take place in April 2012. Paul will be disseminating more information about the event to research directors and senior academics soon, who will then support potential participants to apply.

Please read the flier (pictured right) or contact us to find out more.

Health Innovation Challenge Fund: Smart Surgery | Wellcome Trust

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The Wellcome Trust has recently announced the latest call for proposals in the Health Innovation Challenge Fund:

The Health Innovation Challenge Fund (HICF) is a parallel funding partnership between the Wellcome Trust and the Department of Health. The funders are collaborating to stimulate the creation of innovative healthcare products, technologies and interventions, and facilitate their development for the benefit of patients in the NHS and beyond.

The current call, which closes for preliminary applications on 28th April 2011, is Smart Surgery: Innovative technologies or interventions to reduce, replace or refine invasive surgical procedures. Here’s a summary of the key requirements for the call:

Smart Surgery, involving a replacement (or significant reduction) of invasiveness, will reduce trauma and recovery times, improve post-surgical management, decrease surgery-associated morbidity and mortality, shorten in-patient stays and lower healthcare costs.

The HICF is seeking solutions that will make a tangible difference, in particular:

1. New techniques that blend advances in software, technology and instrumentation, and which are designed and implemented through partnerships between leading surgeons and technical innovators.

2. Innovations which may lead to replacement of invasive surgery with a non-invasive procedure.

3. Improvements on current devices or instruments that demonstrably and significantly reduce the degree of surgical invasiveness.

4. Integrated systems capable of combining early diagnosis and identification of target areas prior to the surgical procedure, thus allowing immediate treatment.

5. Highly innovative and integrative approaches involving advanced technologies such as:

  • Computer-aided non-surgical methods.
  • Sophisticated guidance techniques that de-skill and de-risk surgical tasks.
  • Pre-investigative,image-guided assessments of surgical outcomes, e.g. through modelling of post-surgical states.
  • Use of electromagnetic or ultrasonic radiation to treat target areas/conditions
  • Targeted delivery of therapeutic cells or microparticles
  • Mechatronics and robotics.
  • Innovative strategies for recording and evaluating performance of new technologies e.g. embedded observational databases.
  • Technologies which improve the accuracy and/or precision of a procedure.

Universities, companies and NHS organisations are eligible to apply singly or in collaboration and in fact collaboration and multi-disciplinary working is strongly encouraged in the call. Please note that this is not a “proof of concept” fund – HCIF will only fund innovations which are ready to be translated into new technology. Scalability is also important: work will not be funded which relies on the skill of a single surgeon, for example.