On Tuesday 7th June 2011 in the Barony Hall, over 500 students, staff and visitors attended the University of Strathclyde Research Day. As part of the ongoing Glasgow Science Festival, the main aims of the day were to ‘show off’ current university research projects and to promote the sharing of ideas and collaboration between different departments, visiting professors and interested members of the public.

Now in its 5th year, the research day encourages the exchange of knowledge across faculties through mixed subject poster sessions. Around 130 staff and postgraduate students took part in the poster sessions and there was a prize given to one student from each of the four faculties: Science, Engineering, Humanities & Social Sciences and Business. The winner from the Science faculty, Jochen Bruckbauer, presented a poster titled “Optical investigation of LED structures using cathodoluminescence hyperspectral imaging”. His work aims to reduce the number of defects which occur in the manufacture of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) by examining their surface features.

There was also a Dragon’s Den style event, where five mixed faculty research groups competed to win funding worth up to £20,000 from the Bridging the Gap scheme. Dragons Professor Tim Bedford, Professor Nigel Fabb, Professor Rein Ulijn and Douglas Maxwell scrutinized teams with diverse projects such as “Can music woo bacteria into sex” and “Molecular Autopsy: Evaluating mRNA profiling as a complementary tool for the investigation of death”. After several probing questions, the winners were announced as Professor Dino Jaroszinski from Physics and Dr Marie Boyd and Dr Annette Sorensen from the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences. Their project, “An ultra-compact particle and radiation source for the treatment of cancer” will look into development of a high energy, low toxicity treatment which is less damaging to healthy cells than traditional radiotherapy.

The day was a resounding success, thanks to the many visitors, contributors, judges and the hard work of the organising committee. Headed by Tony Mulholland, the committee comprised of 30 postgraduate students, postdoctoral researchers, academic staff and staff from support services.