Business School PGR Awards 2016

Posted on 15th Dec, 2016 by Doctoral College

This years Business School Postgraduate Research Awards were held on June 17 2016. Awards include Postgraduate Research Champion (Student and Staff) and Best Presentation (each discipline) winners from the day included:

Postgraduate Research Champion (Student) 2016- Hugh Waters

Hugh Waters is a highly active and engaged PGR.
Hugh was successful in securing external funds to run a Great Ideas Start with Discussion initiative. This comprised forums to discuss topics across the PGR community in which speakers were invited to attend.
He was successful in securing additional funds to run a collaboration conference, held at the University of Exeter. PGR students across Bristol, Bath and Exeter were invited to attend the conference and present their research or a poster. Speakers were also invited to discuss the topic of collaboration.
Both of these have been highly successful and attended by PGRs across the university, allowing the PGR community to develop professional and friendship connections within disciplines and within and across universities.

Postgraduate Research Champion (Staff) 2016- Professor Gareth Shaw

Professor Gareth Shaw is a highly supportive supervisor.
He provides critical, complementary and timely feedback to work submitted without fail.
He is adaptive to the needs of the student whilst being able to guide the student through their studies.
Gareth encourages his students to engage with the research community within and external to the university. He provides suggestions for training schools and collaboration.

Best Presentation Winners at the annual Business School Postgraduate Research Conference

Accounting– Festo Nyende Tusubira
Economics– Lorenz Harmann
Finance– Ozkan Haykir
Management Studies– Louisa Hood
Organisation Studies– Matt Gitsham

Atheer Hameed- ICSAE 2016

Posted on 13th Dec, 2016 by Doctoral College

The First International Conference for Students on Applied Engineering (ICSAE 2016) was successfully held in Newcastle upon Tyne from 20 to 21 October 2016. More than 90 papers were scheduled for oral and poster presentations over the two days of the conference and will be published by IEEEXplore. University of Exeter (UK) PhD student Atheer Hameed of the Vibration Engineering Section, did an exceptional job, not only initiating, but also co-chairing the conference as well.

The event hosted Professor Masayoshi Esashi (Tohoku University, Japan) and Professor Kenneth Dalgarno (Newcastle University, UK) as keynote speakers, who inspired the audience with their outstanding ideas and informative speeches

Nearly 150 participants on each of the two days of the conference, who included authors, non-authors, exhibitors, sponsors and invited guests, witnessed the Opening and Closing Remarks on the 20 and 21 October. One highlight was the opening speech of Professor Phillip Wright (Pro-Vice-Chancellor for the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering, Newcastle University, UK) who addressed the attendees with a very warm welcome message on the first day. Another highlight was the presentation of the Best Paper Awards for the best 12 papers (as scored by a panel of 30 international experts), Best Poster Awards for the best 12 posters (as scored by three experienced judges), and Women in Science Awards (for female authors).

Atheer said: “Right from the early stages of preparations this conference had attracted more than 160 researchers from 62 different institutions from 15 countries. This reflects the diversity of this conference, which we are very proud of. Each paper went through a rigorous reviewing process, which was made possible by the help of more than 30 esteemed reviewers, which we really appreciate.. We worked tirelessly as a diverse team, for more than 10 months, to bring this event to life. The team comprises 21 postgraduate students from eight different universities. Here, I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who participated in the success of this event”.

Atheer added: “The impact of this event is evident from the successful collaboration between related institutions and academia, improving postgraduate researchers’ abilities by putting them in contact with like-minded peers, and ultimately a contribution to the field of engineering by means of published conference proceedings.”

Atheer concluded: “Since the conference was very successful, we are considering making it an annual event – especially as there are few bodies who are interested in sponsoring it.”

For more information, please visit http://www.icsae.co.uk

Early Career Researcher Network CEMPS

Posted on 13th Dec, 2016 by Doctoral College

2016 has been a busy year for the Early Career Researcher Network (ECRN) in CEMPS, we have run a number of events with the aim of building a supportive community for early career researchers across the college, helping researchers to get to know other researchers outside their research group.

In June the ECRN had a “relaunch” event where we highlighted what the aims of the ECRN were and what support was available. This included a lunch, talks from the heads of discipline, a poster session and the opportunity for people to give a 60s elevator pitch on their research. Prizes were awarded for the best elevator pitch and posters, and we encouraged everyone to think about what makes a great poster by introducing a peer marking scheme for the posters.

