Research Poster Showcase

Poster Title: A Serious Game to Teach Esports

Biography: This research poster presents research and design plans for a serious game to teach esports (competitive video gaming), supporting the growth and application of the esports industry in the education sector. The serious game will be used as a supplementary teaching approach to teach core concepts and career pathways.

Poster Title: Improving welfare of fish in the ornamental trade.

Biography: The negative impacts that the transport process has on the welfare of ornamental fish cannot be ignored, therefore this project aims to improve welfare via the use of novel diets, as well as developing a process to assess welfare on an industrial level.

Poster Title: The influence of resource availability on the development of an ornamental gastropod

Biography: This research reviews freshwater gastropods and their development before highlighting their ecological, economical, and research importance. It then considers how resource availability in captive environments impacts different life stages and may subsequently impact research and husbandry productivity. The proposed experimental work assesses the effects of environmental calcium availability on the development, behaviour, and reproduction of the ornamental freshwater snail, Planorbella duryi.

Poster Title: Fly-Tipping in Scotland - From Lie in Dirt to Safer End of Engineered Life: An Assessment of Existing Policies to Enable Sustainability

Biography: Fly-tipping costs at least £60m annually to clear up (Scottish Government, 2023b).  Household bulky items and black bags are the most commonly fly-tipped materials (Scottish Government, 2023a).   A key strategy to reduce fly-tipping in Scotland is enforcement, despite its declining levels (Scottish Government, 2021).  Identification of barriers to use of waste management services could inform policies to enable sustainable behaviour.

Poster Title: Exploring the Nature and Extent of High School Student’s Part-Time Work and Volunteering Experiences

Biography: Annalise Gillan is a Doctoral student in Psychology at the University of the West of Scotland. Her research focuses on the impact of early experiences of paid employment and volunteering on young peoples’ development and transitions. She is a member of the Cross-Party Group on Volunteering, and recently completed a project on future pathways for young people in Youth Justice.

Poster Title: hiPSC Derived Cerebral Organoids as Models of Cerebral Toxoplasmosis to Guide Drug Therapy Development

Biography: My research aims to advance the understanding of host-pathogen interactions during Toxoplasma gondii infection. To better the impact on neuronal tissues I am developing 3D in vitro models of T. gondii infection, using human stem cell derived cerebral organoids. By using fluorescent microscopy, transcriptomic and metabolomics studies we hope to better understand the disease state and identify potential targets for new drug therapies.

Poster Title: Trust in Cross-Border Trade: Examining the Case of Exporting Women SMEs.

Biography: Baaba Amoh-Barimah is a doctoral researcher in the School of Business and Creative Industries. Her research interests include the development of trust, its interrelation with economic institutions, social and cultural factors, and their impact on economic growth. Baaba's research extensively relies on the method known as cultural comparative institutional analysis, which she is currently applying to the study of women entrepreneurs operating in Ghana's informal sector

Poster Title: Interpretation in Asylum Hearings: Bridging Borders of Understanding

Biography: Interpreters play a crucial role in the asylum process, where effective communication of an asylum seekers fear of persecution is essential for obtaining protection. This project employs an ethnographic and practical-based approach to examine how the credibility of an asylum seeker is affected by interpreter-mediated settings and addressing challenges to access to justice.

Poster Title: The ‘Hidden’ Problem with Drug Use in Scotland: A Mixed Method Investigation into the Increasing Rates of Drug Use in Older Women

Biography: This externally funded PhD project aims to decrease drug-related deaths in Scotland with focus on improving interventions, policy, and access to treatment for hidden populations especially older women. The project will establish the barriers to treatment for this population with large scale surveys and interviews with affected individuals and treatment providers. The final aim is to take a collaborative approach including third sector organisation and develop a pilot intervention with the intention to support policy and access to treatment. To give a voice with meaning to those who are currently unheard.

Poster Title: Weight loss outcomes after Metabolic Bariatric Surgery among Type-2 Diabetes Mellitus patients: Analysis of routine clinical data from - University Hospital Ayr, Ayrshire & Arran

Biography: The study assessed weight loss outcomes and associated factors after metabolic bariatric surgery. While most patients achieved weight loss, some experienced weight regain. The findings from the linear mixed model analysis shows that preoperative BMI positively correlated with percentage total weight loss but negatively with excess weight loss. Gastric bypass showed higher total percent weight loss compared to sleeve gastrectomy.

