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Dr Alexandros Paraskevas has demonstrated the benefits of implementing academic research and `scientific rigour' into global business practices. His conceptual approach to risk and crisis management has become highly acclaimed within the hospitality industry and has strengthened practices in a turbulent business environment. His research pioneered an effective partnership between the Oxford School of Hospitality Management and InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), resulting in the Group developing new risk management practices, enhancing its effectiveness in managing risks, saving costs and gaining worldwide recognition as industry leader in the field. These practices are continuously shared with the broader H&T industry through appropriate fora and dissemination platforms.
The Beazley Archive Online Database enables large and diverse audiences to access and understand ancient art through Oxford research. It allows users around the world to ask and answer their own research questions and to learn about ancient imagery. It is principally dedicated to the study of ancient Athenian figure-decorated pottery and ancient/neo-classical engraved gems. It makes available hundreds of thousands of pictures and information-fields which can be browsed and searched in a variety of ways, according to the level and requirements of the user. The Database is the foremost academic tool for the study of ancient Greek pottery, but its demonstrable impact extends far beyond academia, to an international audience of students, educators, museums, businesses, and private researchers.
The pedagogic research undertaken by the School of Law has produced an ambitious and innovative model of clinical legal education: the in-house live client model, which offers a university-based free legal service offering full representation to private clients and NGOs in the form of the Student Law Office. The Student Law Office integrates supervised legal service in the law curriculum, thereby delivering free access to justice to the wider community whilst benefiting the learning environment. Impact is three-fold:
Development of the human cell GADD45a assay enabled accurate identification of carcinogens in vitro, with a low rate of misleading positives. Through the spin-out company Gentronix, this research is reducing costs to industry and decreasing the use of animals in research. Industrial collaboration has enabled commercial adoption of the technology in many sectors. With a 10-fold increase in orders in 2012 versus 2008, Gentronix is a profitable business employing 17 people and with an annual turnover of £1.88m. During 2008-12, Gentronix released a series of new products, established testing services, and signed a product license agreement with GlaxoSmithKline. More than 100 companies worldwide are using Gentronix kits, including pharmaceutical, agricultural and health and beauty companies, along with manufacturers of food flavourings and household goods. The Gentronix assay is currently being reviewed by the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods.
Using advanced mathematics and numerical modelling we have demonstrated how fundamental understanding of laminar-turbulent transitions in fluid flows can save energy. From 2008 we helped the cleantech company, Maxsys Fuel Systems Ltd, to understand and improve their technology and demonstrate to customers how it can reduce fuel use by 5-8%. Customers including Ford Motor, Dow Chemical and Findus testify to the impact from financial savings and reduced carbon emissions obtained by installing Maxsys products on industrial burners used widely in many industrial sectors including automotive, bulk chemicals and food. In 2010, Selas Heat Technology Company bought the Maxsys brand to invest in this success.
Research in materials modelling by the Computational Science and Engineering Group (CSEG) is helping aerospace, defence and transport companies design advanced materials and new manufacturing processes. From lightweight components like aeroengine turbine blades to the control of magnetic fields to stabilise the next generation of International Space Station levitation experiments, CSEG is supporting innovations which have:
In the assessment period, CSEG collaborated closely with leading industries in steel-making (ArcelorMittal, Corus), primary aluminium (Dubal, Rusal, Norsk-Hydro, SAMI) and lightweight structural materials for transport and aerospace (European Space Agency, Rolls-Royce).
Employee relations in Britain have undergone fundamental change in the last three decades. Research by Lewis, Upchurch, Croucher and other colleagues has tracked these changes identifying the decline of collective bargaining and the rise of alternative forms of employee voice. The impact of this programme of research has been evident in influencing the evolution of wider public debate on issues of employee voice and shaping the development of policy frameworks and specific policy initiatives in the UK and abroad, particularly concerning whistleblowing. Impact has been apparent through influencing the development of employment culture and the respective practices of employers, unions, and human resources/industrial relations practitioners.
Research at the University of Exeter on the links between the Amazon rainforest and climate change has influenced international climate policy, has directly assisted Brazilian environmental policymakers, and has received international media coverage. The underpinning research spans the vulnerability of the rainforest to anthropogenic climate change and the mechanisms behind the Amazonian droughts of 2005 and 2010. Impact has been achieved by stimulating public debate through the media, by contribution to science-into-policy documents produced by the World Bank and for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and by direct face-to-face interaction with UK and Brazilian policymakers.
Research in robust speech enhancement and audio-visual processing has led to impact on a range of different fronts:
(i) Collaboration with CSR, a leading $1 billion consumer electronics company, has shaped its R&D research agenda in speech enhancement, has inspired ideas for new product improvements, and has helped establish Belfast as an audio research centre of excellence within the company.
(ii) Our technology has changed the strategic R&D direction of a company delivering healthcare monitoring systems, with potential for multi-million pound savings in NHS budgets.
(iii) Audio-visual speech processing research has led to a proof-of-concept biometric system, Liopa: a novel, robust and convenient person authentication and verification technology exploiting lip and facial movements (www.liopa.co.uk). A start-up company is in an advanced stage of being established to commercialise this product. The product and commercialisation strategy was awarded First Prize in the 2013 NISP Connect £25K entrepreneurship competition in the Digital Media and Software category. The first commercial partner for Liopa has been engaged.
(iv) A system-on-chip implementation of a version of our speech recognition engine, which was developed through an EPSRC project, was awarded first prize in the High Technology Award in the 2010 NISP £25K Awards competition, and contributed to the founding of a spin-out company, Analytics Engines (www.analyticsengines.com).
One of the world-leading systems for large-vocabulary Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) has been developed by a team led from the University of Sheffield. This system, which won the international evaluation campaigns for rich speech transcription organised by the US National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2007 and 2009, has led directly to the creation of one spin-out, been largely instrumental in the launch of a second, has had significant impact on the development and growth of three existing companies, and has made highly advanced technology available free for the first time to a broad range of individual and organisational users, with applications including language learning, speech-to-speech translation and access to education for those with reading and writing difficulties.