Category: College News & Updates

Great Exhibition Road Festival 2026 – Open for your ideas! (deadline: 03 Nov)

Do you want to engage thousands of people with your research? Develop your communication skills, have fun, and help create something truly inspiring? Then be part of the Great Exhibition Road Festival 2026!

We’re delighted to announce that the Great Exhibition Road Festival – our flagship public event – will return on Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 June 2026. And from today Imperial staff and students are invited to submit ideas for this weekend celebration of art, science, and innovation.

The 2025 Festival welcomed over 55,000 visitors to South Kensington to enjoy a vibrant programme of imaginative workshops, live experiments, hands-on demonstrations, and artistic performances—brought to life by around 1,000 Imperial contributors. In 2026, we aim to go even further and reach 60,000 visitors, making this our most ambitious and impactful Festival yet.

This year’s Festival coincides with a landmark moment: the 175th anniversary of the opening of the Great Exhibition of 1851. We’ll be marking this anniversary throughout the weekend, and we especially welcome proposals that explore stories connected to the Great Exhibition itself, or the 175 years of science, culture, and innovation that have shaped South Kensington since.

More details for teams interested in contributing to this theme can be found in the 2026 Festival guidance document, which also outlines what we’re looking for in proposals, the support available to contributors, the audiences we aim to attract, and the kind of experience we hope to create—for both visitors and participants.

To help shape your ideas, we also recommend attending our online advice session on 20 October, where you’ll hear directly from the Festival organisers, learn more about the proposals process, and receive feedback on your concepts and any logistical questions.

🗓️ Proposal deadline: End of day, Monday 3 November 2025

📩 Submit your proposal

📚 Guidance document

📚 Advice session registration

We recognise that online forms can present barriers for some contributors—for example, due to language or neurodiversity. If this applies to you, we’re happy to receive your ideas via email, phone, or in-person meeting. Please contact James Romero, Public Engagement Programmes Manager at j.romero@imperial.ac.uk to arrange an alternative submission method.

Great Exhibition Road Festival Team

Imperial College London

Global Fellows Fund 2025-26 – Applications now open! (deadline: 13 Oct)

Calling all Imperial PhD students! Do you want the opportunity to travel the world and be stretched beyond your comfort zone? Are you excited by the idea of experiencing how leading scientists, engineers, mathematicians and/or clinicians are tackling your area of interest in another country? Do you want to challenge yourself through immersion in a different research setting surrounded by new social, environmental and cultural perspectives?  Do you want to the chance to expand your professional and personal networks and draw on this support for the rest of your career?

Then you should apply for Imperial’s Global Fellows Fund 2025-26 and take up a placement in Africa, Asia, North America or Europe!

The Imperial Global Fellows Fund supports high impact international placements for PhD students in labs at Imperial’s strategic international partners. Students, with support of their PhD supervisor and host supervisor, will have the opportunity to spend between 1 and 3 months at one of the following partners:

  • Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany
  • Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
  • Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Mumbai, India
  • French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France (NB approval is needed from both the CNRS host supervisor and her/his head of department or institute)
  • African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), Rwanda, South Africa, Senegal, Ghana
  • Cornell University, USA
  • University of Toronto, Canada
  • Institute of Science Tokyo, Japan
  • University of Ghana
  • National University of Singapore

Read more about the experience of nine Imperial students at Cornell University in New York and find some top tips on how to prepare and apply here.

The deadline for applications is Monday 13 October 2025.

Financial support for this scheme is provided in part by the College’s 2025-26 Turing Scheme award.

For the 2025/26 academic year, the International Relations Office will provide top up funding equal to the cost-of-living grant provided by the Turing scheme grant to help cover more of the overall costs. Enhanced funding is also available for those who meet the necessary criteria.

For further details, including full guidance, eligibility criteria, information on the partners and a link to the application form, please visit the webpage.

Queries can be sent to globalseedfunds@imperial.ac.uk

Imperial Lates: open call for researchers

Imperial Lates are a series of free, after hours, adults-only events. They provide Imperial researchers with a fantastic opportunity to engage with members of the public in an exciting, informal environment.

All submissions are welcome, from initial ideas to fully developed activities. The Imperial Lates programming team can help to develop an idea further, discuss opportunities to host a talk or take part in a panel discussion, or connect researchers with a creative practitioner to explore their ideas through an artistic workshop.

This season’s themes are:

October: Light

Join our researchers in welcoming the autumn and celebrating Diwali, the Festival of Light. Learn all about how light works, as well as it’s uses in health research and even in space!

November: Time

Explore the nature of time at November’s Imperial Lates. Deep dive into the very first second of the universe, catch up with the fastest object ever built, or dance inside a quantum clock.

January: Wellbeing

New year, new you! Start 2026 afresh by learning the scientific secrets to hacking your health and wellbeing from Imperial researchers in our January Lates.

