avatar
Dear UKAN+ Member

Welcome to our July newsletter, a range of news from across our network reflecting and informing our community.
UKAN+ ANNUAL MEETING 2022
IMG_9365 (1)
The first UKAN+ face to face Annual Event took place in Manchester on the 4th of July 2022. The event was attended by 100 UKAN members. It was also attended by Dr. Andrew Lawrence and Zoe Brown of the EPSRC who presented a talk on UKRI/EPSRC Funding Opportunities and Strategy. Together with keynote presentations by Prof. Andrew Hugill, Dr. Alice Eldridge and Dr. Ian Knowles, this talk laid the foundation for the round table discussion on the following three important topics: (i) UKAN+ strategy to support challenge-led research; (ii) UKAN+ strategy for industry engagement; and (iii) UK National Centre for Coordination of Acoustics Related Research. These discussions have generated a wealth of ideas which will be collated, shared with our members later this month and acted upon by the UKAN+ management team.

Jenna
UKAN+ Poster session
UKAN+ ran a poster session as part of our Annual Event in Manchester on the 4th of July. We were delighted to receive twenty two high quality submissions. Four independent judges assessed all of the posters throughout the day and Dr. Jenna Lawson, a Research Associate at Imperial College London, was the winner.

Jenna provided a few words: I chose to present my work on how we used acoustics to study and conserve the spider monkey because we are in the midst of a climate and biodiversity crisis and I feel it is important to highlight and stimulate discussion on this crisis and work that is trying to mitigate it. I would like to thank my supervisors and colleagues, Cristina Banks, Andrew Whitworth and George Rizos for their support on this project as well as the communities of the Osa Peninsula where we conducted the fieldwork. I thoroughly enjoyed attending the UKAM AGM, its excellent to be a part of this new and exciting acoustic community and I look forward to future events and collaboration. Winning the prize was the icing on the cake of a great day!
Her poster is shown below.
Winning poster
Thank you to all who submitted a poster for our Annual Event poster session. All the other submissions can be assessed here. They are also accessible from the UKAN+ Resources page.
UKAN+ Newsletter
Fellowship writing training
UKAN+ is funding an extensive writing training course to support early career researchers/academics in drafting fellowship proposals, with a focus on EPSRC applications. The full course is ten half-day sessions and is run by a former EPSRC Portfolio Manager and a Materials Science academic.

Sessions 1 & 2 have taken place with recordings of Sessions 1 & 2 available on the course website, Academic Smartcuts until 31st August.

Sessions 3–10 will be delivered to a cohort of 16 people to provide more focussed training that will support participants in writing a competitive Fellowship application. These sessions will include a significant amount of time given to feedback and reflection based on homework assignments that will help participants draft their Fellowship proposals as the course progresses.

Sessions 3-10 are limited in number, by application and with a prerequisite that all Stage 2 participants have attended Sessions 1 & 2 or, failing that, watched the recordings. There is also a £50 contribution if selected to attend sessions 3 onwards.
To apply for a training place, please complete the form and submit it and a two-page CV that includes your work history to Zoë Hunter (z.hunter@acoustics.ac.uk; UKAN+ Network Manager) by 31 July 2022.

Funding Call 2

Funding information
Call 2 opens 8th September 2022 and close 19th October 2022. Full details available on our website page.

A one hour webinar took place in June. The webinar provided prospective Call 2 applicants with information on what UKAN+ is looking for in its funding call and to also provide information on the application process. A recording from that webinar is available here.

EXTENDED APPLICATION DEADLINE FOR WORKSHOPS WITH THE COLLECTIVE - 15th July - First come first served.
UKAN+ will once again collaborate with The Collective, expert facilitators, focused on stimulating future collaborative acoustics research projects. These informal events are designed to build research communities to develop new, innovative ideas for more competitive proposals and opportunities to deliver a step change in world-class research.
New Scientist live
UKAN+ Volunteers Wanted
This year’s New Scientist Live festival taking place at the ExCel 7-9th October (Friday to Sunday).

