Dr Adam Sykulski is a Senior Lecturer in the Statistics section of Imperial’s Department of Mathematics. He recently attended an Environment and Sustainability theme event at Silwood Park, organised as part of Silwood’s 75th Anniversary celebrations.

In this post, Dr Sykulski reflects on why he attended the event, what he took away – valuable information about funding strategies, grant applications and potential collaborators – and reasons why researchers at all career stages should engage.

By Dr Adam Sykulski

My research is in mathematical statistics with a focus on data that are spatiotemporal – in other words, data that are collected at multiple instances over space and time and are in some way connected. Such mathematical challenges, while interesting in their own right, truly come to life when they find an application domain to work closely with. In my view, there isn’t a more natural domain for this than the environmental sciences! As I’ve aimed towards such a collaboration to help build the impact and usefulness of my research, over the years I’ve been drawn to working with oceanographers.

Of course, the statistical challenges in oceanography – modelling plastic pollution, oil spills and global warming, for example – are pressing and important. What really drew me in as a statistician, however, were the fascinating physical structures that underpin oceanographic data, but are in reality contaminated by observational noise and uncertainty, thus requiring a cross-disciplinary approach to resolve the scientific challenge. (more…)

Read The bigger picture: collaboration can bring research to life in full

On 21 July 2022 the Silwood Park campus at Imperial College London will welcome speakers and delegates from Imperial, University College London, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and UK Parliament to debate a critically important topic: the future of biodiversity.

In this post Science Communication Master’s student, Sascha Pare, examines why it’s so important for scientists and policymakers to have frank and honest discussions. She also considers the devastating consequences on the horizon if we lose sight of biodiversity commitments for short-term economic gains.

By Sascha Pare

The future of biodiversity on Earth is uncertain. Without joint and systemic action to halt the loss of species and habitats, scientists have warned of a possible sixth mass extinction with devastating consequences for humankind. In the race to mitigate the interlinked effects of biodiversity loss and climate change before it is too late, scientists and policymakers are coming together to discuss long-term solutions. (more…)

Read Valuing biodiversity’s future in a changing world  in full

Every year the Royal College of Science Union‘s (RCSU) international science communication competition, the Science Challenge, welcomes entrants from schools across the globe. This year’s competition focused on climate change, with questions set by Professor Lord Robert Winston, Professor Kathy Sykes, Professor Richard Templer and Dr Paulo Ceppi.

In this post RCSU Vice President Operations, Trinity Stenhouse, reflects on what led her to the VPO position as a first year undergraduate. why the Science Challenge has been designed to focus on sci comm for non-specialist audiences, and the importance of making science meaningful.

You can also find out more about this year’s winning entries! (more…)

Read Make it meaningful: RCSU’s Science Challenge 2022 in full

Dr Viraj Perera is Director of Industry Partnerships and Commercialisation in the Faculty of Natural Sciences. In this post he highlights the reasons why the Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) programme, run by Innovate UK, is such a valuable opportunity for collaboration and funding, detailing how FoNS academics can learn more about the scheme and its benefits. 

By Viraj Perera

Championing translational research

Innovate UK is the nation’s innovation agency and is a part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Its approved budget for 2021-22 is £667 million, which is greater than the budgets approved for BBSRC, AHRC and ESRC funding combined. This clearly indicates a major thrust towards championing translational research in solving real-world problems in industry settings. (more…)

Read A free postdoc and publication opportunities… interested? in full

The Imperial Bioscience Review (IBR) is a student-led project, publishing articles on emergent and established fields of bioscience. The team aims to remove barriers to science by providing accurate, up-to-date, unbiased and inclusive articles that are free-to-access.

Life Sciences undergraduate student, Andres Hernandez Maduro, is a contributor. In this post he shares insights into IBR’s editorial and publishing process, and why it’s such a rewarding role alongside his curricular studies.

By Andres Hernandez Maduro

Sci comm and collaboration

Imperial Bioscience Review (IBR) published pieces are short, evidence-based summaries of topics that interest student contributors – and these articles are made freely available online. Since its inception just over a year ago, IBR has extended its base to over 100 writers across several undergraduate and postgraduate courses. With articles published online on a weekly basis, the collection of work has quickly grown to over 400 review pieces. In addition, IBR produces a termly magazine to showcase our writers’ work to the college community, kindly supported by the Department of Life Sciences. (more…)

Read Through the eyes of a STEM student writer: Imperial Bioscience Review in full

In this post, Naima Sykes, Global Stakeholder Engagement Manager for Target Malaria, shares an animation video that the Target Malaria team developed, detailing their approach to stakeholder engagement activities. She also shares insights on how the consortium engages meaningfully with their varied stakeholders, and why this is so essential for their research.