“ECRs networking during the poster session at the relaunch event”

We have also run specific workshops for early career researchers. In April we ran a promotions workshop for postdoctoral researchers with advice from both HR and academics on what the promotions process involves and what you can do to maximise your chances of success. On the 25^th October we ran a finding funding workshop with advice from Dr Debbie Marsden on the college support available for grant applications and an opportunity to build a data base of suitable opportunities for early career researchers.

Finally, on the 8th of December the ECRN held a Christmas social with festive food and activities. One of the activities was for people to write an abstract describing their research using only the 1000 most common words in the English language, prizes were awarded for the best abstracts and everyone had the challenge of matching them to their scientific titles.

“Crackers, hats and science fun at the Christmas social”

“Well done to all the winners of the ECRN competitions this year.”

We would like to say thank-you to the research led initiative (RLI) award and funding from the college for making these events possible and we are looking forward to running many more events in 2017.

Best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

CEMPS ECRN

Exeter Startup Weekend- Winners- Dot_IT

Posted on 8th Dec, 2016 by Doctoral College

The winners of this years Exeter Startup Weekend competition were Dot_IT. The event took place on 20th November 2016 in the University of Exeter Innovation centre. Team Dot_IT who were declared joint winners with Collabnation, have told us a little more about their business idea:

“Dot_IT is a smart screen specially designed for visually impaired people. Dot_IT will shape 2D pictures or videos onto 3D surfaces to allow users to use their touching sense to access graphic information such as maps, charts, text and photos. Dot_IT will be a tool with enormous potential in education and social engagement.”- Henry Fernandez Pizarro

We want to congratulate Dot_IT on their achievement, as well as all the other teams who took part in such an exciting event.

The Dot_IT team members include:

Nina Malina (MSc Finance and Investment, Universtiy of Exeter)
Henry Fernandez (CDT in Metamaterials, Universtiy of Exeter)
Kishan Menghrajani (CDT in Metamaterials, Universtiy of Exete)
Erick Burgos (CDT in Metamaterials, Universtiy of Exeter)
Tamara Jalajel (MSc in Pediatric Exercise and Health, Universtiy of Exeter)
Tomasz Szelagowski

Guest Blogger- Camilla Owens

Posted on 7th Dec, 2016 by Doctoral College

IMPC 2016 11^th September – 15^th September

Between the 11^th and 15^th of September I attended the International Mineral Processing Congress (IMPC) in Quebec City, Canada representing SoS Rare. A bi-annual congress the IMPC is a meeting of over 1000 mineral processers who are based in both industry and academia, topics range from anything from flotation to grinding. This year there were was a session on rare earth elements (REE) with talks relating to all aspects of processing REE deposits.

I presented a poster on my research “Recovery of REE’s from a mixed apatite- synchysite ore” in the student poster session that was well received. The congress was also a good opportunity to meet up with collaborators Dr Martin Rudolph of the Helmholtz Institute of Resource Technology Freiberg and Professor Corby Anderson of Colorado School of Mines. It was a superb opportunity to see some of the outstanding research conducted on both REE’s and flotation around the world.

Although most of the congress was based in the conference centre we were encouraged to wander around the old city during breaks and Quebec Old city was suitably stunning. Special thanks to SoS Rare, NERC, IOM3 and Mkango Resources for supporting my visit to Quebec City.

SoS RARE, HIF collaboration

Between the 1^st and 28^th of October I visited Helmholtz Institute of Resource Technology Freiberg, HIF (a SoS Rare international research partner), in Germany to collaborate on a short term research placement. My visit was organised by Dr Martin Rudolph (the head of the Mineral Processing department at HIF) and I was lucky enough to collaborate with Edgar Schach who has just finished his Master’s at HIF.

My research was focused on the fundamentals of froth flotation, which is used to process rare earth deposits. In particular we researched the effects nanobubbles, tiny bubbles hundreds of times thinner than the width of a human hair, have on flotation. Nanobubbles were only discovered in the 1990’s and are an exciting area of fundamental science that is slowly being applied to industrial research. The placement was highly successful with data analysis ongoing both at HIF and at CSM.

During my time in Germany I had time to visit the local Terra Mineralia Museum in Freiberg which hosts one of the world’s best mineral collections. It was a superb visit and the gallery of luminescent minerals was particularly stunning. During one of the weekends I also had time to pop to Dresden to visit the Zwinger palace and see the amazing architecture.

This visit could not have gone ahead without the fantastic support of Dr Martin Rudolph and the Helmholtz Institute of Resource Technology, Freiberg. Special thanks to Will Dawes of Mkango Resources Ltd for his support of this placement. I would also like to thank Nathalie Sterbik, Bent Babel and Lisa Ditscherlein for their invaluable help whilst at HIF.

Milly Owens, Friday 28^th October 2016.