Click here to find out more and to fill out the open call form 

If you have any questions, please email lates@imperial.ac.uk

Help to shape the Student Counselling and Mental Health Advice Service

Give your views on the workshops, groups, and courses currently on offer from the Student Counselling Mental Health Advice Service. Your feedback will help to ensure services are relevant, inclusive, and accessible to all students.

The team are especially interested in hearing from those of you who have not yet attended any sessions.

Complete the two-minute survey

Establishing the Imperial IBD Research Community – Join Us!

Are you a researcher, engineer, or clinician working on or interested in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) research? If you’re based at Imperial, Imperial NHS, or St Mark’s Hospital, we’re building an IBD research community to foster collaborations, support grant applications, and facilitate knowledge sharing and translation across all departments, career stages, and backgrounds.

Please take a moment to help us map this network by completing this short form: Join the IBD Research Community.

Save the Date for Our First Networking Event

📅 When: 24th April, 16:00
📍 Where: Hammersmith Campus

Let us know if you’ll be attending by filling out the form by 21st February, so we can secure the right venue size.

Join the new Viva Engage channel: Measuring Visibility and Impact

Join the new Viva Engage channel: Measuring Visibility and Impact

Scholarly Communications Management team has created a new Viva Engage community channel, Measuring Visibility and Impact to share insights and updates and invite discussion and collaboration on the various tools that imperial subscribes to. Tips and guidance on responsible use of metrics will also be shared.

Imperial subscribes to a number of powerful tools (e.g. Altmetric for tracking mentions of research publications on social media and news and Overton for monitoring citations on policy documents), but many staff and students are either unaware of these sources or unsure how to use them effectively. Through the Measuring Visibility and Impact channel, we aim to bridge this gap by advertising the tools, sharing updates about them, interesting case studies and organising training sessions to equip you to work with them.

The research analytics products allow you to:

  • track academic and societal impact of research publications, not only journal articles but other types of outputs such as reports, theses or preprints,
  • move away from journal-based metrics and h-index,
  • better communicate research results and increase visibility,
  • help you prepare job applications, narrative CVs, grant applications and REF submissions,
  • understand the latest research trends and key research areas in different disciplines,
  • monitor research performance of research groups, departments, faculties or institutions.

The community channel will support Imperial’s commitment to the responsible use of metrics by promoting best practice, fostering awareness, and keeping you updated about initiatives and opportunities. The channel will serve the ultimate objective of building a healthy research culture at Imperial by helping us break out of the dysfunctional culture of publish-or-perish.

Please join the Measuring Visibility and Impact community channel on Viva Engage and share this message with your contacts who might be interested.

Postgraduate Climate-Conscious Travel Fund

Postgraduate Climate-Conscious Travel Fund 

Postgraduate climate-conscious travel fund guidance document

The Postgraduate climate-conscious travel fund is designed to help postgraduate students make more sustainable travel choices by compensating for the higher costs involved. If you are a postgraduate student and wish to apply, please review the guidance document linked above which provides more detail on what the fund covers, and complete the application form. 

Find out more about sustainable travel on the Imperial website: Sustainable travel | About | Imperial College London

International Family Network

Are you an international student with dependants ?   Our International Family Network is for all Imperial International Students who have their dependants with them in the UK.  We arrange fun trips and events for you and your family such as theatre trips , visits to London tourist destinations and also on campus events such as the traditional Easter Egg Hunt in the College Gardens  .  See our website for further details.

Join our mailing list here or email s.markey@imperial.ac.uk .

New Trusted Research Training e-learning module

All staff with research, and academic responsibilities are expected to complete a new Trusted Research e-learning module. We encourage PhD students to complete this module too.

Research security considerations are increasingly important for universities across the UK, which includes minimising risks to national security during international research collaborations. It is crucial to ensure that everyone undertaking research at Imperial are aware of what Research Security is, its role in academia and key considerations when collaborating with research and funding partners overseas.

This module introduces Research Security, providing learners with insight into core principles including legal compliance, contractual obligations, and protective measures.

Joining instructions: You can self-enrol onto the course through the Trusted Research Module website.

Further training focused on export controls specifically will be released soon. If you are interested in being enrolled onto this module, please see the Research Security Training website for more information.

Additionally, the new Research Security website provides guidance on various areas of Research Security including the Trusted Research agenda, key legislation, and signposts other relevant areas of the university’s online guidance.

Access the New York Times to discover quality journalism

Access the New York Times to discover quality journalism

We are pleased to announce that we have purchased a subscription to the New York Times.  The subscription provides access to all Imperial students and staff.

Don’t miss this opportunity to stay informed and up to date with the latest news from one of the world’s most respected news sources.

You can access both New York Times website and app content, including the International, Chinese, and Spanish editions of the newspaper.

First-time users are required to register with their Imperial email address. Further details on how to register can be found on the Imperial website.