Ben Upton

Jan 17, 2024 | researchprofessionalnews.com | Ben Upton

EPSRC Prosperity Partnerships are set to return in 2024On 9 January, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council announced that it would open the sixth round of its Prosperity Partnerships programme in March, with an application deadline of 21 May. The Prosperity Partnerships scheme supports collaborative research projects involving businesses and academic partners. Full details of the sixth round of the competition have yet to be published, but it will run via two application routes.

Dec 11, 2023 | lexology.com | Ben Upton |James Caird |Jonathan Nicolle |Nina Blomfield |Sam Comber

In the latest penalty obtained by the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) - Te Mana Tātai Hokohoko, Medical Assurance Society New Zealand Limited (MAS) must pay $2.1 million for failing to correctly apply policy discounts, inflation adjustments, and benefit payments to some of its entitled customers between 2014 and 2019. Key takeawaysFinancial institutions should have robust systems and processes to prevent overcharging and to calculate customer entitlements.

Nov 15, 2023 | timeshighereducation.com | Ben Upton

Long an outward-looking country, Portugal’s government and universities are tweaking their internationalisation approaches to augment their historic links. Last month, Portugal’s minister for science and universities, Elvira Fortunato, told local media that institutions had “more than space” to accommodate additional international students. The main country of origin is Brazil, with 19,000 enrolling this year.

Oct 29, 2023 | timeshighereducation.com | Ben Upton

The UK’s two years of talks that finally resulted in association to Horizon Europe showed how easily research cooperation can become embroiled in domestic and international politics. Someone who knows this only too well is Signe Ratso, an Estonian with decades of experience in international affairs, who leads all new association talks for the European Commission, handling the myriad complexities that can arise when a country looks to join the €95.5 billion (£83 billion) flagship research scheme.

Oct 26, 2023 | timeshighereducation.com | Ben Upton

Spanish police have opened an investigation at the University of Barcelona after the death of an academic from suspected Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a deadly and incurable brain disorder that some suspect he contracted from samples he was studying. The investigation was opened after the newspaper El Pais reported that lab checks after the death had unearthed thousands of unauthorised samples of cerebrospinal fluid from people with CJD in a freezer in university laboratory 4141.