Here is a little promotional video I made for my 2018 Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas show: “Is Astronaut Food the Future?”
See you on 20th August at 8.10pm!
Here is a little promotional video I made for my 2018 Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas show: “Is Astronaut Food the Future?”
See you on 20th August at 8.10pm!
Absolutely thrilled to be announcing my upcoming Edinburgh Fringe show: “Is Astronaut Food the Future?”
The event is part of the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas series (CODI), which is a joint Beltane Public Engagement Network and Fair Pley production. This is my third time at the Fringe, you might even rememner the 2016 show “Let Big Brother Watch!” and last year’s collaboration with the amazing Pippa Goldschmidt on “Outer Space – The Next Empire?”
So this year we will be talking all things Food and (Outer) Space, from consumables sent “up there”, “space microwaves”, baking bread and growing salad on International Space Station and Earth Observation technologies controlling global food production of the future.
To find out more why this matters, here is a little interview I did for the CoDI Blog.
Finally, speaking of freeze drying, there might be some interesting samples to taste…
Though the plan is to have as much fun as possible, there are interesting questions surrounding food production, nutrition science and the role of “consumers”, PS: that is you and me, in all of this.
Most importantly, I will be wanting to hear your opinions about what high-tech might do to food standards, quality and also is end in sight for food poverty.
If you want to find out how this links to my research and teaching, I have written a Teaching Matters blog: CoDI: Is Astronaut Food the Future?
So, join me on 20th August at 8.10pm in the Stand’s New Town Theatre (George Street; Fringe Venue 7) to have your say about having astronaut food for dinner!
More info and tickets: www.bit.ly/IsAstronautFoodTheFuture
Kindly supported by the Student Development Office at the School of Social and Political Science.
This is a belatedly late post about some of my (early) research findings – and my efforts to disseminate them.
This is build around Phase 1 of my research into the facilitation of technology transfer from basic research into high-tech industry, which is (hopefully) leading to overall economic growth and prosperity.
I am focusing on the Space Sector, the historic development of which is in its 3rd phase, sometimes referred to as the “New Space”, – after the initial state monopoly (1st phase) and the technology being commercialised by large multinational corporations (2nd phase), it is now being democratised through innovation and entrepreneurship as the (previously complex and expensive hardware becomes smaller, more standardised and cheaper (Space IGS, 2010). In the context of this transition and growth of the sector, there is a government target of increasing the UK share of global Space market from 7% to 10% by 2030 (Space IGS, 2010).
For small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) – which are the subject of my research – this is also denoting a transition in SMEs from “technology-push” to “market-pull” new product development (NPD) orientation, based on a shift from “supplying” to larger companies to “selling” to end customers/users, which is also moving from “mass-manufacturing” to developing Complex Products and Services (CoPS) (Hobday, 1998) and vertical value chain integration.
In order to help facilitate technology transfer at this transition point – one of the objective of my research – a key link between the systemic understanding of the sector and the innovation processes and practices in companies must be established. Given the prevalence of network research – which is at the core of Innovation studies both at macro as well as micro level (Freeman, 1991), due the fact that it covers the crucial aspect of knowledge commercialisation, namely interaction – this is an obvious choice to bridge the two.
In particular I am using ego-centric Social Network Analysis (SNA) (Scott, 1988; Giuliani, 2007) to plot the business network for each of the three studied companies (see table above). This is based on a survey-style questionnaire, with multiple-choice answers, but options for other (more expanded) answers as well. This enabled me a comprehensive analysis of the knowledge network, in particular the flows of knowledge and a qualitative analysis of the NPD process, by examining the specific “innovation moments” (i.e. points at which decisions about developing an innovation into a product take place) (Edwards et. al., 2000), the role external partners play in those instances and how the differences in companies’ network make-up affect the creation of new products (and vice-versa).
Presently, the study is in its pilot incarnation, focusing on three case studies, carefully selected to represent key elements of the population of the field (upstream /downstream; hardware/software; start-up/spin-off; “Classical”/”New Space”; products/services), i.e. a set of typical cases (Yin, 2009), as summarised here:
In short, these are the key findings so far:
Of course, these are only preliminary observations and substantial further research is being planned to further this work, including expanding the study to analyse all Scottish Space Sector companies.
If you are interested in a more full account of my research click through for the full paper presented at Reinventing Space 2015 conference (Oxford, 9th-13th November 2015)
Here is also a photo of my poster (from SUPA Cormack Meeting 2015):
And here is another! Video about my research, that is.
I have now started the Student Research Films (SRF) initiative, a video series of Edinburgh University students briefly (should be under 1min) talking about our different research projects. (If interested to take part, check out the resources page!)
The idea came from all the video work I have done recently and the Research in a Nutshell series, a similar initiative for academics (1min videos about their research). In particular, I found these 60 second introductions very useful when meeting new staff, looking for information about my interests and seeking advice about my research.
As part of the Innovative Learning Week 2015 I got some funding to put together a small workshop to exchange ideas, present the template to other students and challenge us all to make a video each (there were also two prizes for the best entries – congratulations to Nurun and Alastair!). We got five videos in total in this first batch including mine…
I am very grateful to Siri Rodnes, Bob Fisher, Alyssa Newman and Helene Frossling Mattsson for all their help and enthusiasm for this project.
We are hoping to grow this initiative over the years, so if anyone seeing this is interested, do have a look at the project page and/or get in touch with me!
Hello!
Another video of mine is out, this time about why do I do my research at the University of Edinburgh.
This is part of the “The University of Edinburgh is My Perfect Match Because…” Video Challenge.
There are more videos from the Challenge available at EUSA YouTube Channel.