Welcome to the December newsletter from the Lloyd's Register Foundation, our final one of 2017. Looking back it's been an exciting year for us and our grants community in which we've awarded 21 grants totalling £22.8m, which brings our total active grants portfolio now up to more than £100m. In this newsletter we've got news on our support to the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures to be broadcast on the BBC, as well as lots of other updates. In addition, we've got some exciting prospects in the pipeline which I'm looking forward to updating you on in 2018. In the meantime, from the team in the Foundation we wish you all the best for a safe and happy New Year.
RI Christmas lectures
The Foundation is proud to be the major supporter of the Royal Institution's CHRISTMAS LECTURES programme for the next three years. This year's topic – COMMUNICATION – is important to us because we are interested in the human and social factors that affect safety. What could be more fundamental to this than the way in which we interact and speak with each other?
The Lectures, presented by Professor Sophie Scott from University College London, will be broadcast in the UK on BBC4 at 8pm on the 26-28 January. Don't miss them! Professor Scott is a fantastic and engaging communicator. We'll share details of how they can be accessed by international audiences in early 2018.
Let's get digital
Through Foundation funding, Lloyd's Register has issued a call for small technology companies and large asset owners to trial innovative digital safety and risk solutions. Through The Lloyd's Register Safety Accelerator programme we will engage with clients to understand their key safety issues, identify challenges suitable for the accelerator, support them during the process and trial the solution.
Past funding impacts today's world
In 2007 one of our former grant-holders, Professor Jose Torero, received funding to conduct a series of workshops that would examine and redefine the way fire is treated in the structural design of buildings. This work is getting enormous attention, especially now that Professor Torero and his colleague Professor Luke Bisby are contributing to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry. Additional work, focusing on how new approaches to structural design might be taught (and leveraged as a result of the Foundation-funded workshops), has started to influence how engineering education can be transformed. On this latter topic, do look out for additional insight from the Foundation in 2018!
Here's a short video of Professor Torero explaining some of the background [4 minutes].
Funded research impact
A great example of Foundation funded research leading towards impact is the NSIRC PhD of Peyman Amirafshari. Peyman has been researching the application of risk based inspection methods, usually applied to existing systems, in the context of the ship building process. Peyman has been mentored by Martyn Wright, Principal NDE Specialist at Lloyd's Register Group in Southampton GTC, UK, providing a real world focus to the research. An important part of mentoring is the translation of research into the community and in this case the knowledge from Peyman's research has been applied in the Rule proposal No. 2017/MAT07 to the Rules and Regulations for the Classification of Special Service Craft, July 2017.
Heritage & Education Centre
In December the Heritage & Education Centre (HEC) launched its first ever research call, Opening Access to the Heritage & Education Centre. This scheme has been established to help the Foundation improve access to our archive and collections for research and education purposes. The primary goal of the scheme is to support researchers to enhance public understanding of maritime history, technology and safety, by using the Heritage & Education Centre collections focusing on HEC's 4 research themes.
Upcoming
Alumni Programme
If you have directly benefited from a Lloyd's Register Foundation grant please register on our database making sure to tick the option at Registration "I have been asked to Register for the Lloyd's Register Foundation Alumni programme – please tell me more."
Public Understanding of Risk Fellowship
15-18 January 2018: Lloyd's Register Foundation Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk (LRFI) at the National University of Singapore is offering fellowships to professionals from developing countries in Asia to attend an executive education programme "Understanding and communicating risks: Facts, fears and fallacies" in Singapore. For more information see here.
Lloyd's Register Foundation International Conference
09-10 May 2018: The conference registration site can be found here, where you can also register your place. #bringingsafetytolife