Knowledge Exchange & Public Engagement Awards 2019 - The Shortlist
Best Collaboration (Arts & Culture)
Refugee Cycle
The Refugee Cycle event was a series of guided bicycle rides developed with project partners Sustrans and Bike For Good which progressed along a circular route in Glasgow. The project was envisaged as an embodied experience of language of migration and movement in a multicultural setting drawing on research on multilingualism and how language changes in different settings. Participants brought differing knowledges to the encounter: refugees with experience of movement, journeys and the unsettling nature of forced migration, and local participants with their knowledge and experience of the landscape.
Govan Young
Govan Young is a documentary film produced and co-directed by Dr David Archibald which features Professor Stephen Driscoll’s long-standing research into the archaeology of Govan. The film was funded by the University’s Chancellors Fund, Historic Environment Scotland and Heritage Lottery Fund. Govan Young follows a group of schoolchildren from Pirie Park Primary School as they learn the rarely-told story of the Viking invasion of Central Scotland and the subsequent establishment of the medieval kingdom of Strathclyde, which had its spiritual centre in Govan. The film has screened at over 25 international film festivals, thus far, and won 7 international awards.
New accessible community and museum resources to socially marginalised groups
Dr Cheryl McGeachan from Human Geography at the University of Glasgow has facilitated sustainable collaboration between the Open Museum (OM), Leverndale Recreational Therapy Unit, Project Ability and SPS Barlinnie Prison. This partnership has been built over years to facilitate the co-design of culturally-safe community co-curation of two exhibitions for the Pollok Civic Realm (PCR) and to develop the OM’s first ever ‘handling kit’ using objects from the internationally unique Art Extraordinary Collection (AE) held by Glasgow Museums. This collaboration has innovated by co-designing a project that creates new accessible community and museum resources to enhance the wellbeing and citizenship of socially marginalized groups.
Best Collaboration (Business)
Lynkeos Technology
Since 2009, the Glasgow Nuclear Physics Group has developed cosmic-ray muography in collaboration with NNL Ltd. A 7-year, £4.8 m research project led to the founding of the spin-off company Lynkeos Technology in 2016. Lynkeos has just deployed the global first muon tomography system for nuclear waste containers at the NNL Central Laboratory at Sellafield. This first-of-a-kind, CE-marked system is the result of the continuing close collaboration of Lynkeos Technology Ltd., NNL Ltd. and the University of Glasgow. This innovation has been recognised with a 2018 IOP Business Start Up Award and at the NDA Supply Chain Awards.
Glasgow Polyomics
Glasgow Polyomics, with funding from Innovate UK and IBioIC, have an ongoing partnership with Ingenza to create a novel real-time metabolomics system used for the optimisation of synthetic biology cultures to give Ingenza’s fermentation department a competitive advantage. The system could prevent loss of whole product batches due to biological process failures, as it identifies errors much faster than traditional methods. Their system could potentially save the pharmaceutical industry millions of pounds if used for monitoring drug production and could also have applications in other fermentation-based industries (e.g. brewing) by supporting batch consistency and preventing batch failures.
Virtual Reality technology - Sublime
In May 2018, Professor Fiona Macpherson and Dr Neil McDonnell from the School of Humanities, launched a project in collaboration with the software developer Sublime to explore how virtual and augmented reality programs can be used to improve student learning experiences. The project involves two major strands. One collects data on how using immersive technology enables student learning. The other involves developing new virtual and augmented reality programs that can improve these learning results. Innovate UK helped jumpstart the project with a grant of £911,000.
Best Collaboration (Policy & Practice)
Suffering and Autonomy at the end of life
Dr Ben Colburn and Dr Jennifer Corns from the School of Humanities, address the problem of preserving individual autonomy and addressing pain and suffering in palliative and geriatric care, and draw on their philosophical research to help end-of-life practitioners find solutions to enhance and protect autonomy for the elderly and dying. Their work has shaped professional policy and practice at an institutional level, and is feeding into wider legislative change.
