Chair and Secretariat transition

At the end of April 2023, the role of IARU Chair and Secretariat passed from the University of Cambridge to the University of Cape Town. Since 2021, Cambridge has chaired IARU and provided the Secretariat team which manages the general administration of the Alliance.  During its tenure, the projects that the Cambridge Secretariat has worked on include a survey of IARU members,  establishing the new Education Committee, launching the Early-Career Collaboration Grants scheme and creating a newsletter for the IARU community.

On handing over the Secretariat duties to UCT, Cambridge IARU Senior Officer, Dr. Karen Kennedy,  remarked:

“Cambridge has been delighted to serve the IARU community as Chair and Secretariat, benefitting greatly from the guidance and experience of our predecessors, the University of Tokyo. It has been especially rewarding to oversee the return to in-person meetings and activities as we have emerged from the restrictions of the pandemic years. We look forward to our friends at UCT taking IARU into its next chapter.”

Carolyn Newton, IARU Senior Officer and Director of Global Engagement at UCT, will head the new Secretariat team that will take over IARU administration from May 2023. Cambridge and UCT will work closely over the next few months to provide continuous support to IARU members.

New IARU Chair: Professor Daya Reddy, University of Cape Town

We are delighted to announce that Professor Daya Reddy will be the new IARU Chair. Professor Batmanathan Dayanand ‘Daya’ Reddy, a former holder of the South African Research Chair in Computational Mechanics at UCT, took on the role of interim Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town in March 2023.

Professor Reddy’s research interests are focused around solid and computational mechanics, applied mathematics and engineering sciences.  An alumnus of UCT, he completed a PhD at Cambridge, before returning to Cape Town as a postdoctoral researcher. He then remained at UCT, becoming Professor of Applied Mathematics in 1989, and was then appointed South African Research Chair in Computational Mechanics in 2006.

Professor Reddy has served in various leadership positions at UCT, including Director of the Centre for Research in Computational and Applied Mechanics, Head of the Department of Applied Mathematics (1989–1994), Dean of the Faculty of Science (1999–2005) and acting deputy Vice-Chancellor over three separate periods.

From 2018-2021, he was President of the International Science Council (ISC), a body comprising 45 international scientific unions and associations, and national and regional scientific organisations from around 150 countries.

His other accolades include the National Order of Mapungubwe, awarded by the President of South Africa for distinguished contributions to science, and the Georg Forster Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He speaks regularly on aspects of science and public policy, the promotion of science, academic and scientific freedom, and science diplomacy.

Global Transformations Borderlands field course

This summer, we welcome the return of the IARU Global Transformations group fieldwork course, Borderlands. After a hiatus of three years (due to the impact on travel from the pandemic), the Global Transformations group will once again host the course, combining classroom learning, field engagement and immersion in a local environment. The course culminates with a short term placement with local NGOs or ongoing research projects in and around Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, an immensely valuable experience for the attending students.

Migration, mobilities and immobilities

Open to undergraduates and Master’s students, the Borderlands course is designed to provide an opportunity to think critically about the research process, epistemologies, and ethics in the conduct of research.

It focuses on the research process rather than the mastery of a specific topic or method, with the aim of providing students with the tools to raise and address critical questions in their own research and establish a foundation from which they can apply the knowledge and practices from the course to future research projects. 

With the focus on the research process, the course is organised around the themes of Migration, Mobilities and Immobilities that have emerged as among the most pressing 21^st century challenges, cutting across 11 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. In engaging migration, mobilities and immobilities, the Borderlands course explores the different forms and facets of migration (internal, cross-border; regular and irregular), and of im/mobilities – e.g. social, political, economic), as well as intersectionalities among causes and consequences of migration and im/mobilities.

In exploring these themes, the course combines classroom learning with meaningful interactions and placement with local NGOs or ongoing research projects in and around Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. Through this placement, students will have the opportunity to engage in critical research, issues and policies related to the themes of the course, as well as communities and institutions impacted by and working on addressing these issues through research, policy formulation, community development or advocacy. 

Course structure and format

The course contains the following elements: pre-departure research and preparation; in-class lectures and discussion; field placement; independent and supervised research writing; and public presentation. 

All activities in the course revolve around the themes of Migration, Mobilities and Immobilities and are designed to complement each other and reinforce learning and meaningful engagement with the curriculum. The readings, lectures, and experiential activities are aimed at providing the necessary contexts for student field engagement and for the development of the research proposal, while the work conducted with NGOs and the research projects are meant to give students ‘real-world’ experience that informs critical research. Drawing upon insights from these different forms of field engagement, students will reflect on the research implications, and develop a succinct research proposal (based on their work for the NGO or ongoing research project or on a completely different topic of their choice that is related to the themes of the course). 

