Fellowship focus: Expanding research into the impact of a new definition of community banks, exploring areas such as lending availability and competition.
Recently the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) recognised the critical role that community banks play in providing access to credit in the US economy. This Fellowship will build on existing research by Professor Ongena and Dr Pappas into the impact of this report on financial stability, asset quality, capitalisation and profitability. In addition to co-authoring several research papers on community banking, they will establish a research network to stimulate future collaborative proposals. Professor Ongena will also help to develop a new Banking and Finance MSc at Surrey and contribute to the teaching curriculum within Surrey Business School
Fellowship focus: Investigating a system to help understand and classify ‘inflectional morphology’ (the way words are formed in certain grammatical categories).
Inflectional morphology (such as how we would expect the past tense to be indicated with the addition of ‘ed’ at the end of a verb) is hugely complex, and mapping out how it varies requires advanced techniques to measure both within and across languages. Dr Carroll and Dr Beniamine aim to develop the world’s first detailed typology for this variation, which will include a large-scale classification of languages and samples from the lexicons of a range of languages representing the world’s inflectional diversity.
Fellowship focus: Furthering and promoting the use of AI, big data and informatics to improve animal health and livestock production.
This Fellowship will bring together Professor Rosa’s vast experience in developing tools for the analysis of livestock data with Surrey’s capability in veterinary and human health informatics. As well as establishing strong interdisciplinary links, the objective will be to conduct useful joint research in vet informatics. Professor Rosa will share insights into his research via a series of research seminars, and deliver two workshops for researchers in animal and vet sciences, statisticians and data scientists. Another aim will be to advance the level of machine learning techniques among Surrey’s vet students.
Fellowship focus: Developing animal-inspired gliding robots to monitor the ecosystem.
Robots that can launch, glide and perch like animals could allow us to monitor and protect ecosystems in inaccessible areas such as forest canopies, but developing these robots is challenging because we know surprisingly little about the gliding behaviours of animals in the wild. Dr Khandelwal will bring eight years of experience studying flying lizards in the Indian rainforest to inform the design of a new bioinspired gliding robot in collaboration with Dr Siddall (an expert in robotic systems) and an interdisciplinary team of biologists, conservationists and engineers. A key aim will be creating a framework for deploying robotic systems in real-world conservation tasks.
Fellowship focus: Exploring the strategic and business value of Generative AI technologies and how they affect people’s trust in organisations.
Summary: Gen AI (Generative AI) technologies such as ChatGPT have attracted significant attention but, as yet, organisations are struggling to leverage them. In this Fellowship, Professor Mikalef will combine his experience in Information Systems with Dr Ioannou’s expertise in privacy and trust to develop a framework that demonstrates the impact of Gen AI on trust among internal and external stakeholders and – in turn – on an organisation’s overall performance. Outcomes will include a lecture, research seminar and a collaborative research project focused on a comparative case study of two organisations deploying Gen AI.
Fellowship focus: Translating research on the impact of feedback in education into practice, and establishing an international Feedback Lab.
Much research has been undertaken – by Professor Lipnevich, Professor Winstone and other academics worldwide – into the way students engage with feedback and the effects of praise on student performance. This Fellowship is aimed at developing a strategy to translate this research into educational practice. It will include the development of a book for educators, visits to local schools to gain teachers’ input, a masterclass and research seminar led by Professor Lipnevich, and the launch of ‘The Feedback Lab’ – an international community of early career researchers working in this field.
Fellowship focus: Solving a fundamental problem in computer vision by developing a method for segmenting objects found in images in real-world scenarios.
At present, computer vision systems are able to segment predefined objects (for example they can be trained to recognise ‘dogs’ and ‘cats’) but often fail when confronted by new classes of object (such as ‘pandas’). Associate Professor Zhang will spend two months at Surrey with the aim of building a new multimodal framework that combines images, text and sound, and enables systems to adapt quickly to new or poorly-trained classes of object. The Fellowship will include the establishment of a research network with China University of Petroleum and a jointly-organised seminar on computer vision and AI.
Fellowship focus: Combining multidisciplinary knowledge on wind flows over forested hills with advanced data analysis to improve weather and climate environmental modelling.
Understanding wind flow and turbulence over hills and forests enables us to model scenarios such as heat damage to crops, wildland fire behaviour and pollutant dispersal – but current models often lack the complexity needed. Using numerical simulations and Surrey’s EnFlo meteorological wind tunnel, Associate Professor Banerjee and Dr Iacobello will conduct numerical experiments, collect data to validate new hypotheses, and test their theories on the land-atmosphere exchange when complex terrain and vegetation canopies are present. The Fellowship outcomes will include a seminar series and a short course of lectures for PhD and postdoctoral researchers.
Fellowship focus: Tackling the issue of assessing older and vulnerable people’s proficiency to drive using an advanced driving simulator.
Currently, there are no systematic assessment tools for motor and cognitive skills which GPs can use to determine whether to approve driving license extensions. Building on an existing collaboration, Professor Sodnik will bring SimFit2Drive – his innovative solution for assessing basic driving skills – to Surrey and collaborate with researchers in transport, AI and sustainability to consider the wider societal objectives of the tool and to exploit commercialisation opportunities. Studies will be conducted with elderly drivers to prove the concept, and collaborative research will be disseminated through a series of lectures, seminars, webinars, conferences and joint publications.
Fellowship focus: Exploring an innovative approach for reducing soil and groundwater pollution caused by pesticide production.
The pollution of soil and groundwater caused by pesticide production is a widespread problem in many developing countries. Professor Xu and Dr Cao will, for the first time, combine in-situ chemical oxidation technology (ISCO) – a solution which is widely used but offers limited efficiency – with groundwater circulation well technology in order to improve the speed at which pollutants degrade. The Fellowship aims to establish a hydrogeochemical numerical 3D model and verify the technology at a pesticide company in Jiangsu Province in China, with the longer term objective of reducing unnecessary use of ISCO and providing a more sustainable solution.