Author Archives: Holly Hoar

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About Holly Hoar

I am the Development Officer (Research & Funding) in Research, Business and Employability Services. The Research team provides information to University staff on external funding, partners, and innovation activities. The team works with researchers and academic staff to help diversify income for Staffordshire University. Our Research and Funding Blog contains information on funding opportunities and the activities of the team. See my staff profile here http://www.staffs.ac.uk/staff/profiles/heh2.jsp

Innovation Design Development

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A workshop for staff with Staffordshire University Designer in Residence, Jonathan Butters
Jonathan specialises in bringing design solutions to healthcare products, medical devices, laboratory equipment, and consumer, leisure and domestic products. Before founding his two businesses, he was a Mechanical Engineer and then lectured in 3D and product design in both Further and Higher Education.
Jonathan Butters has created and managed two innovation consultancies, Jab Design and Butters Innovation, operating in the UK and abroad. Jab Design, offered product design and technology development to small start-ups through to large blue-chips, while Butters Innovation has, since 2008, focused on the strategic development of disruptive innovation, particularly in hi-tech university spin outs.

2pm on Wednesday 16th October in the Brindley Building B211
Email r.watmore@staffs.ac.uk to register.

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Pitch for £5,000 of HEIF Funding at Enterprise Exchange

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People attending the next Enterprise Exchange meeting will be given the chance to give £5,000 to a project of their choice under the HEIF scheme.

Staff are being invited to give an ‘elevator pitch’ –the length of time you get when you want to impress an influential person you have met in a lift. They will be given two minutes to pitch their ideas to the Enterprise Exchange group and the crowd will vote on the project they like the most. Ideas could include business start-ups, support to established businesses or pioneering new products and practices.

There will be a small number of slots available to pitch – you must pre-register with Libby – libby.plant@staffs.ac.uk, Libby also has some tips on helping you to develop your pitch.

The next Enterprise Exchange Meeting is on Wednesday 11th December, 2pm-4pm LT114/116, Ashley Centre, Stoke. So plenty of time to get planning.

Further Information: libby.plant@staffs.ac.uk

 

 

Dementia Project Suitable for Faculty of Health or FACT

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This fund from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation is looking to change the way people think about dementia. There are a number of different angles the research could be looked at leaving it open for work from both the Faculty of Heath and the FACT. One of the themes they are interested in includes languages, images and stories around dementia.

Funding Body: Joseph Rowntree Foundation

Scheme: Reframing dementia in the 21st century: challenging thinking and stimulating debate

Overview: This call supports one or two projects to influence how people think, talk, write about and portray dementia. Projects are for a duration of 18 to 22 months. The aim is to challenge attitudes, understanding and behaviours around dementia that reinforce stigma, isolation and exclusion. The foundation seeks to support the future development of policy, practice and research, and to improve societal attitudes and ultimately the quality of life of people with dementia.

Budget: Projects will be supported with a budget of up to £50,000

Deadlines: 06 Nov 13

Further Information: http://www.jrf.org.uk/funding/calls-for-proposal/reframing-dementia-21st-century

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Networking to Join Horizon 2020 Projects

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With the new European research programme Horizon 2020 due to open in January now is the time to start networking and seeking out projects which you could become partners on. This is never an easy thing when time and budgets prevent you from getting to conferences in Europe. An alternative way to get a foot in the door can be through using groups on Linked In www.linkedin.com
There is a group called ” HORIZON 2020 ” : Framework Program for Research and Innovation which is a very good starting place. This group is a general discussion place for the H2020 programme, but also has subgroups linking to the H2020 themes. For example, environment, health, Marie Curie or ICT. The group is one of the largest and most active groups on LinkedIn and has surpassed 74,000+ members within just over 2 years and it is ranked within the top 200 out of 1.7 million LinkedIn groups.
The aim of this group is to become an international forum, where professionals working in all types of organizations from around the world could share ideas, knowledge & experiences, and explore new partnership and business opportunities.
Joining the groups can help you to find people who are working in similar areas to you and give you a chance to share ideas and possibly link up to work on a research project together.
Further details: Join group http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=3731775&trk=anet_ug_hm

 

Tender on Tourism Education in Europe

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This tender looks like it could be interesting for the Business School as it is looking at the education offered on tourism across Europe.

Funding Body: European Commission
Scheme: Mapping and performance check of the supply side of tourism education and training
Overview: Tenders for its mapping and performance check of the supply side of tourism education and training. The tenderer will study the education and training offered for the tourism sector and assess its performance in delivering the qualitative skills needed on the labour market.
Transnational consortia are encouraged to submit tenders. A minimum number of partners is not specified.
The tourism occupations targeted primarily by this contract derive from the following
services:

  • Accommodation
  • Food and beverage
  • Entertainment, recreation, attractions
  • Travel support services

Budget: Funding is worth an estimated €500,000 over a period of 13 months.
Deadlines: 24/10/13
Further Information: https://etendering.ted.europa.eu/cft/cft-display.html?cftId=359 –Download the technical specifications document

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Design in innovation: research development funding

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The AHRC is very interested in design innovation at the moment. This fund looks is particularly interesting because it supports speculative research.

