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 NEWS

Geography students travel to Rio de Janeiro

Earlier this year, 3 PhD students from the Geography Department travelled to Rio de Janeiro to participate in the International Political Sociology winter school, organised by the International Relations Institute at PUC-Rio. Emily Holmes, Joe Rees and Ben Walkling participated in the 2-week intensive theory school, engaging with different concepts and theories with international staff, and in research workshops. This research exchange between Wales and Brazil was organised by Dr Angharad Closs Stephens, Associate Professor in Geography, and funded by the Welsh Government's international exchange scheme, Taith.

National Geographic Young Explorer achievement

Congratulations to Betty Jahateh, an MSc Environmental Biology: Conservation & Resource Management student in the Department of Biosciences who has been named National Geographic Young Explorer. Betty recently presented her work in Washington D.C. at the National Geographic headquarters where she talked about her project "Salty Much?", funded by NatGeo, that studies salt intrusion effects along the River Gambia tributaries. 

Last year Betty also attended COP27 to share her perspective on climate challenges in west Africa. Betty has been working tirelessly to understand climate change impacts and promote environmental education in the coastal communities of The Gambia.

Best presentation winner at International Conference

Congratulations to Talal Abdullah from M2A, who has won the best presentation award at the International Conference on Mining, Mineral Processing and Metallurgical Engineering. The title of the presentation was 'Investigating the Viability of Small-Scale Rapid Alloy Prototyping of Interstitial Free Steels'.

STAFF NEWS

Black History Youth Awards

Congratulations to Michael Ijaiye-Makinde, International Student Recruitment Officer, who was a Young Leader finalist in the National Black History Youth Awards held at the Sennedd this month.

The Young Leader category is for a young person who has shown promise and gained skills, knowledge, qualifications and/or experience leading civic engagement, educational activities and community organising activities.

UKRI Interdisciplinary Assessment College invitation

Congratulations to Dr Sanjiv Sharma, Biomedical Engineering, who has received an invitation to become a part of the UKRI Interdisciplinary Assessment College. This is a two-year opportunity, during which Sanjiv will be trained as a Panellist and as a Chair allowing him to participate in panel meetings to evaluate the outcomes on the UKRI interdisciplinary research projects.

UKCDR Expert Advisory Group invitation

Earlier this year, Professor Kathryn Monk, Honorary Professor in the Department of Biosciences, was invited to be a member of the Expert Advisory Group for a UKCDR project “Understanding the Impact of Development Research through REF 2021”.

The UKCDR report has recently been published ‘The landscape of UK development research impact: An analysis of REF2021 impact case studies’ together with the associated case study booklet, ‘Realising the impact of UK international development research: A collection of REF2021 impact stories’.

These publications represent a culmination of extensive research and analysis, and they will provide valuable insights into the international development research sector.

Read more about this work

NERC 2023 Impact Awards Chair announced

NERC has recently announced that Professor Kathryn Monk is the Chair of the NERC 2023 Impact Awards' Shortlisting and Judging Panel. The winners will be announced on 29 November at a ceremony at the Natural History Museum in London.  

Kathryn is a University Council lay member and Honorary Professor, Department of Biosciences, Swansea University. She is also Chair of the International Collaboration for Environmental Evidence, Joint Editor-in-Chief, Indonesian Journal for Applied Environmental Studies and Visiting Professor, Graduate School of Environment Management, Universitas Pakuan, Indonesia.

Read more about the finalists and the Impact awards

New book publication

UKRI Award

BBC Radio 4 In Our Time

Congratulations to Dr Anna Pigott, Department of Geography, who has published a book entitled Art and Creativity in an Era of Ecocide.

Congratulations to Dr Paul Albert, Department of Geography, who has secured a new UKRI award to continue his Future Leaders Fellowship work on constraining the risks of volcanic ashfall hazards.

Congratulations to Dr Chris Lowe, Department of Biosciences, who recently recorded a contribution on the significance of plankton for the BBC Radio 4 series In Our Time. Over 5 million people typically tune in to this series, and the programme was aired on October 5th. 

Native Welsh salmon on the brink of extinction

Professor Carlos Garcia de Leaniz, Department of Biosciences, was recently featured in a BBC News article, shedding light on the critical situation of native salmon in Wales. Carlos serves as the project lead for the Reconnecting Rivers project, a collaborative effort with the Afan Valley Angling and Conservation Club. This project focuses on eliminating obstacles like weirs that severely affect the salmon's ability to survive.

Carlos said “Europe has probably the highest density of artificial barriers anywhere in the world for hundreds of years, despite the fact many of them are no longer serving their purpose.”

Read more on the project

UK Shared Prosperity Fund grant awarded

NPT-FLOWRD has received £260k from the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

Dr Michael Togneri, Mechanical Engineering is Project Lead on the NPT-FLOWRD project which will support cooperative R&D projects in Neath-Port Talbot between the university and enterprises in the council area. It is aimed at the development of a regional supply chain for floating offshore wind power (FLOW) in the Celtic Sea. This will be achieved by supporting NPT-based enterprises with short-term research projects (1-6 months duration) that will prepare them to join the supply chain for the planned rollout of FLOW – the Crown Estate has targeted 4GW of floating wind capacity in the Celtic Sea by 2035, more than five times the current total offshore wind capacity in Welsh waters.

Solar panels in space

Dan Lamb, Research Lead MOCVD Centre, CISM, has recently contributed to an article in UK Tech News on the viability to produce low-cost, lightweight solar panels that can generate energy in space.

The research, in collaboration with the University of Surrey, studied data from a satellite over a six-year period, observing how the panels generated power and weathered solar radiation over 30,000 orbits. The results showed that the panels resisted radiation and their thin-film structure had not deteriorated in the harsh thermal and vacuum conditions of space.

The study and findings have also been published in the Journal Acta Astronautica.

Read more about the research

Digital Twins for marine Engineering

Dr Matt Bonney, Engineering, is co-author on a white paper for "Digital Twins for Marine Operations" which has been recently published. The paper was the result of research undertaken by a multi-disciplinary team from across the UK including aerospace engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, and robotics engineering.

Read the full paper

Academic Centres of Excellence in Cyber Security Education award success

Swansea University, under the lead of the Cyber Security Group in the Computer Science Department, has received the Academic Centres of Excellence in Cyber Security Education silver award. The award is in recognition of the departments' excellence in cyber security education and research. 

The MSc course was the first in Wales to be fully and completely certified by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and Swansea University is now listed on the NCSC web pages as one of 14 UK universities with an ACE-CSE award.

Event Highlights

Zienkiewicz Lecture 2023

The 2023 Zienkiewicz Lecture will be livestreamed from the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea on Wednesday 22nd November from 6pm (please note that due to capacity attendance in the National Waterfront Museum is invitation only).

Zienkiewicz Lecture Guest speaker Professor the Lord Darzi of Denham OM KBE PC FRS, Co-Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London, Consultant Surgeon at Imperial College NHS Trust and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, will deliver a lecture entitled ‘Health Care Transformation through Science and Technology’.

Watch live on Vimeo

Find out more

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.

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

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