The Early Career Academics’ Research (ECAR) Forum was officially launched on Wednesday 17th June by Professor Graham Hooley.
The ECAR Forum is very much research-based and is specifically for those in the early stages of their academic and research careers. It provides (through various activities) a network of peer support and facilitates and enables cross-discipline research collaboration to raise awareness of research profiles and activities.
The launch was combined with a Poster and Networking event with a buffet lunch for 60 staff. The Associate Deans of Research; Professor Jim Love, Professor Helen Griffiths, Professor David Lowe and Professor Malcolm Coulthard with Professor Hooley judged the posters which were categorised within Aston’s five research themes. Assessment was against the following criteria: Contribution to knowledge; Impact potential; contribution to the Aston research strategy; novelty; timeliness; star quality.
Congratulations to the prize winners who all received a financial contribution to their PASA accounts, kindly donated by the four Executive Deans:
Health and wellbeing of the individual: Rebekka Heitmar; Andrew Devitt; Andrew Ingham
Effectiveness of organisations: Claudia Sacramento; Jane Matthiesen; Melina Manochin
Engineering solutions for tomorrow: Paul Topham; Maria Chli (both of Maria’s posters); Yassir Makkawi
Creating an inspirational learning experience: Jane Andrews; Hannah Bartlett
There were no poster submissions under the theme of ‘an ever-changing, diverse, society’.
To encourage communications an intranet site for ECRs has been created: www.aston.ac.uk/ecar. Information on the launch event together with most of the posters has been uploaded. The content of this site is at the early stages of population and will depend very much on what ECRs would find useful and relevant, any feedback and/or suggestions for content would be very welcome and should be sent to Debbie Evans, ECAR Co-Ordinator.
The events was initiated and organised by Debbie Evans with support from Wendy Overton, Susan Doughty and Margarita Seresht. Feedback has been extremely positive and further events will be planned to ensure that ECAR becomes embedded into Aston’s research culture.
Watch this space!
Words by Debbie Evans
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