Updated on: 14 May 2021
The Vertically Integrated Project (VIP) concept is an innovative student education programme which is currently being explored at Bath.
Since 2019/20, the University of Bath have been developing Vertically Integrated Projects (VIPs), which are innovative research and applied learning projects that enable inter-disciplinary, multi-level teams of students to work with a member of academic staff on long-term real-world projects.
VIPs are an attempt to create sustainable, research-engaged communities of staff and students - both undergraduate and postgraduate - who work collaboratively on live projects. Students come from a range disciplines or fields and from across year groups, enabling more experienced students to support other student team members, and allowing everyone involved to work closely with researchers or senior staff. The VIP concept was created by Professor Ed Coyle at Georgia Tech, but has since extended to around 70 HE institutions all over the world.
The University of Bath is the first University in England to develop VIPs.
At Bath, the VIPs are currently operating outside of the curriculum, enabling students across all disciplines and year groups, including postgraduate and doctoral students, to work together on global challenges often with a local focus. Discussions will be held within the context of the Bath Blend and Curriculum Transformation around whether VIPs could operate within the curriculum as optional units, which is the traditional structure for VIPs at other HE institutions.
VIP@Bath Projects
In 2020/21, we ran nine VIPs, led by 12 academic members of staff working alongside 150 students. For 2021/22, we are delighted to offer eight new VIPs.
New VIPs - 2021/22
This VIP will aim to work with B&NES to give local people a bigger say in the way their new green space is shaped, while simultaneously helping to address the climate and ecological emergency.
Access to green spaces is essential to human well-being. The quality and quantity of green spaces near a population has been found to have far-reaching impacts, from effecting the physical and mental health of the population to the market value of homes and the levels of crime experienced. However, access to green space is far from equal.
Bath and North East Somerset Council is in the process of creating a new linear park for Bath. The Bath River Line (BRL) will follow the River Avon from Batheaston to Newbridge. Covering 10km, the BRL will connect beautiful green spaces and city landmarks, tempting pubs and peaceful water meadows.
Academic Directors: Dr Dima Albadra (Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering) and Dr Sophia Hatzisavvidou (Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies
Who can apply in 2021/22? This VIP welcomes applications from all University of Bath students.
Addressing a key, global challenge like climate change does not necessarily require global solutions. Local approaches can offer valuable lessons enhancing our understanding of how we can tackle climate change.
This VIP focuses on a local community - Farrington Gurney. It aims to identify the community’s carbon impact and suggest ways for mitigating the community’s carbon emissions. The intention is to find solutions that will allow the local community to make its infrastructure (e.g., buildings, power supply, transport) and local citizens’ lifestyle patterns more environmentally sustainable.
Academic Directors: Prof Margaret Heffernan and Dr Kostas Iatridis, School of Management
Who can apply in 2021/22? This VIP welcomes applications from all University of Bath students.
Like Bath Engineering without Borders (BEwoB), this VIP team joins driven students and dedicated staff with problems that many people are currently facing throughout the world. However, unlike BEwoB, the focus of TBB: Bath Biodevices without Borders is on the development of practical, biodevice-implemented projects that can, and hopefully, will help many people throughout the world, whilst at the same time providing the involved students with practical employability skills. To this end, we intend, as soon as it is once again possible, to travel to areas of the world where we have identified a real need that we can devise a solution to, properly identify the need in that area, then develop a system/design that can help solve this problem.
This VIP team aims to integrate all student years into not just our design and development process, but also into our assessing and implementation processes. This means that even if you are a first year, with no more engineering experience than your first semester modules, you will still have the opportunity to travel to new regions of the world and provide aid to people living there. On the same note, it is possible to join us at any point in your studies, even if this is your final year and you haven’t been a part of any societies or student teams to date.
All skills are welcome and no need for any specific background knowledge required.