Poster Title: Caring for People with Dementia in a High-Secure Forensic Setting

Biography: My research will be exploring the care and treatment needs of people living with dementia in a high-secure forensic hospital, from a biopsychosocial perspective. The poster focuses on background information and a projected timeline for the project as I am 6 months in and have not yet begun data collection.

Poster title: Sports mega events, human rights and governance: A case study of the United 2026 FIFA Men's World Cup

Biography: Given FIFA's establishment of their human rights policy (in 2017) and subsequent inclusion of human rights in the bidding criteria for the 2026 FIFA Men's World Cup, this study aims to investigate the extent to which human rights promises made as part of the successful United 2026 World Cup bid have been enshrined in planning and delivery processes.  

Poster Title: IoT and Machine Learning Enabled Estimation of Health Indicators from
Ambient Data

Biography:  Cezar Anicai is currently pursuing a PhD degree in Computing at the University of the West of Scotland. He holds a MSc degree in Advanced Computing and a BEng degree in Automatic Control and Computer Engineering. His research interests include machine learning, deep learning, bio-inspired and evolutionary algorithms, internet of things and distributed learning. 

Poster Title: A collaborative exploration of family-centred reminiscence within visits of care home residents with dementia.

Biography: My name is Connor McDonald, and I am a final year PhD student based at the Alzheimer Scotland Centre for Policy and Practice at the Lanarkshire Campus. I am grateful to be the recipient of the Wendy Baxter Scholarship funding my PhD thesis researching the potential benefits of a family-centred, reminiscence framework which will be a practical tool to shape enjoyable family care home visits.

Poster Title: Heavy Breathing: The Invasive Killer Shrimp Outlasts Other Gammaridae After Exposure to Heavy Metals

Biography: Connor Wood is a freshwater ecologist studying invasive species dynamics and their interplay with aquatic pollutants. His research focuses on freshwater Gammaridae species as a model for native vs invasive comparisons.

Poster Title: Racist Peer Victimisation among young people: Cultures of coping and support

Biography: Understanding cultures of coping and support amongst young people faced with racist peer victimisation in Scotland can provide key insights into strategy selection and coping efficacy. By employing a modified photovoice methodology positioned within the emancipatory paradigm, this research aims to challenge dominant narratives of coping through collaborative arts based data creation and analysis with youth.

Poster Title: Triboelectric nanogenerators: A new technology to harvest mechanical energy wasted in the environment

Biography: Emma Keel is a PhD student in the School of Computing, Engineering & Social Sciences.

Poster Title: Adapting NLP Strategies for Stock Price Prediction

Biography:

Due to the parallelism of natural language processing (NLP) data and stock data in the data representation and the way machine learning models process them, I am interested in investigating how well NLP-ML approaches can be applied to stock data. I examine the adaptation of various NLP strategies or entire established language models.

Poster title: Evaluation of protease activated receptor 2 (PAR2) as a novel therapeutic target for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)

Biography: Jennifer Loudon is a 2nd Year PhD student in the School of Health & Life Sciences

Poster Title: Developing a Theory of Leadership Grounded in Stoic Philosophy

Biography: As a practicing Stoic I was struck by the potential of ancient wisdom being integrated with leadership paradigms to tackle contemporary leadership challenges. I am seeking to integrate the core tenets of Stoicism into a framework that can empower individuals to lead with unwavering integrity, clear purpose, and enduring resilience.

Poster Title:  Deep visual odometry for natural habitat mapping

Biography: My research started during my master's study in computer science. Excited about the possibilities of artificial intelligence, I decided to learn more about deep neural networks, trying to interpret their inner working. Although I failed for the most part because of the black box character of neural networks, I continued my research in computer vision.  Currently, I am studying self-learning neural networks for robot navigation and mapping.

Poster Title: Autism & Anorexia

Biography: Kath Limond is a part time PhD student in the School of Health & Life Sciences. Kath is in the first year of her PhD and is focusing on the lived experience of family carers of female adolescents with co-occurring autism and anorexia with a specific focus on their individual support needs. This study aims to use an intrinsic, collective case study methodology.

Poster Title: A Trauma-Informed Pathway in Young Onset Dementia - An Investigation of the potential for a trauma-informed pathway through the diagnosis of dementia, for people under 65 years old.

