Welcome to our first newsletter of 2016
These newsletters serve an important purpose for sharing information amongst our grants community and wider stakeholders about Foundation-funded work and the plans we have in the pipeline. If you have news or information that you’d like to see included and shared more widely, then we’re always open to contributions.
In this newsletter there’s exciting news about calls for proposals in areas including nanotechnology and structural integrity research in collaboration with some of our existing grant holders, as well as news about our next steps in resilience engineering following the publication of our foresight review on the subject. These examples help demonstrate how the Foundation is placing itself at the centre of agendas in key areas of technology such as these, and looking to contribute to knowledge and accelerate applications that enhance safety and advance public education.
At the end of the day everything we do and everything we are able to fund with the resources we have, is to achieve impact in line with our charitable aims. Case studies are pivotal for us in demonstrating such impact, so we’re very pleased in this newsletter to include the great news about a prestigious early-career research prize won by one of our Foundation-funded PhD scholars at Imperial College London. Well done to Dr Milena Studic.
The Foundation has two charitable aims, essentially to enhance the safety of life and property and to advance public education. Both of these are of equal importance. To drive forward our impact in the public education area, there’s also information in this newsletter about a new role we’re advertising, looking for the best candidate to lead this area and provide strategic and operational leadership.
Keep safe and best wishes.
Richard Clegg Managing Director
Applications invited to set up new resilience engineering programme: deadline 10 March 2016
Resilience engineering is one of the research priorities identified in the Foundation’s strategy. It is an emerging research discipline which the Foundation can help to develop. At its heart is the concept of building systems, structures, infrastructures, organisations and associated human and social capacity which can respond appropriately (not catastrophically) to foreseen and unforeseen stresses.
The Foundation is seeking a director and a host institution for a programme to build resilience in critical infrastructure. We anticipate committing £10 million to the international programme which will run for an initial period of five years.
Structural Integrity Doctoral Call: deadline 19 February
February 19 is the closing date for the current call for PhD topics from the Foundation-funded National Structural Integrity Research Centre (NSIRC).
NSIRC PhD topics must align with the recommendations of the Lloyd’s Register Foundation Foresight Review in Structural Integrity & Systems Performance. Research suggestions for individual studentships or a programme of studentships are permitted but must clearly show how they will work towards an answer to a specific challenge that will enhance safety.
For more information go to: www.nsirc.co.uk/funding/
International Consortium for Nanotechnology (ICON)
The Foundation is supporting the International Consortium for Nanotechnology. ICoN will develop an international cohort of doctoral students all working to develop nanotechnologies to enhance safety. ICON PhD topics must align with the recommendations of the Lloyd’s Register Foundation Foresight Review in Nanotechnology.
The first ICON call closed on 3 February, with 25 applications from 7 countries and four continents. The call will be evaluated and the first awards will be made in April 2016. The next open call for applications is expected to be around June 2016.
For more information go to www.lrf-icon.com
Foundation funded PhD scholar recognised by prestigious 2015 SESAR Young Scientist Award
Dr Milena Studic, a Foundation supported PhD scholar at the Lloyd’s Register Foundation Transport Risk Management Centre at Imperial College London, has been recognised with a prestigious 2015 SESAR Young Scientist Award. Milena’s research brought to the attention of both the national and international aviation communities the safety-criticality of aviation Ground Handling Services. This has prompted the call for a worldwide standardised safety risk management and assurance processes for Ground Service Providers. Congratulations Milena!
Update for Undaunted
Project Undaunted, as reported in previous newsletters, is looking at options for how we can put to work LR’s heritage collection spanning more than 200 years of maritime history. It represents a unique and irreplaceable educational resource, with Undaunted looking at its storage, cataloguing, preservation and digitisation. Over the past month a governance document has been created for the project that details the decisions that need to be made in each of the various areas. An international advisory committee has been assembled to help inform these decisions, comprised of individuals with specialist knowledge from a variety of institutions, such as the National Maritime Museum, National Archives, Wellcome Library, British Library, SS Great Britain and many more. The success of the “Going Beyond Digitisation” conference held in October last year has been phenomenal. A follow up report on the conference findings, as well as videos of the talks themselves, are now being edited and will be made available on the Foundation’s website in the near future.
The pilot digitisation project, called the ‘First and Famous’, has also been running alongside Project Undaunted. This month the majority of work has been focused on cataloguing. Cataloguing is the act of attaching metadata to an object record to make it searchable, for example, digitally recording information from a physical document such as the ship mentioned, date, location, author of the document and many other fields. This will ensure that the information will be discoverable and researchers and the public can mine the contents to achieve their own educational aims. So far, 2947 documents have been catalogued from 66 ships out of the 100 that will be done.
The blog from our Heritage and Education Centre has also been flourishing, having over 5000 views from 81 different countries across 6 continents. Several particularly interesting archival collections have been discovered during cataloguing which have been blogged about, including images of the Orungal (see lrdigitisation.wordpress.com) and the Belpamela which has a considerable number of documents in her file relating to surveyors testifying at a court case. Whilst travelling across the North Atlantic in 1947, her cargo of trains became unstable and caused her to sink. These gems are quickly highlighting the worth of the collection, as well as the effect it could have on global scholarship both in maritime history, as well as seemingly unrelated areas.
New job opportunity within the Foundation
We are looking for an experienced STEM education, skills and learning professional to drive our strategy and spread our impact even further, in the UK and internationally.
The closing date is February 14 2016.
Robotics and autonomous systems (RAS) foresight review consultation
The LRF RAS foresight review is taking place until 30 April 2016. An initial open consultation with the RAS research, innovation and industrial communities will take place during February 2016, leading to an invitation only workshop 3-4 March 2016. There will be further community consultation until delivery of the final report by end April 2016. To contribute and/or make comments and suggestions please contact Professor David Lane CBE FREng FRSE at rasreview@mail.com
Upcoming events
Save the date!
The flagship Lloyd’s Register Foundation International Conference will be held on 13 and 14 October 2016 at the IET London, Savoy Place. This two-day event will bring together our grant holders, academia and industry, and feature keynote speakers, presentations and early career ‘master classes’ spanning all areas of our grants funding. Further information and details on registration will be available in March, but for now please save the date!
15 February - Workshop on Ship Total Energy-Emissions-Economy.
Registration is open for the third workshop organised by the LRF-NTUA Centre of Excellence in Ship Total Energy-Emissions-Economy.