In the spotlight: Getting to know our IARU members

Dr Rui Brandao

Director of IT Services (Chief Information Officer), ETH Zürich

IARU Cybersecurity Group Lead

Rui has more than 25 years of experience in various IT functions with more than 18 years in management positions. Today he is the CIO of ETH Zürich and in this function is responsible for all central ICT infrastructures, applications, and services. The central ICT department currently employs around 350 people. Rui puts a special emphasis on encouraging women for apply for IT jobs and is a sponsor of the IT-Women@ETH network. 

Rui has been leading the IARU Cybersecurity Forum since 2020. “Finding the balance between academic freedom and the need for efficiency and security in IT is a special challenge for all universities,” says Rui. “Cybersecurity remains an ongoing issue that requires constant attention. Ultimately, it is all about being better and faster than potential attackers.”

The Cybersecurity Forum held its first meeting in 2018 at NUS and 2019 at UCT. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the forum had to meet in a series of online meetings since 2020 and the annual meeting is finally planned to take place in June 2023 at ETH. The forum aims to create a mechanism for sharing knowledge, experience, and methodologies about cybersecurity in higher education, prompted by cyber-attacks on several universities.

The participants are currently focusing on two areas of interest: (1) management and governance aspects of cybersecurity and (2) technical methods for cyber detection and defence, on which the members of computer emergency response teams (CERT) are having lively exchanges.

Rui has been facilitating the online discussion during the Covid-19 pandemic. He is now looking forward to finally meeting the IARU participants in person. The forum in Zürich is planned to continue the discussions on both the management and CERT levels.

Cybersecurity Forum

• The IARU Cybersecurity Forum aims to facilitate exchange on cybersecurity topics between IARU members. It was initiated in 2018 at a 2-day inaugural event at NUS.
• Following the founding of the group, the primary topics have been sharing cybersecurity practices, collaboration on joint development of KPIs and benchmarks, the formation of virtual teams and the creation of a shared online platform.
• The next Cybersecurity Forum will take place on 13-15 June 2023 at ETH Zürich.

CYBATHLON 2024

A flagship project of ETH Zürich, CYBATHLON is an initiative that brings together education, research, outreach and technology transfer in the field of assistive technology. Through a variety of international competitions and events, teams from universities, companies and NGOs complete everyday tasks using technology developed to help those with disabilities.

Each team of developers and their ‘pilot’ - a person with disabilities who will use the assistive technology - compete in races across a range of disciplines, including brain-computer interfaces, arm/leg prostheses, exoskeletons, assistance robots and wheelchairs. The examples below illustrate the conditions and tasks the technologies are challenged with:

• Brain-Computer Interfaces

The brain-computer interfaces (BCI) race uses cutting-edge technology to enable direct communication between the human brain and a computer. BCI detect specific activation patterns in the brain and translates them into control signals suitable for interacting with computer-based processes. This can be particularly effective for assisting those with tetraplegia or locked-in syndrome (people living with paralysis of numerous muscles of the body) with carrying out daily activities independently. In CYBATHLON 2024, the competition tasks will require teams to use BCI to generate and control multiple commands to drive a vehicle in an animated scenario, both as a planned activity and in response to environmental changes.

• Robotic Exoskeletons

The challenges for robotic exoskeletons lie in their limited ability to adapt their movement patterns to situations and also the time-consuming procedures for fitting them to the person and later removing them. Despite this, exoskeletons offer other advantages, including enabling an upright posture and gait for paraplegic users (which counteracts some of the problems associated with long-term wheelchair use) and being able to communicate with peers at eye level while standing. The tasks in CYBATHLON 2024 emphasise variability and uncertainty about the exact structure or arrangement of the various objects. As well as using the exoskeleton without crutches, pilots will also be tested on overall body balance and reaction to dynamic elements.

32 teams have already registered for next year’s events and ETH is keen to encourage applications from teams based at IARU universities for the 2024 edition. At their meeting in Zürich in January 2023, the IARU Presidents endorsed this idea and so the Secretariat would be grateful if you could publicise the project to any interested groups in your institution.

More information about CYBATHLON 2024 can be found on the project website.

Please do This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you would like to know more or have any questions.