Recovering NHS Losses
Professor Sayantan Ghosal from the Adam Smith Business School has co-designed an initiative with NHS Scotland to recover £1 million of the £10 million lost annually due to incorrectly claimed exemptions for payment of charges for dental and/or ophthalmic treatment. Frames (the way choices are described and presented ) were embedded in letters requesting voluntary payments against a business-as-usual (BAU) letter involving the threat of a penalty charge. Cash recoveries from the initiative targeting incorrectly claimed exemptions were £944k in 2017/18 (relative to £360k in 2016/17), with estimated annual recoveries of £1 million. Recovering £1 million annually would free up resources for front line services and investment elsewhere in the NHS Scotland.
Professor Sayantan Ghosal
The CAMAU Project
CAMAU is a collaborative venture involving researchers, policy makers and practitioners. This deep partnership led to a new national curriculum that will be used in every school and every classroom in Wales. This collaboration tackled a perennial problem in curriculum and assessment design; the challenge of building evidence from research and practice into policy development. A particularly innovative feature has been the design of Decision Trees. Decision Trees target key decisions in curriculum design and succinctly draw ideas from an extensive evidence base (research, policy and practice) to enhance the quality of decision making amongst those responsible for the design.
Best Community or Public Engagement Initiative
Chemistry Outreach Group
The Chemistry Outreach Group (COG) is an open and inclusive community of practice in the School of Chemistry that aims to increase meaningful public engagement. The mission has a particular focus on engaging with individuals with poor access to science education/equipment in Scotland, including those from rural areas and socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. Since its founding in 2015, the group’s membership has grown and they have successfully implemented an ambitious range of outreach activities locally and internationally. By supporting the undergraduate and postgraduate members to take part, many of the students have also experienced an unparalleled opportunity to develop their graduate attributes.
Effective management of Lyme Disease
Lyme disease, transmitted by ticks, is an emerging disease on Scotland’s Uist islands. In response to a request from NHS Western Isles to help investigate high local rates of infection, staff from the School of Veterinary Medicine and IBAHCM worked with local public health, environmental, veterinary and community stakeholders to design and implement a collaborative research project. Insights from public consultation influenced the scope of the research, for example identifying gardens as an important source of tick bites in people. In turn, the research findings are helping this highly affected community to manage ticks and Lyme disease risk more effectively.
Historical Racial Slavery
The significance of racial slavery in the history of Glasgow and Scotland is little known today. Professor Simon Newman of the School of Humanities and his team have restored public consciousness and enriched understanding of Scotland’s and Britain’s role in historical racial slavery. Through work with schools, consultancy, collaboration in cultural productions (radio and live plays, a film, musical compositions and radio documentaries), they have reached broad audiences, actively changing understanding of the place and significance of enslaved people in Scotland. The group are establishing the extent of the financial dividend earned from slavery by UofG, which is changing understanding of UK HEI’s and other public institutions’ relationship to slavery.
Glasgow Entrepreneur of the Year
Derek Gilchrist
Derek along with Neal Millar co-founded Causeway Therapeutics to commercialise the development of TenoMiR, a ground-breaking therapy for the treatment of tendinopathy. One in 10 people will suffer from some form of tendinopathy, yet the best treatment remains physiotherapy which only benefits 50% of cases. Research carried out by Derek and Neal while in the lab of Professor Iain McInnes uncovered the molecular mechanism that causes tendinopathy. This insight led to the development of TenoMiR that targets the key features of the disease. Treatment with TenoMiR restores tendon structure and function. Causeway will begin testing TenoMiR in patients in 2019.
Jonathan Siviter
Jonathan co-founded Thermoelectric Conversion Systems Limited in 2015 and as Managing Director leads development of thermoelectric cooling products and consultancy services internationally. The business is a spin out from the School of Engineering’s Thermoelectric Research Group and he is currently an Enterprise Fellow at the Royal Academy of Engineering. Jonathan has successfully secured £400k from Innovate UK, a £10k Scottish Edge award, £60k Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellowship and £17k EPSRC Impact Accelerator Award in the last 12 months.
http://www.teconversion.com/
Thermoelectric Conversion Systems
Richard Taylor
Richard has been key in leading the development of photonic crystal lasers from a commercial point of view and has taken this technology to the point where it will form the basis of a spin out in the near future. Key components of this have involved customer engagement, market analysis, and business plan development. Richard has so far won over £100k in funding, reached the final of the Converge Challenge Kickstart competition, been invited to 2 highly prestigious enterprise fellowship interviews (RAEng, RSE), and succeeded in securing highly competitive (<10% success) phase 1 Scottish Enterprise high growth spin-out funding.