Biography: Kelly Kelly is a registered mental health nurse specialising in the care of older adults with dementia. With a background in BA Psychology (Hons) and MSc in Mental Health Nursing, Kelly is currently pursuing an MRes in collaboration with Alzheimer Scotland and UWS. Her passion lies in enhancing the quality of life for individuals with dementia and their caregivers. She is enthusiastic about advancing her research initiatives in this field, aiming to make a meaningful impact to individuals affected by dementia.

Poster Title: Emergence of new pathogens in hospitals – the costs of ever-increasing hygiene?

Biography: Kenny Richardson is a PhD student in the School of Health & Life Sciences

Poster Title: Extending Healthy Life Years: Exploring the Experiences of Scottish Women in the Transition to Retirement. 

Biography: The transition to retirement (TtR) is often a missed opportunity to positively impact women’s healthy ageing. Interventions to support the TtR rarely address challenges women face or collaborate with women to find meaningful solutions. Fifteen Scottish women of retirement age were interviewed. Stories of actual retirement experiences were gathered and dialogically analysed, yielding four typologies of the TtR.  

Poster Title: Exploring Learning for Sustainability in Scottish Primary and Secondary Schools

Biography: I am in the third year of my PhD at UWS, and my research is exploring Learning for Sustainability (LfS) in Scottish primary and secondary schools. My research aims are to provide a definition of LfS and understand LfS from both a policy and practitioner perspective.

Poster Title: A study of everyday solutions deployed by family carers when balancing risk and safety of relatives living in the family home with advanced dementia. 

Biography: Margaret Kyeremeh is a Registered Nurse, Social Worker, and second-year PhD student at the Alzheimer Scotland Centre for Policy and Practice, School of Health and Life Sciences, UWS. Her project Title is “A study of everyday solutions deployed by family carers when balancing risk and safety of relatives living in the family home with advanced dementia.” Her research is supported by the Vice Chancellor’s Fund, UWS.

Poster Tite: Early Player Transition in Elite Youth and First Team Soccer: The Predictive Value of Sprint Distance, Acceleration, and Deceleration Attributes. 

Biography: My research examines elite youth soccer player transition from academy level to the first team. Based on the perceptions and attitudes of key stakeholders from an elite academy, this research project aimed to investigate the predictive value of physical performance metrics in relation to early transition opportunities for youth soccer players.

Poster Title: In Search of a Hidden Regenesis: Exploring Spatial and Contextual Understandings of Decay in Post-Industrial Urban Landscapes

Biography: My PhD looks at the inherent possibilities of decaying spaces in Paisley  (Renfrewshire) and the usage of creative initiatives to leverage these as long-term urban assets. The research takes liveability as a starting point to question how we can revive a deep sense of engagement and community agency from our urban environments. By curating a series of events and creative interventions in Paisley, she seeks to examine the configuration of derelict spaces, vernacular creativity and regenerative placemaking in the search for the longevity of quality places.

Poster Title: Assessing the security resilience of buildings to establish comparability

Biography: In a literature review, it was determined what can influence the security of buildings with building automation. This led to a theoretical knowledge gap in the area of composite vulnerabilities, which will be closed in a Delphi study. In the end, a catalogue of questions will be used to make the security of buildings comparable.

Poster Title: Entrepreneurial transformation of Higher Education Institutions and Digitalisation

Biography: This research is to investigate how the innovative digital technologies have catalysed the transformation of traditional universities into entrepreneurial universities in digital era. In doing so, this research is aiming to analyse existing definitions, characteristics, and models of entrepreneurial universities, and develop a comprehensive model to contribute to existing literature and provide practical implication for practitioner, government, industry, and researcher for better clarity of entrepreneurial university that can be used in digital era through digital transformation.

Poster Title: Leadership of School Improvement in Bangladeshi Government Primary Schools: An Ethnographic Study

Biography: Nasrin Sultana is a PhD student in the School of Education & Social Sciences

Poster Title: Exploring The Significance of Trust Among Scottish Based Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurs.

Biography: Ola is a doctoral student at the School of Business and Creative Industries. Her research adopts a trust-informed perspective on a range of topics, including economic sociology and entrepreneurship. She is currently using an institutional lens to explore the meanings and consequences of trust within Scottish-based ethnic minority entrepreneurship. Ola's latest research addresses the issue of superdiversity and its relationship to transnationalism.

