Calling all Researchers! As part of our seven steps to ICT Sustainability, we recommend taking our Digital Research Sustainability course.
The course, created by our Research Computing Service team, explores how digital research activities contribute to carbon emissions and what you can do to reduce them.
Find out more about the course
Registration is now open for the new season of public engagement training! From developing core engagement skills to exploring participatory research, discover the right tools to engage your audiences effectively through our Engagement Masterclasses.
These sessions are open to all Imperial staff, doctoral students and postgraduate research masters students, register now to secure your place.
Core Engagement Masterclass: This session covers why engagement is so important, explores approaches to quality engagement and discusses the many opportunities for public engagement at Imperial and beyond.
Communication in Engagement: This skills-focused workshop looks at the key to effective communication and messaging, relevant across engagement formats, and will help you to tailor engagement to different audiences or contexts.
Making Public Engagement Inclusive: This new session will enable you to identify key areas of inclusion for your engagement activities by considering a variety of different scenarios, underpinned by equity, diversity, and inclusion principles.
Engagement, Funding and Impact: This session covers what research funders are looking for and how engaging the wider public can be a pathway to many potential impacts and applications of research.
Digital Engagement: Join us to discover a wide range of online tools and platforms, explore the merits and limitations of digital engagement, and discuss the key considerations when engaging with audiences online.
Participatory Research: Discover the benefits of participatory research and how to approach it effectively. Explore power dynamics and how to build trust, ensuring all participants feel able to participate in the process.
Please contact the Public and Community Engagement team with any queries.
Imperial Lates are returning this autumn with three exciting new themes. These fun and free post-work events are a great night out, as well as a fantastic opportunity for Imperial staff and students to get experience in public engagement in a laid-back setting.
Whether you’re a seasoned Public Engagement expert or have never taken your work outside the lab, the Lates team wants to hear from you! Fully developed activities or initial ideas are equally welcome, and the team can help you to develop your proposition into a talk, exhibit or workshop.
Please complete the open call Qualtrics form to register your interest, and if you have any questions about the ideas submission process, please get in touch via email (lates@imperial.ac.uk)
This year’s themes are:
If none of these quite fit with your area of expertise, you can still get involved as a volunteer! Volunteers keep everything running smoothly and can have a go at several roles, such as welcoming guests, supporting researchers or artists taking part in a workshop or talk or capturing social media content for Imperial channels. If you are an Imperial staff member or student interested in volunteering at Imperial Lates, you can sign up to the volunteer portal to be notified when shifts open.
Calling Early-Career Researchers!
Finished your PhD? Working as a postdoc or early-career lecturer in the UK?
This UKRI-funded study looks at how AI is shaping anxiety, creativity, and research practice among ECRs. Your responses will directly inform support design and wellbeing guidance for the research community.
Click the link below to take part, or scan the QR code in the image.
https://nclpsych.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_d5xQB7dK1MYFif4
Participation involves a 30-minute online survey (£5 e-voucher), with an optional follow-up interview (£25 e-voucher).
Any questions? Please contact cen.cong@newcastle.ac.uk
SAVE THE DATE AND JOIN US on the afternoon of 8 December at the Hammersmith Hospital Campus
Dear Colleagues
I am excited to invite you to this year’s refreshed Faculty of Medicine Christmas Festival, exclusively returning to the Hammersmith Hospital Campus on Tuesday 8 December from 14.30 onwards.
The format of the event has been revisited to offer an entertaining, social afternoon for all faculty members to enjoy. We will be hosting some of our own fantastic Imperial speakers, an invited guest speaker Professor Nick Lane, Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London, and Director of the UCL Centre for Life’s Origins and Evolution (CLOE).
The event will followed by a range of cocktails and nibbles. Medical science-themed cocktail names to be decided and we would like suggestions to come from you!
We are still working on the finer details of the afternoon’s programme and further information will follow.
Please register your initial interest to attend; this will generate a calendar invite to reserve the time in your diary.
Professor David Owen PhD FRCP
FoM Director of Hammersmith Hospital Campus, Imperial College London
Imperial ICT have recently begun providing GitHub Copilot business paid subscriptions to Imperial staff and postgraduate students who are involved in research. If you use GitHub Copilot to assist you with programming tasks, these plans provide a high quota which is suitable for regular use (just make sure not use the most expensive models available unless necessary). To get access to this plan you will need to:
If you are interested in learning more about how to use GitHub Copilot in your programming practice, we also run a course which focuses on learning to use this tool (new dates will be announced in September).
| The Innovation Launchpad Network+ (ILN+), has secured an additional £500,000 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to launch the Researchers in Residence (RiR) Sprint programme.
Running between October 2026 and February 2027, the RiR Sprint will build on the success of the Network’s flagship Researchers in Residence scheme by providing a new fast paced model of collaboration between universities and the Innovate UK Catapult Network. The call for the Researchers in Residence Sprint programme is open now, with projects commencing in October 2026 and ending in February 2027. Applications are invited for projects of between £25,000-£50,000 of university researcher costs which will take fundamental work from the University lab and scale it towards application in the real world. Everything you need to know, including a three-step guide to application, is here. |
Research on “Assessing the development in policies for use of generative Ai tools in the ethical research process in the higher education of the UK”
The questionnaire takes approximately 10 minutes to complete, and all responses are completely anonymous. Participation is entirely voluntary, and the data will be used solely for academic research.
REF 2029: what you need to know
Code of Practice
Imperial’s REF 2029 Code of Practice has been submitted to Research England and is now available for staff to view. The Code of Practice is our REF governance framework which ensures that decisions are being made fairly and transparently and that our submission reflects the breadth and excellence of our research.
Training and resources
Training and resources are available to all staff to support REF preparations, including:
All staff should also make sure their Imperial Essentials are up to date.
Volume measure and REF independence
The volume measure is a calculation of staff contracts which determines the size of Imperial’s submission to REF 2029. You can find more detail about the volume measure, how it’s calculated, and which contracts are included in our FAQs.
We are required to have a process for determining whether contracts in the Research job family at grades Research Associate, Research Fellow and Advanced Research Fellow, meet the REF criteria for ‘research independence’. Staff who hold a contract at these grades will receive an email notifying them about whether their contract will be included in the volume measure.
Decisions on whether a contract is included in the volume measure are for REF purposes only and have no relation to an individual’s career progression at Imperial.
Sexual harassment awareness e-training
As part of our commitment to ensuring a respectful and safe environment for work and study, an online sexual harassment awareness training course was introduced last summer for all staff, from all job families.
All new starters must complete this training within six months of joining Imperial.
As part of our commitment to preventing incidents of harassment and sexual misconduct, and to meet regulatory requirements from the Office for Students, we have created a webpage with resources which include:
Please familiarise yourself with the webpage on preventing harassment and sexual misconduct and share with staff as necessary, particularly those working with students.