Collaborations Blog

 Developing collaborations is essential for the advancement of science and BiosearLab's research model is based on establishing and fostering collaborations. This blog will report on BiosearLab collaborations efforts and reflect on broader aspects of collaborative research. (It is written by Stefano Casalotti)

December 2021

I intended  to write this blog monthly . I was a bit late for the March 2021 blog and then the health of my daughter Lara deteriorated. She had been fighting with Leukaemia for the last 5 years and after two transplants and two relapses she became dependant on specific inhibitor drugs to keep the disease in check. In March the inhibitors stopped working and she had to return to a form of chemotherapy which unfortunately made her vulnerable to infection. Very sadly, she passed away on May 1 . I still have not come to terms with her death and I miss her every day. As  this blog is on the theme of  collaboration,  I believe she was a strong believer in collaborations for the common good especially for the cause of the refugees. (This is what the family wrote for her obituary )  I dedicate this page to Lara and I hope to pick up this blog again in 2022.

February 2021

Facilitating  collaborations within a  university department and between departments is recognised as being an essential strategy for strengthening the research potential of the department and of the institution. In departments and institutions with a strong emphasis on research,  collaborations are likely to emerge from the daily interactions in the laboratories and internal research seminars. In institutions where academics have to spend more time on teaching and much less funding is available, research often becomes a more lonely activity where academic teams are often composed of just a PhD student and their supervisor(s). The development of collaborative projects is hindered by both lack of time, limited resources , and often lack of a recruitment  strategy to ensure common interests among academics. As a result a sense of  alienation from research and a reduction in the ambition of developing larger projects can arise. The need for academics to collaborate to better utilise the scarce resources should be obvious and yet it is difficult to achieve.  The School of Health Sport and Bioscience  at UEL has been reflecting on these issues. Recent surveys of Postgraduate Students and of the staff have indicated that while there is still a strong will to do research there is an agreement  that the Research Culture is not as developed as it should be. In order to address this issue Dr Mukhles  Rahmen (Senior lecturer) together with  Stefano Casalotti  (Biosearlab Director) with the support of Prof Winston Morgan (Reader and Director of Impact and Innovation) have re-launched the Research Hour: a weekly hour slot (Wednesdays 13:00-14:00) dedicated purely to communal research activities . The three main activities are Research Seminars, Research Group Meetings and Journal Club which will alternate on  different weeks  in the Research Hour. It was important to get the approval  of the Head of the School, Prof. Jane Perry, who has been very supportive and is committed to ensure that this initiative is successful. However , the staging of Research Hour events may not  in themselves be enough to stimulate the initiation of new collaborations. Given that specific financial support is unlikely to be available,  efforts need to be made to discuss and explore collaborative ideas. With the view of supporting such efforts, I will endeavour   to document  the discussions that will arise during the research hour and will  curate a 'collaboration web' which will hopefully highlight potential collaborative initiatives. This blog will report on the hoped for success of  the Research Hour .

January 2021

As BiosearLab director  I (Stefano Casalotti)  have  been involved in the preparation of a Research proposal that was submitted to the NIHR- social care branch on Jan 20th. The project is entitled Qualitative and feasibility study to evaluate and enhance the social care contribution of peer-led services for marginalised people suffering from substance abuse.. It is a collaborative project between HSB (Bioscience, Nursing ,Sport) and SocialStudies and Build on Belief The aim of the project is to contribute academic research skills  to the work experience of the peer-led services that support people with substance abuse issues.

The elements of collaborations of this project are at multiple levels:: within university departments, with an external organisation and to create collaborations among peer-led groups. This proposal is a continuation from  previous work with Build on Belief which was the first outreach work that emerged from the Substance Use and Misuse  (SUM-UEL) collaborative group. SUM-UEL had been searching ways to bring together expertise in substance misuse from different UEL departments. and was successful at obtaining a UEL grant to carryout interviews of service users of Build on Believe. The work was published , but unfortunately the internal collaboration broke down and it was necessary to rebuild new links within UEL. Collaborations can thus run into difficulties and it is important to be very open and frank about the goals of the project. We hope that the new team will be able to progress well, independently from the success of the NIHR grant application