By Naima Sykes

Target Malaria is a not-for-profit research consortium that aims to develop and share new, cost-effective and sustainable genetic technologies to modify mosquitoes and lower malaria transmission. By reducing the population of malaria mosquitoes, we aim to bring down the transmission of the disease, allowing people in affected areas to live without the burden of malaria and freeing up resources currently used to combat the disease. (more…)

Read Animation: Target Malaria’s approach to Stakeholder Engagement Activities in full

In December 2021 PhD students from Imperial’s Centre for Environmental Policy (CEP), Dyson School of Design Engineering (Dyson) and Business School (ICBS), organised an event in response to COP26 and the environmental crisis.

‘Beauty of a More Colourful World’ brought together twelve postgraduate research students from six different departments to showcase how their research ties into addressing environmental problems. In this blog post one of the organisers, Yurong Yu, reflects on the experience.

Author: Yurong Yu | Photo credits: Yunwan Tao.

My fellow co-organiser, Neel Le Penru, and I initiated this event because we realised that the complexity of environmental problems requires interdisciplinary collaboration, so opportunities for interdepartmental communication among researchers is vital. It’s also crucial for junior researchers to learn how to communicate their research to a non-specialist audience, to achieve a greater impact.

After some discussion we came up with the idea of inviting interactive and entertaining presentations from multiple departments, using different formats such as demos, prototypes, installations and games to inspire members of our Imperial community. The title, Beauty of a more colourful world, not only refers to the colourful environmental system, but also our diverse Imperial research community. The “flash mob” element came about because of the tight timeline – normally an event like this takes months to plan and carry out, but we didn’t want to miss the perfect window created by COP26, so we sped up and made it come true in five weeks! (more…)

Read Beauty of a more colourful world: CEP X Dyson X ICBS PhD Flash Mob #1 in full

In this post Anna Goodwin and Ella Robson, our FoNS Wellbeing Advisors, explain what impostor syndrome is and share their tips for keeping those niggling feelings of inadequacy – at university, work and in social situations – at bay.

By Anna Goodwin and Ella Robson

First off, well done for making it to the end of this term! Hopefully you’re now starting to feel settled in your routine, and enjoying your course and all that student life has to offer.

If this not the case for you, however, then fear not – you’re almost certainly not alone. The later part of the autumn term can be a tricky time to navigate. With Freshers’ and start of term events now a distant memory, longer evenings drawing in and the reality of course demands kicking into gear, it’s understandable if you feel a little disheartened or overwhelmed.

If you also find yourself doubting whether you deserve your place on the course, or whether you belong at Imperial, then you may be experiencing a phenomenon known as impostor syndrome. (more…)

Read Impostor Syndrome, anyone? in full

Sofia Palazzo Corner is a PhD student at the Centre for Environmental Policy, and part of the Imperial delegation heading to COP26.

My research is about extremes in the Earth system (think rapid permafrost thaw, AMOC collapse) and specifically about finding a way to include these in simple climate models. The aim is to more fully represent the spectrum of plausible warming that could occur by 2100, taking into account the current uncertainty in many of the Earth system processes. As part of my research, I’m consulting researchers in different areas of climate science to obtain their expert judgement on the range of plausible behaviour within the Earth subsystems that they study. This is sometimes our best source of information when observational or model data is missing. (more…)

Read FoNS at COP26: Sofia Palazzo Corner in full

Paul Brown is Mechanical Instrumentation Workshop Manager in the Department of Physics. He’s worked on projects such as the Solar Orbiter and the Interstellar Mapping Acceleration Probe (currently being built), was made a Member of the British Empire (MBE) for services to Higher Education in 2017 and has recently been shortlisted for the Lifetime Achievement Award as part of the prestigious Papin Technical Prizes.

In this blog post he reflects on his experiences as a lab and instrumentation technician within an academic environment, and gives us insight into the projects he’s been involved in from a technician’s perspective. (more…)

Read From student labs to outer space: a day in the life of a Physics technician in full