Postgraduate News: All Subjects

UKPASS, the new centralised postgraduate application service is now available for providers of both Taught and Research programmes and for full-time, part-time or distance learning routes.

Developed by UCAS and launched in November 2007, UKPASS is available online to any postgraduate providers, allowing institutions to tailor their own applications whilst taking advantage of the national management information available to them.

Applicants are able to manage their applications within one area and can track their progress and reply to offers at any time.

For more information about this service, advisers can contact the UKPASS team at info@ukpass.ac.uk or visit www.ukpass.ac.uk.

We are delighted to announce the arrival of our new site design, which:

- shows more study/funding opportunities from individual funders on the home page, and on main subject pages
- launches a new Student Profiles service, so Universities can now upload profiles of selected postgraduate students, and intending postgraduates can find out more about study at a particular University or in a particular subject area.
- gives intending postgraduates more ways to browse our funding opportunities, both by type of funding organisation and by level
- Adds a new opportunity to browse Professional Doctorates - they have always been there, but now they have their own browse facility, making them easier to find. They can also be found within the PhD/Doctoral browse.

This year, posgraduate students in the Faculty of Social and Political
Sciences have become actively involved in the Social and Political Sciences
Society established a year ago by the undergraduate students.

The postgrads' first SPS Society activity was a day trip to Peterborough
early in the year that aimed to provide an opportunity for PhD and Mphil
students to meet each other informally. The SPS Society also organizes a
weekly social gathering on Friday evenings so that students can catch up
and unwind after their week's worth of work.

The SPS Society has initiated a series of research seminars aimed to

Each year arc offers a number of prestigious prizes to allied health professionals which are available in open competition and winners receive a silver medal, certificate and cheque for £500. They are advertised in the BHPR Newsletter and by specialist Rheumatology AHP groups and include:

- arc BHPR Silver Medal Prize
- arc NAROT Silver Medal Prize
- arc RCNRF Silver Medal Prize
- arc PRCA Silver Medal Prize

Prizes are a good way of demonstrating your abilities to your current and future employers, help when applying for courses or grants and look good on your CV!

To find out how to enter this year’s competition and the deadline for submission of an entry, please contact the prize administrators for your particular field as shown below:

The Department for Electrical and Electronic Engineering is delighted to
announce the winners of three recent MSc prizes, which were awarded at the
Graduation Reception earlier this year. The students were all graduating
from the Department's taught MSc course, Communication Systems and Signal
Processing, a challenging one-year programme with specialisation in Mobile
Communications, Signal Processing or Optical Communications.

Sylvie Nay - awarded the Toshiba Prize for the MSc degree graduate with the
best overall performance

Gregory Begumisa - awarded the IEEE UK/RI Communications Chapter Prize for

One of the world’s leading research centres is set to open a new research facility which will house one of the biggest clean room complexes in Europe. The new interdisciplinary complex will provide the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of Southampton with all the necessary world-class facilities to allow internationally-leading research to continue at Southampton for the next two decades.

The new building will replace labs lost in a fire that destroyed ORC’s facilities in 2005. Since the fire, a building on the University’s main campus has been renovated so PhD students and postdoctoral researchers can continue hands-on research on some of the most exciting areas of new technology.

Steve Phillips MCIOB, a final year EngD student and Jim Martin FRICS of Martin Associates Chartered Surveyors have won the CIOB Faculty of Architecture and Surveying Premier Innovation Award for 'The Development of a Tender Support Tool OVID-BV' which was developed as part of Steve's EngD research at the Centre for Innovative and Collaborative Engineering at Loughborough University.

The movement away from the traditional culture of acceptance of the lowest monetary bid tenders towards value based procurement, has presented the UK social housing sector with a number of challenges. Their innovation addresses some of the challenges that need to be overcome. OVID-BV, which is an acronym for Optimising Value In Decision-making using Best Value, has been developed into a software package that enables Registered Social Landlords to analyse both the quality attributes and whole life costing

Juliet Houghton took Brunel’s MSc course in Cross-Cultural Studies of Children, Child Development and Youth and has recently received the National Children’s Champion Award.

