Exhibition

The British Council creates international opportunities for the people of the UK and other countries and builds trust between them worldwide. We are a Royal Charter charity, established as the UK’s international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations. Our 7,000 staff in over 100 countries work with thousands of professionals and policy makers and millions of young people every year through English, arts, education and society programmes.

The Daphne Jackson Trust

The Daphne Jackson Trust is a charity founded in 1992 to help scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians (STEM) return to their careers after a break of two or more years, taken for family, caring or health reasons. The Trust offers flexible part-time paid fellowships hosted by universities and research institutions around the UK. The fellowship scheme offers STEM professionals who have had a break from research, the opportunity to balance an individually tailored retraining programme with a challenging research project in a suitably supportive environment. Whilst the Trust provides the infrastructure and expertise to recruit and retrain fellows, financial support is provided by external sponsors such as the research councils, universities, learned societies, charities and industrial partners. The unique combination of mentoring, retraining and research these fellowships offer has led to an impressive success rate – 7 out of 10 fellows remain active in research after completing their fellowship, and many go on to gain permanent research-based positions. To date, the Daphne Jackson Trust has helped  over 265 talented researchers return to their chosen careers.

The Idox Group  

Idox group is a supplier of software solutions and services to the UK public sector. Its Grants arm has worked with public and voluntary sector organisations for close to three decades to provide Europe's leading grants and policy information service.

Its suite of products includes:

• GRANTfinder 4 Education – the UK’s only grants and policy information service that offers a one-stop shop for key projects such as widening participation and business spin-offs as well as R&D funding opportunities.
• RESEARCHconnect – a complete, specialised funding solution built for and designed by the UK academic research community.

Reporting in excess of 13,000 funding opportunities – from local to European funding and wider international programmes – Idox’s funding solutions allow you to maximise your chances of success through the use of tools that enable you to track, save and share content with professionals both inside and outside your organisation.

Idox representatives will be on hand at the Conference to deliver stand demonstrations and provide full information on the products.

KKI Associates - Entrepreneurship and Transferable Skills Training 

KKI Associates trains, inspires, and motivates students and HEI staff in entrepreneurship and commercial skills. The skills they learn in these workshops will also improve their employability and improve their understanding of factors affecting research 'impact'.

KKI training has a high impact and a distinctive training style.

We try to:

• start at the basics
• go very fast
• use interaction and case studies, incentives and prizes
• demystify and explain jargon

Because KKI has been working in this area for 20 years, we can show examples of people having been directly inspired towards entrepreneurship. For a cohort of (typically Ph.D and young post-doc) staff who receive KKI commercialisation training, we have a reasonable estimate of the outcomes:

• the portion who will consider starting some form of commercialisation activity within a few years
• the portion who within 4-5 years will have started companies and obtained significant grant and investment funding
• the portion who will have achieved 'commercial success' - a thriving company or perhaps an investor exit (which can take 10 years from that first training programme)

Stats on the last group suggest that about 1 in 150 trainees goes on to 'become a millionaire' - slightly better, we believe, than the chances that the average student has of becoming a professor!

Come to our stand and:

• see some videos of training workshops in operation
• meet some recent students whom KKI has trained and mentored to success in the BBSRC Biotechnology YES competition
• enter our 'build a tower, build a team challenge' - prizes will be awarded at the end of the day!

Progress Platform

ProgressPlatform^TM is an interactive, web-based system for recording, monitoring and reporting on student progression and skills training activity. The system is extremely flexible and can be tailored to the specific needs of each institution. The range of uses extends beyond postgraduate students, as undergraduate, CPD, other taught students and research staff can also benefit from the system’s flexibility.

ProgressPlatform^TM is transparent and easy to use, offering the potential to enhance data quality, promote student-supervisor interactions and stream-line processes for administrators and supervisors. Key benefits of the system include a booking and management area for skills training activities and a single point of truth for progression, bringing together information from numerous sources/databases.  

We maintain a dialogue with our customers and are constantly developing upgrades in response to evolving requirements. Key elements of the Vitae RDF are embedded in the skills training functionality and there are plans to develop this further in the future. Another recent development is the roll-out of a bespoke reporting module which enables administrators to create reports on any information in the system.  

