Author: Stephanie Thomson

TEF silver 2023 logo

Brighton secures national Silver Award for teaching excellence

The University of Brighton has been recognised for the quality of its teaching and student outcomes in a UK-wide evaluation of higher education institutions.

The university has today secured a Silver award in the national Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). The award confirms that the student experience and student outcomes across all of the university’s undergraduate provision including apprenticeships are “typically very high quality”, delivering excellence above the rigorous standards set for the UK’s higher education providers. The rating lasts for four years, until September 2027.

The TEF is a national scheme run by the Office for Students (OfS). It aims to encourage universities to improve and deliver excellence in the areas that students care about the most: teaching, learning and achieving positive outcomes from their studies.

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Graduate finalist in prestigious town planning awards

Congratulations to Town Planning graduate Laura Hemsley for reaching the finals of the prestigious Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) Awards for Research Excellence (Student Award).

Now in their ninth year, the awards continue to recognise and promote high quality, impactful spatial planning research. Laura was nominated for her masters dissertation, ‘The Effectiveness of Strategic Planning Arrangements in Mineral Planning’.

We caught up with her to find out more about her dissertation, the support from her lecturers and what it meant to be nominated for the award.

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Debris on mountain road cropped Source: @theaftertimes on Twitter

Brighton Geography and the 2023 Morocco Earthquake

Please note that some people may find the information and images below distressing.

Every Spring we bring the human geography students on our 2nd year BA(Hons) Geography programme to Morocco, to practice their fieldwork skills. Since 2011 we’ve visited important sites in the city of Marrakech, and built a close working relationship with the community of Imlil village in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, including meeting local residents and their families. When in the area, our students study the challenges of living in this mountainous environment.

Unfortunately a rare but devastating example of such challenges occurred on Friday Sept 8th 2023, in the form of a terrible earthquake that had its epicentre close to Imlil. We know that our former and current students will want to know about how the area has dealt with the impact. So over the past few days we’ve been checking that our community partners are safe, the extent of the damage, and – most importantly of all – what we can do to support Imlil’s people.

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Calebtina holding her award and smiling at the Students Union Awards

Gaining confidence and achieving goals at Brighton

Third-year Pharmacy student Calebtina Peprah received a scholarship through the Student Potential Fund. She has shared with us the positive impact this had made on her studies and her appreciation to the donors for their support.

I am the first person in my family to go to university and was determined to make a bold step and attend university. I have always wanted to pursue a career in healthcare, and I could not hide my joy when I got accepted at the University of Brighton. It was a dream come true.  

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Worthing Crematorium garden with trees and the building with blue sky

Brighton researchers helping create world’s first hydrogen-powered crematorium

A project to create the world’s first hydrogen-powered crematorium is being supported by a team of researchers from the University of Brighton.

The pioneering project, funded by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, is centred on Worthing Crematorium in West Sussex and is part of Adur & Worthing Council’s plan to become carbon neutral by 2030.

This summer, cremator manufacturer DFW Europe will begin testing pioneering hydrogen technology at its base in the Netherlands. If these tests are successful, the technology will be brought over to trial at Worthing Crematorium as early as spring 2024.

Dr Kevin Wyche, Pete Lyons and Dr Kirsty Smallbone from the University of Brighton’s School of Applied Sciences are carrying out air quality monitoring on the project to demonstrate that the proposed new hydrogen-powered system can dramatically reduce carbon emissions without worsening air quality.

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What is it like studying a pharmacy degree?

Hi, I’m Eva and I’m a third year Pharmacy MPharm student. Here is my experience of studying at University of Brighton – from lectures and work experience to getting support, my favourite places, social life, living in Brighton, and tips on making and saving money.

How I found university different from college

I struggled with the jump from GCSE to A-level at college and got really stressed that the only form of assessment was one set of exams. Uni isn’t like that; there are multiple forms of assessment including exams, coursework, and OSCEs (live spoken exams, role play style), assessed at different points throughout the year. This takes some of the pressure off the end-of-year exams and gives me a better idea of how I’m doing academically throughout the year.

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Discussing solutions to current challenges at the Planning for Water conference

It’s not often these days that you hear people say ‘money is not the problem’, but that was one of the more surprising contributions at a recent Planning for Water  conference hosted by the Centre for Aquatic Environments and the Royal Town Planning Institute SE region at the University.

The 19th June conference brought together almost 70 town planners, engineers, developers, academics, charities, water companies and government officials to discuss solutions to some of the current challenges that water quality, water scarcity, climate change and the biodiversity crisis present to the building sector.

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Bhavik in the lab wearing a white lab coat with colours writing and drawing

University of Brighton scientist wins prestigious Royal Society of Chemistry Prize

Professor Bhavik Patel has won the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Analytical Science mid-career Prize in recognition of brilliance in research and innovation.

Based at the University of Brighton’s School of Applied Sciences, the Professor of Clinical and Bioanalytical Chemistry has been named winner of the prize for the development of innovative electrochemical sensors for advancing the understanding of biological signalling processes. This year’s winners join a prestigious list of past winners in the RSC’s prize portfolio, 60 of whom have gone on to win Nobel Prizes for their work, including 2022 Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi and 2019 Nobel laureate John B Goodenough.

After receiving the prize, Professor Patel said: “This prize is real recognition for me and my group on our research approach to create sensors which are fit-for-purpose and provide impactful knowledge about biological systems.”

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Group of students standing in front of a presentation about Sickle Cell Disease

Donor Research – co-creating student-led donation awareness education

The University of Brighton Donor Research Team is comprised of student champions and academics from the School of Sport and Health Sciences and the School of Applied Sciences, and wider collaborators from other universities, organisations, charities and the NHS.

It has been a busy year for the team with another round of funding secured from NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) to continue our work in educating the student population on organ and blood donation to address the health inequalities in ethnic communities. Read about the new funding secured by the University of Brighton’s Donor Research team.

To further develop our work the team invited Stephanie George from Red Cells R us to share her experience of having Sickle Cell Anaemia at the Year 3 Healthcare Student Interprofessional Conference in April. Swetha Kalaimani, a University of Brighton Donor Research Student Champion, interviewed Stephanie. Read about Stephanie and her experiences.

Rebecca Craig and Charlotte Humphris, academics in the School of Sport and Health Sciences, have also been working with Stephanie to transform the BSc nursing curriculum to be inclusive of Sickle Cell Anaemia and the service users experience. Learn more about this important work.

Learn more about the Donor Research Team’s work and how you can collaborate as a student, colleague or researcher:

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Brighton researchers to explore better sourcing of vital rare earth elements needed in battle to decarbonise

University of Brighton researchers have received a £799,950 grant to explore more efficient and less damaging ways to source vital rare earth elements.

Researchers from the School of Applied Sciences and the Centre for Earth Observation Science at the University of Brighton have been awarded a £799,950 grant by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to investigate the rock weathering processes in generating deposits of Rare Earth Elements (REEs). Information gleaned from the SCREED project should help to predict resource potential and minimise the environmental impact of extraction.

REEs are part of a group of elements that are crucial components in high power magnets used in renewable power generation and low carbon transport. In particular, neodymium and dysprosium are essential for renewable energy devices such as wind turbines and the development of electric motors. They are, however, in limited supply worldwide, and University of Brighton researchers will explore ways to access supplies in a more sustainable manner by examining the presence of REEs in rocks that have already been partly broken down by natural weathering.

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