Funding Body: AHRC

Scheme: Design in innovation: research development funding

Overview: This call is aimed at enabling groups of researchers, including academics, design practitioners, businesses and any other relevant non-academic organisations or individuals, to hold exploratory workshops, networking and collaborative activities, or conduct original research reviews, scoping studies or capacity building activities focusing on design in innovation.

The following areas were identified as being in particular need of academic investigation:

•the role of design in service innovation;

•the role of design in the innovation ecosystem;

•providing evidence of the impact of design.

Awards should last for a maximum of six months and should be completed by the end of October 2014.

Budget: Funding of up to £50,000 is available on full economic costs basis with the AHRC meeting 80% of the FEC

Deadlines: 31 October 2013

Further Information: http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/Funding-Opportunities/Pages/Design-in-Innovation-Research-Development-Funding.aspx

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Staffs Uni Shortlisted for “Outstanding Employer Engagement Initiative”

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Staffordshire University have been shortlisted in the “Outstanding Employer Engagement Initiative” category in the Times Higher Education Awards. The entry was submitted by ECD and we are one of only six universities within the category – to just get shortlisted is a fantastic achievement! The awards night takes place on Thursday 28th November at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London.

The past 12 months have been an award winning year for ECD-

CIM Marketing Excellence Awards: Best Strategic Marketing project for KTP Associate/Project with GDM Heat Transfer

Praxis Unico Impact Awards: Special Recognition Award for our Spin-out Company Flux Stoke-on-Trent

Unitemps Annual Conference: Innovation of the Year Award for our Internship Scheme

 

ECD also supported an entry from Wade Ceramics into the Midlands in Business Awards ‘International Manufacturing’ category and they won!

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Support with European Funding

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The University is also a subscriber to the UK Research Office (UKRO). This specialises in European funding and events. You can subscribe to get emailed when funding calls and events are open in your research area.

To join use this link http://ims.ukro.ac.uk/UKRO/login.aspx and click on the option ‘If you do not yet have a profile’. The site will use your email address to identify you are a member of staff at Staffordshire University and give you free access to it. You subscribe to emails using the ‘My Profiles’ section at the top of the page.

If you want to visit the main UKRO website you can access it here: www.ukro.ac.uk

Better Blog Following Your Feedback

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The research Funding blog is getting a new look. Following feedback from users, we will be categorising funds by research areas. We have also brought in many other changes based on people comments.

The general the feedback on the blog was positive with people finding the site easy to navigate. But there were some suggestions on how to improve the site, we have been making changes in response to this.

We have introduced a Rate the Post feature which allows people to rate posts out of five. We would love to hear from you, so please use this and make use of the comments box below posts. We get lots of comments by email, but by sharing them on the blog it may get noticed by another researcher in a different faculty that you don’t know and make them aware of shared research interests.

The issue of sending daily emails was highly contentious. Some people really value it where as others found it too frequent. This left us in a situation where we were not going to be able to please everyone. We felt that it would be better to have the option of getting the daily emails and allowing people to ignore it rather than not having daily emails as an option at all.

There were also comments regarding the look of the emails. We have set up a new sign up system from the blog which sends out the emails in a more attractive HTML format. The structure of WordPress is currently preventing us from automatically converting all emails to this version. But if you would like to sign up using the subscribe box on the right of the blog, you will be able to access this new version of the daily update.

The team also plans to change the system in which blog posts are categorised to make them more focused on research areas rather than the current system of type of funder. This should make it easier to filter blogs by subject area. When this is activated it will change the location of existing posts, so please bear with us whilst things are reorganised –we have published over 250 posts since December 2012, so it will take some time to relocate them all. This change should be happening very soon.

We are currently exploring the feasibility of enabling people to register an account with the blog and then select themes of what information they would like to be sent. This will enable us to make the content much more tailored to individual interests. So far we have had technical difficulties in getting this to work. If we manage to resolve the issues we will send out details of how to set up an account.

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback on the blog, we hope that the changes we have made and are bringing in will make the site and even more useful tool for you to use.

If you ever need to find our site you can get there using our new web address www.staffs.ac.uk/researchfunding

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Set up your own Specialised Funding Search with Research Professional

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Research Professional provides an easy way to find research funding for your work. You can search by discipline, type of funding or a whole range of other search fields. You can set up an account to send you a weekly email on new funds that have been launched in your specialised research field.

The guide below take you through the step by step process of how to set up your account for fund updates. Staffordshire University pays a subscription to Research Professional, it can be accessed without a password from anywhere on campus please share it with your colleagues so we can get as much use from it as possible.

Further details: www.researchprofessional.com

Step by step guide on how to find funds using Research Professional https://www.researchprofessional.com/0/rr/Help/Getting-Started.html

Research Professional provides a guide to  set up your own Opportunities Alert which highlight when funding in your research area comes up.

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