At this public facing festival of science and technology UKAN+ are looking for interest from members to be involved in the organising and running of UKAN+ presence. Travel, accommodation and attendance costs can be covered by UKAN+

Please contact Zoë (z.hunter@acoustics.ac.uk) in the first instance to note your interest.
Young Muslim
Young Muslim Leadership Programme (YMLP)
Hasina Begum attended at the alumni day held by the prestigious Young Muslim Leadership Programme (YMLP) run by the University of Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OXCIS). She represented our Early Career Group, Metamaterials, Physical Acoustics and Vibro-acoustics SIGs.

Read the full blog in the UKAN+ resources.
Computational Acoustics Knowledgebase Logo
We are pleased to announce the launch of the UKAN Computational Acoustics Knowledgebase, a community project funded by UKAN+ developed in response to skills gaps highlighted in consultation with industry and academia. The knowledgebase is intended to be a central location for knowledge and software related to all aspects of computational acoustics, e.g.: the theory and algorithms themselves; their implementation in software and code; and good practice in research computing.

The knowledgebase was launched at the UKAN+ Annual Meeting on 4th July with example content which we hope the community will contribute to and build upon throughout - and beyond - the life of UKAN+.

Check out the knowledgebase, our GitHub repo, and our plans for the future. You can join our Slack Channel for more information, or email ukan.ca.knowledgebase@gmail.com.
Noise control prize
The 51st International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering is to be held at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) in Glasgow on the 21-24 August 2022. This is the major international conference on acoustics and noise control engineering and attracts scientists, engineers and consultants from around the world.
The Congress is organised by the Institute of Acoustics (IOA) and the United Kingdom Acoustics Network (UKAN) on behalf of the International Institute of Noise Control Engineering (I-INCE).
The Congress theme is Noise Control in a more Sustainable Future. This theme is particularly timely and the congress venue is the same as that for the recent conference on climate change COP 26.

As part of the theme we would like to invite UK based students to enter submissions into a soundscape competition to create an experience that makes a difficult acoustic space in the SEC more pleasant, engaging, relaxing and restorative The winning submission will receive an award presented by the conference chair, an invitation to the conference dinner on Tuesday 23rd August, £500 from the prize sponsor Sustainable Acoustics Ltd plus electronic accolades for their exclusive use. The runner up will be awarded a certificate and a prize of £250. All shortlisted submissions will gain exposure to a wide range of international delegates and companies representing elements of the acoustics sector across the world.

Full details are available on the UKAN+ resources page.
TERC
A new report by the EPSRC sets out the long-term vision for how engineering research will help to tackle key challenges. This work has been led by Dr. Andrew Lawrence, Head of Engineering at the EPSRC.

EPSRC Tomorrow’s Engineering Research Challenges (TERC) was one of the largest consultations undertaken to set a long-term vision for the engineering sector.
The report has now been published: https://www.ukri.org/publications/tomorrows-engineering-research-challenges/

A film which features TERC co-Chairs, Dr Peter Bonfield and Dame Helen Atkinson can be found on the EPSRC YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gps-xg66rgY&feature=youtu.be
UKAN+ Events
Zoom
UKAN+ Online Webinar -
Recent examples of use of vibro-acoustic simulations in the industry
20th September 2022.
UK “Ear and Hear” Meeting This conference is of interest to anyone in the UK and the world who has an interest in the science of Hearing, Audio and Audiology
We are looking to plan our schedule advance. Please email if you are interested in hosting a UKAN+ Zoom webinar. z.hunter@acoustics.ac.uk
You can replay our various webinars via our YouTube, including the 18th May webinar Clinical opportunities and standardisation challenges for photoacoustic imaging
Acoustics related grants
As a part of our annual review of acoustics related research funded by the UKRI UKAN+ have produced a copy of the document which lists all the live grants in acoustics. This document can be found here. Please let us know if any of your grants are not listed in this document or any listed information is incorrect.
Get in touch!
If you have any news for our September newsletter do drop us an email before the 22nd of August. We are interested to hear a range of news, perhaps you have a recent publication, or you would like to offer a blog for our community or maybe you know of some industry news we could share.