Spotlight on Success - June 2019
Friday, 28 June 2019
Each month we publish a selection of key Teaching & Learning and Research achievements and developments. See June’s news below.
Awards & Prizes
- Dr Alana James (Psychology) has been named the Higher Education Psychology Teacher of the Year. Dr James impressed with her case study on university-school mentoring to support the transition of students into and out of higher education.
- Reading International (Art) won a ‘Reading Cultural Award’ on 24 June.
- Hydrologist Professor Hannah Cloke received an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours on 7 June for services to flood forecasting and the development of hazard early warning systems, following on from work with the UK government to provide forecast reports ahead of recent cyclones in East Africa.
- Dr Natalie Masento (Food and Nutritional Sciences) has been awarded a British Science Association Media Fellowship and will be working on BBC2’s Jeremy Vine show during August and reporting from the British Science Festival in September.
- Winners of the 2019 UoR Research Engagement and Impact Awards were announced at a ceremony attended by over 100 guests on 25 June, selected from a shortlist of 12. The winners were:
- Professor Emily Black: Drought insurance using TAMSAT rainfall estimates
- Dr Rebecca Emerton and Dr Andrea Ficchi: Real-time flood briefings for humanitarian emergency response to cyclones in Mozambique
- Dr Federico Faloppa: Leading Amnesty International's task force against hate speech in Italy
- Professor Rosa Freedman: Safeguarding Children from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Conflict and Crisis Zones
- Alice Nield (Food and Nutrition Sciences) has won the undergraduate award in the national Young Scientist Competition hosted by the Institute of Food Science and Technology with her ‘Production of GOS from aerobic probiotics'.
- A team of undergraduates known as the Venergy team (Food and Nutrition Sciences) has won the gold prize at Ectotrophelia for their vegan energy sweets for endurance athletes.
- Dr Karen Dempsey (Archaeology) has been awarded a 2–year postdoctoral fellowship by the Irish Research Council on the topic ‘Home is Where the Heart(h) is': investigating medieval houses in Ireland 1100-1600 AD’ to be based at the University of Galway.
Click here to see information on all recent research grants and awards.
News
- The University’s ‘Real Jobs’ scheme this month celebrates 50 years of giving Graphic Design undergraduates the opportunity to produce work for real businesses, charities and other organisations. Work produced by students over the past five decades is on display in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication until 4 July, and you can find an online archive here.
- A #MadeAtReading campaign to highlight UoR environmental research and sustainability efforts ran from 17-21 June culminating in a globally successful Climate Stripes Day, engaging with the public and media to raise awareness of climate science using Ed Hawkins’ (Meteorology) climate stripes graphic. By 24 June almost 1 million stripes graphics had been downloaded from over 180 countries and over 100 TV meteorologists had agreed to use the graphics on their live broadcasts.
- A snakebite awareness campaign led by Dr Sakthi Vaiyapuri (Pharmacy) has reached 749,536 people in India and his Facebook page hosting the campaign has been viewed 2,845,144 times - for a cost of just £253.65.
- Dr Rebecca Bullard (English Literature) and the University of Reading's Crusoe Collection both feature in a recent Radio 3 programme, a Robinson Crusoe Road Trip, which marks 300 years of Daniel Defoe's best-known novel.
- Dr Duncan Garrow (Archaeology) led a successful conference on ‘Objects and Death’ at the British Museum on 31 May, based on the AHRC-funded British Museum and UoR partnership project on Grave goods.
Click here to see all recent University of Reading research publications.