A social meeting was organised by the North West Regional Network of Commonwealth Scholars and Fellows at the University of Lancaster on 9 June 2012. Eleven scholars from three universities in the North West of the UK shared their research and personal experiences.
Researchers from the Universities of Lancaster, Liverpool and Manchester explained their diverse array of research to fellow Scholars. Research topics included:
- Natural immunity against pneumonia (Ahmed, MS)
- Radioactive polonium recovery from environmental samples (Babatunde, BB)
- Soil contaminant degradation endpoint determination (Bilqees, A)
- Mental health and socioeconomic inequalities in the UK (Bonyo, TA)
- Molecular mechanism and treatment of heart failure and arrhythmia (Chowdhury, SK)
- Marketing performance of organisations (Mohiuddin, M)
- Agricultural practice improvement to encompass climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation (Okoni-Williams, A)
- Thermoelectric material development for power generation (Deepanshu, S)
- Biological data analysis method for understanding of evolution (Hossain, ASMM)
- Role of social background in higher education choice in Bangladesh (Lata, LN)
- Improvement of wireless communication systems (Viegas, C)
As well as sharing their academic experiences in different faculties of different universities, Scholars also shared their more general experiences of life in the UK. A short tour of the university and the city of Lancaster followed the meeting.
Scholars strongly emphasised the need for regular social events to encourage intra- and interdisciplinary networking amongst Commonwealth Scholars and Fellows from different countries while they are in the UK.
The meeting was organised by Sanjoy K Chowdhury (2011 Commonwealth Scholar, PhD Medical Science/Cardiovascular Science, University of Manchester) and Bolaji Bernard Babatunde (2011 Commonwealth Split-site Scholar, PhD Coastal Pollution Monitoring, University of Port Harcourt and University of Lancaster), on behalf of the North West Regional Network.
