Sent on behalf of Professor Perumal Nithiarasu, Associate Dean for Research, Innovation and Impact

Dear Colleagues,

Please read below about some of the Faculty’s most recent success stories. We would particularly like to see more from our Professional Services staff for the next email! 

STUDENT SUCCESSES

Adetoun Afolabi

Felix Richards

Thesis title: ‘Beyond Forest Conservation: Exploring the Impact of REDD+ on Livelihood and Detection of Forest Cover Change in Cross River State, Nigeria’

Congratulations to Adetoun Afolabi (Geography) who recently passed her MSc by Research viva!

Adetoun (Ade) was supervised by Yeran Sun and Dr Iain Robertson with examiners Pan He (Cardiff University) and Dr Keith Halfacree. The viva was chaired by Dr Angharad Closs Stephens.

Thesis title: ‘Classification and Segmentation of Galactic Structures in Large Multi-spectral Images’

Congratulations to Felix Richards (Computer Science) who recently passed his PhD viva.

Felix was supervised by Professor Xianghua Xie and Adeline Paiement with examiners Frédéric Bouchara (University of Toulon) and Dr Scott Yang. The viva was chaired by Dr Benjamin Mora.

Design challenge winners announced

Civil Engineering student Johanna Schwarting was part of the winning team for a major competition run by Timber Development UK.

The Timber Development UK University Design Challenge (#TDchallenge22) is a student competition based on a live project to design a net zero community centre, showcasing timber construction and meeting Passivhaus Standard. Across more than 150 students from 57 universities, the winning team were selected at a live two-day event at the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE).

PUBLICATIONS

Frontiers for Young Minds

Dr Sean Walton, (Computer Science) recently had a 'Core Concept' paper published in the Mathematics section for "frontiers for Young Minds". The open access journal is aimed at children and young people and the papers are reviewed by young people. 

The paper was written with support from Dr Ben Evans together with Ben Smith and Jakub Vincalek, doctorate students at Swansea.

EVENTS

Research Institutes launch success

The Research Institutes Launch Event on 22 July 2022 was a great success and was attended by many faculty academic and research staff. 

The day’s agenda included introductions by Professor Perumal Nithiarasu, Professor Helen Griffiths and Professor Ken Meissner, presentations from the RI leads and a closing summary from Professor Hans Seinz.

Professorial Inaugural Lectures

Upcoming Inaugural Lectures:

• Professor Cinzia Giannetti and Professor Matt Carnie – Wednesday 14th September from 2pm Register here
• Professor Hamed Haddad Khodaparast and Professor Richard Bracken – Wednesday 28th September from 2pm Register here
• Professor Chedly Tizaoui and Professor Jo Hudson – Wednesday 12th October from 2pm Register here
• Professor Matthew Davies and Professor Neil Bezodis – Wednesday 26th October from 2pm Register here

RESEARCH

Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance

The 2021 Active Healthy Kids Wales (AHK-Wales) Report Card has concluded that despite 21 national policies that incorporate strategies, action plans, legislation and guidance that aim to promote physical activity in children and young people in Wales, children meeting the guidelines for physical activity remains low and sedentary behaviours remain high. 

Professor Gareth Stratton (Sport and Exercise Sciences) Report Card lead, has been involved in physical activity measurement studies for over 20 years. Professor Stratton stated, "We are really quite worried about this because physical activity is related to lots of things, including how well children achieve at school." (BBC, 2018)

IN THE NEWS

61 tonne Megalodons!

A new 3D model has revealed that Megalodon weighed more than 61 tonnes and could eat a whole killer whale. 

Thanks to a megalodon which was discovered in the 1860s, an international team of scientists, including some from Swansea University, have been able to create, what is to date, the most complete 3D reconstruction of a megalodon – the largest shark that ever lived. 

Jack Cooper, the study’s first author and a Biosciences PhD student at Swansea University, explains “Shark teeth are common fossils because of their hard composition which allows them to remain well preserved. However, their skeletons are made of cartilage, so they rarely fossilise. The megalodon vertebral column from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences is therefore a one-of-a-kind fossil which has enabled us to carry out this unique study and create the 3D model.” 

Read more

Swansea wildfire experts interviewed for BBC Wales Today

Professor Stefan Doerr, Director for the Centre for Wildfire Research and his team were interviewed recently by Lucy Vladev for the BBC Wales Today Programme about the increase in the risk of wildfires.

The team have been developing a system which can predict when and where there might be an extreme fire event and is a similar model to the systems already used in Canada and Australia. By looking at factors such as windspeed, grass cover and moisture levels, it is possible to identify which areas of the UK which are most at risk.

Find out more

RESEARCH EVENTS

If you would like to promote a research event on the FSE Events webpage, please contact fse-reception@swansea.ac.uk

Faculty upcoming events

RESEARCH BLOG

Read more research stories!

Research Blog

KEEP IN TOUCH!

If you are aware of any recent achievements to share, either for yourself or for any members of your team, we would love to hear about them!  We’re interested in stories from academic and professional services communities. Please email any news to Anna Ratcliffe (a.c.ratcliffe@swansea.ac.uk). Deadline for submissions: 15th of each month.