“As a children’s HIV specialist nurse working with children and families from sub-Saharan Africa, I was delighted to find a part-time Master’s course that considered children and young people when trying to understand how culture is constituted and transformed. This MSc was particularly attractive to me as it worked on the premise that children are not simply passive recipients of culture, but rather are actively and creatively involved in constituting their worlds.

Nanoscience continues to make a significant impact in modern science and technology. This is reflected by the University of Nottingham’s investment, in excess of £3 million, to establish the Nottingham Nanotechnology and Nanoscience Centre (NNNC) due to be opened in June 2007 by Nobel Laureate Sir Harry Kroto. The centre will not only house a significant new suite of equipment for nanoscience research but serves as the home for the University of Nottingham’s innovative MSc in Nanoscience. The MSc course is based in the NNNC and is taught jointly by the Schools of Chemistry, Physics and Astronomy, Pharmacy and Mechanical, Materials & Manufacturing Engineering.

Researchers from the University of Essex have won funding from a government initiative to promote research collaboration with India. The team from the Human Rights Centre and Children's Legal Centre, based at Essex, will work with Indian organisations to improve the protection of children's rights in India.

The Indian government recently banned child labour, but this is one of the areas the team will research as it develops ways of measuring whether the state is upholding and protecting children's rights.

The two-year programme of research is being funded by the UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI).The winning proposal was among 23 out of 261 applicants selected, and one of only three social science/humanities bids funded by the programme. The award was announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon Gordon Brown, in Delhi last month.

We are delighted to announce that the February Prize Draw has been won by Jude, from Wiltshire who is
planning to undertake a PhD exploring the experiences of older people with dementia who go on to develop cancer. Jude has won an iPod Shuffle.

Our next Prize Draw will be after Easter - please tell your friends and colleagues about the site: you will get an extra entry into the Prize Draw for each one that registers and and tells us you referred them.

To celebrate 50 years of the foundation of Birmingham's Dante Alighieri Society this
year, the University of Birmingham's Department of Italian Studies is hosting a
series of open lectures by Dante specialists from UK, European and American
Universities.

The Society, known as 'The Dante', is one of the oldest campus based societies with
a membership that spans the whole region. For anyone interested in Italy and
Italian culture, the society runs a packed programme of talks, musical events and
informal gatherings, often with an array of Italian food.

The lectures centre on Dante from Medieval Italy to the Third Millenium and take

The Principal and Chairman of Council of King's College London have led a successful delegation from the College to India to develop further links, and raise the College's profile.

The Principal, Professor Rick Trainor, and Chairman, Baroness Rawlings, went to the Presidential Palace to meet the President of India, Dr Abdul Kalam, who was a career physicist.

On Monday 12 February the College hosted a major seminar on Perspectives on Terrorism – Europe & Asia which made a significant contribution to the ongoing debate on global approaches to terrorism.

Presentations were given by Michael Clarke, Professor of Defence Studies at King's and an international commentator on defence issues; and Major General Afsir Karim (retd), editor of the leading journal in South East Asia on terrorism.

The NPC (National Postgraduate Committee) has set up an online petition via the Government's service at 10 Downing Street as part of its campaign for the student loans scheme to be extended to postgraduates not in receipt of financial assistance. Although around a third of PhD students and some Masters students receive financial assistance from Research Councils, usually via schemes feeding money through their own institutions, many are self funding. The NPC believes that the student loans scheme is the best way to support postgraduate students.

On February 4th, the petition had 1049 responses - UK citizens are elligible (and encouraged!) to vote for a measure that could clearly benefit postgraduate students.

The FT has just published Global MBA 2007, its MBA rankings, with overall rankings, as well as separate rankings for top American schools, European Asia-Pacific and Canadian schools, and the top 10 schools in selected categories. The FT comments that the MBA is having a strong year, but with fierce competition to attract the best students.

See http://www.ft.com/businesseducation/globalmba2007

The Universities of Birmingham, Nottingham and Warwick have recently announced the establishment of a joint graduate school for physics.

The Midlands Physics Alliance (MPA), has attracted £3.9m in funding from HEFCE and will see academics from all three institutions joining together for research and create a joint graduate school across the universities.

Postgraduate students will still get degrees from their own universities but in this new scheme will have access to staff at all three universities and, whilst some contact will be virtual, through video conferencing, there will be opportunities for physicists to meet, made easier by their geographical proximity.