Last week Thursday, the BMS Research Conference took place in the DesignLab. Over 200 colleagues joined, marking an exciting start of a new tradition. Let’s look back at this inspiring day.
RESEARCH IN CHALLENGING TIMES
"What do we do to tackle the current challenges? This question is not new for us. At UT, we want to recognise talent, revise our R&I infrastructure, future-proof our finances, maintain high-quality research, and more importantly, be vocal about our academic and societal impact" – Bernard Veldkamp, Vice-dean Research BMS
The conference opened with a keynote from our Vice-dean Research Bernard Veldkamp, who reflected on what it means to be an academic in modern times at BMS: he highlights the dual purpose of educating the future generation and contributing to societal impact. To illustrate, Veldkamp talked about his team’s research on Development Language Disorder and how to implement findings in education through adaptive learning materials. This has the potential to have a great impact: children can get learning materials tailored to their own level. This research also highlights one of BMS's strengths: we operate on the interface of technology and humanity.
FINDING CONNECTIONS
"Today, we take time to celebrate what we like to do - research. Research that crosses boundaries, domains, and departments" – Tanya Bondarouk, Dean BMS
The day continued with various sessions: roundtables, poster presentations, topic sessions and themed symposia. The programme, largely structured along our BMS Research Themes, was filled with contributions from all research and support departments. Throughout the conference, colleagues could get acquainted with work outside of their daily team and find new connections.
These connections also came back at the closing part of the programme, where our Dean presented a Concept Mapping research on what UT, BMS and departmental policy documents and research evaluations say about BMS and which connections appear. For instance, the importance of societal impact is highlighted strongly by both internal and external sources.
LOOKING AHEAD
The BMS Research Conference organising team thanks all colleagues for their presence and contributions! An after-booklet is being developed to formally recap the conference, including many more pictures.
With this conference being set up as a tradition-to-be, please help us by sharing your thoughts on the event using this 3-question survey.
