Open Research Week 2024: Tuesday, 27 February, Connecting education

Open access to my drawings and figures / Prof. Geoff Smith, Professor of Pharmaceutical Process Analytical Technology, De Montfort University

Geoff Smith is a professor of pharmaceutical process analytical technology in the School of Pharmacy, De Montfort University. His research focusses on the freeze-drying of pharmaceutical drug products. The work is supported by various PhD programmes and has attracted grant funding from collaborative projects, involving a range of industrial partners and government agencies, in particular the MHRA. His work has inevitably flagged requirements for data management strategies, that consider data repositories and sharing capabilities. His talk today will explain some of the simple approaches he is taking using OneDrive and Figshare; approaches that allow for effective co-working with external partners and dissemination of results, while at the same time supporting his teaching commitments.

Patented patterns: on art and science of patterns, a critical inquiry / Dr Tincuta Heinzel, Textiles Senior Lecturer, Leader of Textiles Design Research Group, Loughborough University

Tincuta Heinzel is an artist, designer, researcher, and curator with a background in visual arts, textiles design, cultural anthropology, and aesthetics and arts sciences (PhD, Paris 1 University - Pantheon Sorbonne). She is interested in materials sciences’ new paradigm, electronics, and reactive textiles, as well as the changes provoked by the 4.0 digital industry. She initiated, curated, and or coordinated several projects, such as “Artists in Industry” (Bucharest, 2011–2013), “Haptosonics” (Oslo, 2013), “Repertories of (in)discreetness” (Budapest – Bucharest 2013-2015) or “Utopian Cities, Programmed Societies” (2019-2020). Her texts have been published in Design Issues, Artnodes, Journal of Textiles Design, Research and Practice, etc. She is presently Senior Lecturer at Loughborough University in the UK, after being previously a Fulbright Scholar at Cornell University in the USA (2017) and artist in residence at KHM - Academy of Media Arts Koeln, Germany (2009-2010). Websites: https://textiltronics.com/.

Community journals for teaching Natural Sciences / Dr Cheryl Hurkett, Lecturer in Natural Sciences, University of Leicester

Dr Cheryl Hurkett is a teaching-focussed lecturer on the Natural Science degree programme at the University of Leicester. She graduated from the University of Leicester with a Masters in Physics with Astrophysics and immediately re-joined the same department to complete a PhD in X-Ray Astronomy, using data from the NASA Swift mission to study Gamma Ray Bursts and the birth of Black Holes. During the later years of her PhD she started to support the teaching of undergraduate students. In 2008 joined the Natural Sciences teaching team and has been a permanent fixture ever since. Her main role is convening the physics and mathematics focussed modules across all years of the degree, though she has been involved with the curriculum design and development of all of the modules on that course. Her more recent research has revolved around innovative teaching practices in STEM subjects in higher education, particularly those involving Research/Problem Based Learning approaches and authentic assessment. The focus of her talk today is based on one of these activities, namely the use of undergraduate journals to teach students time management and written communication skills alongside creativity and synoptic use of their undergraduate scientific knowledge.