Please visit our trade stand to discuss your requirements and book a demonstration, at no obligation or cost.

Research Fortnight

Since 1994 we have been publishing research-based funding opportunities and news about research policy. Our experienced technical team created Research Professional, the world’s most comprehensive and accessible database of funding opportunities, to provide our customers with easy and instant access to the relevant information.

Our analysts, contributors, reporters and editors are in direct contact with research funding agencies and universities throughout the world, in order to provide the most detailed and authoritative coverage of research policy news and funding opportunities available. We give our customers all the information they need to compete effectively for

research funding and keep on top of the latest policy developments in any field. www.researchresearch.com

Researchers in Schools

Researchers in Schools (www.researchersinschools.org) is a salaried teacher training programme exclusively for researchers with a doctoral qualification. The two-year programme is designed to ensure that the researchers have the time and resource to maintain an academic profile as they train to become excellent classroom teachers. Over the two years trainees will achieve QTS and complete the requirements of the NQT year

through a structured programme of school based training sessions, lesson observations, supernumerary teaching and independent teaching. Researchers in Schools is a partnership between two education charities (The Brilliant Club and Challenge Partners), two OFSTED-rated ‘Outstanding’ teaching schools (Lampton School and George Abbott SCITT) and King’s College London. The programme aims to increase subject expertise, promote research and champion access to higher education in non-selective state schools. This September, over 20 high-calibre trainees, assessed for their communication, inter-personal and research skills from nearly 200 applications, will be placed in schools as part of the programme’s first year. Applications for the 2015/16 academic year are now open.

SkillsForge

The SkillsForge is an integrated system for the management of Postgraduate development. It provides a set of modules to record and track Postgraduate activity including:

• student-supervisor interactions
• student progression
• personal skills reflection based on a number of competency frameworks
• an online course booking facility

We provide SkillsForge as a fully supported and bespoke software as a service, managed by a full time project-dedicated team. We are based at The University of York and are highly experienced within the HEI environment.

www.skillsforge.com

The Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE)

The Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) is an international learned society concerned to advance understanding of higher education through the insights, perspectives and knowledge offered by research and scholarship.

It is a specialist publisher of higher education research, through journals such as Studies in Higher Education, Higher Education Quarterly, Research into Higher Education Abstracts, and a book series. The Society also supports special interest networks for researchers, and it organises an annual higher education research conference and a parallel conference for postgraduate and newer researchers each December .

To find out more, including membership details, visit www.srhe.ac.uk

SRHE colleague on the stand - Nicola Manches, Administration Officer

UK Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE)

UK Council for Graduate Education is the leading independent representative bodyfor Postgraduate Education in the UK. Its mission is to be the authoritative voice forpostgraduate education in the UK, providing high quality leadership and support to itsmembers to promote a strong and sustainable postgraduate education sector.

UKCGE promotes:

• the interests of graduate education across all disciplines
• quality measures for graduate education and research conducted in HEIs
• the effective leadership and management of postgraduate students
• the effective provision and funding of graduate education
• the status, education and training of postgraduate students
• equal opportunities for students in graduate education
• the professional development and status of staff and supervisors in HEIs

The Council is:

• an authoritative voice for the HE sector on postgraduate activity in the UK
• a developer and communicator on policy relating to postgraduate education
• a developer and promoter of best practice in the delivery and administration of
• postgraduate programmes
• a provider of appropriate information, services and publications for these issues

UKRSA

The UK Research Staff Association (UKRSA) was established in 2010 to provide a collective voice for researchers at Higher Education Institutions across the UK

UKRSA is supported by, and works closely with, Vitae. It aims to empower research staff to take control of their own careers and contribute to policy.

What we do is:

• support local and regional research staff associations and networks
• contribute to national policy, through active  representation on committees and steering groups, and by advising Vitae
• interact directly with research funding bodies
• provide a UK voice on the International Consortium for Research Associations (ICoRSA)
• provide resources such as our Guide to Research Staff Associations
• undertake and report on research projects into the impact of Research Staff Associations and postdoctoral funding
• engage members of research staff in their professional and career development