Poster Title: The Use of Digital Engagement Strategies for Customer Retention in Independent Hotels

Biography: I am a 1st-year PhD student at the UWS London Campus. Before starting my PhD, I had completed my BSc honours degree in international tourism and hospitality management and my MSc in tourism and hospitality from the University of Sunderland, UK. My motivation to do the PhD programme arises from my strong passion in the field of tourism and hospitality and I have chosen my PhD research topic, The Use of Digital Engagement Strategies for Customer Retention in Independent Hotels, in the emerging market of Bangladesh.

Poster Title: Crochet on Gray | Thinking through Stitching

Biography: My research is focused on developing understanding the career experiences of women living with young-onset dementia, using reflexive thematic analysis (developed by Braun & Clark; 2022) as a methodological approach. Part of my reflexive practice has been to crochet a reflection following each interview, which are presented here as a tangible representation of my data set.

Poster Title: Chlorhexidine resistance in a caries-associated bacterium (planktonic cells vs biofilms)

Biography: Streptococcus mutans is a causative agent of dental decay and tooth plaque in humans.  To prevent oral disease(s), antiseptic mouth rinses containing chlorhexidine (CHX) are recommended.  Unfortunately, these mouthwashes are associated with antimicrobial resistance.  This study aimed to analyse the antimicrobial effects of CHX against S. mutans (planktonic cells vs biofilms) and investigated the development of CHX resistance.  Overall, S. mutans adapted to high concentrations of CHX, and biofilms were more tolerant to the antiseptic compared to planktonic cells.

Poster Title: Can The Introduction of Simulated Health Applications Within the University Environment Improve the Digital Capabilities of Nursing Students in Preparation for the Workplace?

Biography: My research project aims to enhance the digital capabilities of nursing students by exploring their confidence and motivation to using eHealth systems during clinical placements and after graduation. The outcome to the project is to create a simulated digital health environment to allow the development of the necessary digital skills required for clinical practice.

Poster Title: Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses of Aerobic Capacity In Cross-Country Skiing, Using Retrospective Participant Classification Framework Assessment

Biography: Maximal oxygen uptake (VO­_2Max) is reportedly key to cross-country skiing (CCS) performance and arguably the most important measure for a CCS athlete. This contrasts with other endurance sports which, despite also requiring high VO_2Max­, emphasise the importance of movement economy. There is little doubting VO­_2Max is important for CCS performance; the question is how important?

Poster Title: Collaborative working within one Scottish health and social care integration joint board: a case study approach

Biography: Susie Gamble is a Lecturer and Programme Leader within the School of Health and Life Sciences. Susie has successfully defended her thesis which explores collaborative working within one Health and Social Care Integration Joint Board in Scotland. Prior to joining the University of the West of Scotland, Susie nursed within the Community setting, delivering integrated care.

Poster Title: Continuous catalytic hydrotreatment and isomerisation of bio-oils

Biography: Svenja Iserloth is a PhD student in the School of Computing, Engineering & Physical Sciences

Poster Title: Facial Expression Recognition in Virtual Reality. 

Biography: Thorben Ortmann holds a master's degree in computer science. He works as a Research Associate at the Hamburg University of Applied Science. His research interests lie in the interdisciplinary field of affective computing. As part of his doctoral research, he investigates deep learning techniques to recognize human emotion in virtual reality environments.

Poster Title: Robot Perception in Precision Agriculture and Coarse Waste Recycling Using Machine Learning and Multi-modal Sensors

Biography: Timo Lange is a first-year PhD student at UWS in collaboration with HAW Hamburg. His research focuses on robot perception using machine learning in agriculture and waste recycling. His research is conducted within the publicly funded research projects RoLand and SmartRecycling, where he works as a research assistant. He is particularly interested in the field of deep learning.

Poster Title: Influence of Users on the Success of IT Projects

Biography: Timo Stiriz is a Phd student in the School of Business & Creative Industries

Poster Title: Chemical Recycling of Mixed Plastic Waste – A Step Towards a True Circular Economy

Biography: Chemical Recycling of plastic waste is becoming more and more relevant due to the limitations of well-known Mechanical Recycling routes. However, the continuous processing of mixed plastic waste still poses a major challenge in this field. This experimental study will investigate the impact of key parameters on product quality and process stability.

Poster Title: Integrating AI and IoT for Advanced Indoor Air Quality Monitoring

Biography: My research employs IoT sensors to monitor ambient environmental conditions, analyzing correlations between occupants and air parameters. Utilizing machine learning, it predicts future trends and occupancy, aiming to enhance occupants' health and well-being.