Cutting through the smoke and championing diversity: News from the College

Here’s a batch of fresh news and announcements from across Imperial.

From a longform feature on Imperial academics' work tackling air pollution, to a professor’s appointment to a new equality, diversity and inclusion advisory group, here is some quick-read news from across the College.

Cutting through the smoke

Air pollution is a major public health issue, contributing to around 40,000 premature deaths each year in the UK alone. A cross-faculty network at Imperial is working to discover more about how individual pollutants contribute to this problem, and how we can combat their harmful effects.

Some researchers are using personal sensors and biological measurements to understand how pollutants affect us as individuals, a departure from traditional methods that only measure the effects at population level. Others are developing methods for quantifying the monetary costs of air pollution, offering local governments a way to factor these costs into their decision-making.

You can read more about the work taking place within Imperial’s Network of Excellence in Air Quality in a new long-form feature, Cutting Through the Smoke.

Showcasing active learning

Professor Emma McCoy, Faculty of Natural Sciences Vice-Dean (Education), recently announced winners of the faculty’s Active Learning Summer Challenge. Active learning, such as class polling, strives to involve students in their learning and is at the centre of the College’s Learning and Teaching Strategy.

She said: “This event is a great opportunity to share best practice of active learning. We aim to increase active learning by showing how you can embed it in teaching.”

The panel of staff and student judges agreed that all entries showed excellent pedagogic techniques and the students were very positive about the active learning demonstrated. The overall winners were Dr Caroline Clewley, Dr Steve Cook and Professor Pietro Spanu.

The entries, with links to videos explaining each technique, can be viewed in the Active Learning Showcase.

September success: BioMedEng18

This month Imperial hosted the UK's largest gathering of biomedical engineers. BioMedEng18 saw two days of inspiring talks from biomedical engineers, medical engineers and bioengineers at our South Kensington campus.

Chaired by Professor Peter Weinberg from Imperial’s Department of Bioengineering, the conference was also held at Imperial College London in 2008 and 2014, will be held here again in 2019.

Equality, diversity and inclusion

Professor Tom Welton, Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, has been appointed to the UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) new External Advisory Group for equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). The group will work with UKRI to identify and prioritise areas to make the most progress and improve outcomes in this these three subjects.

Professor Welton is a longstanding champion of equality, diversity and inclusion. He has worked with many universities and departments to help to build their EDI action plans, and was awarded an OBE specifically for his services to diversity education.

Read the full UKRI announcement

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