TBB is scientifically supported by Electronic and Electrical Engineering C3Bio academics (academic lead: Dr Despina Moschou, further academic support: Dr Pedro Estrela, Dr Ben Metcalfe); they will be providing initial project ideas in line with ongoing research projects and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (https://unfoundation.org/what-we-do/issues/sustainable-development-goals ), technical training, dedicated lab space and resources within the Faculty of Engineering and international network contacts.
Academic Directors: Dr Despina Moschou, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering ; Dr Mirella Di Lorenzo (Department of Chemical Engineering); Dr Pedro Estrela (Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering); Dr Ben Metcalfe (Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering)
Who can apply in 2021/22? This VIP welcomes applications from all University of Bath students.
This VIP explores how the University can work with BANES and local older adults to help to create a more age-friendly and inclusive local environment. The project could help to inform research and teaching, and has the potential to contribute to local policy making.
Students may investigate questions such as; How can older people’s voices be heard in relation to the research which impacts them across all disciplines? For example, in the design of retirement homes; the use of digital technology to minimise social isolation; the policies around pensions, rural facilities and health inequalities; designing inclusive communities; the use of remote consultations by hospital staff. What lasting impact has the stay-home guidance during the COVID-19 pandemic had on older adults, for example in terms of loneliness and isolation, mobility and activity? How can students, the decision-makers of tomorrow, understand the needs, concerns and priorities of people as they get older and how can these be considered in their academic studies? And importantly, how can we help to challenge the negative stereotypes of ageing and older adults through how we teach and learn? The interdisciplinary VIP will explore the measures the University can take to communicate with older people and initiate some projects to engage with local participants. The VIP forms part of the Healthy Later Living Network – a multidisciplinary research network at the University of Bath which brings together leading academics, students, and stakeholders to support the UK government’s Grand Challenge of an Ageing Society. The University is working with business, charities, care providers, research funders, and the community to support generations to remain active, productive, independent, and social connected for as long as possible.
Academic Director: Dr Fiona Gillison, Head of Department of Health - Healthy Later Living network
Who can apply in 2021/22? This VIP welcomes applications from all University of Bath students.
This VIP project will look at how plastics are recycled and used. We will aim to investigate how much single use plastic the University uses in a semester and what this plastic is. Are all plastics the same or are some more impactful than others? We will investigate different alternatives and try to understand reasons why these materials are not more widely used. As this project develops, we will write a briefing document for the University and the SU detailing recommendations on how to make the campus less reliant on single use plastic.
Academic Director: Prof Matthew Jones (Professor of Inorganic Chemistry)
Project is not going ahead for 21/22
The OpenFlexure Microscope is a fully computerized microscope, where all the designs are available to use freely as open-source hardware and software. One goal of the project is to show the important role that physics and engineering play in life science and medicine, by taking schoolchildren through the process of building, programming, and using an automated microscope. Beginning with 3D printed parts and Raspberry Pi-based electronics, some light mechanical assembly and simple programming, enables students to bring the power of an automated research microscope to school science lessons.
This VIP will see the project team get involved in preparing and delivering a series of sessions where school pupils will build an OpenFlexure Microscope, write simple code to control it, and use it to observe different microscopic samples.
The OpenFlexure Microscope is used around the world, and that means we have an opportunity both to communicate the global nature of science and technology, and to share educational materials that have the potential to achieve a worldwide “reach”.
Academic Director: Dr Emma Osborne and Dr Richard Bowman (Department of Physics).
Project is not going ahead for 21/22
Virtual Reality provides an immersive environment that can feel so real to the user that the experience they gain within it can be applied to the real world. It also allows users to practice tasks that would be too complex, expensive, or dangerous in real-life. It is rapidly becoming a popular tool for providing training in all manner of activities, from using a point-of-sale system to performing surgery. This VIP aims to identify, develop, and deploy VR training activities both within the University and with external partners and in the process develop a best practice guide for the creation and use of VR training tools.
Academic Director: Ken Cameron (Department of Computer Science)
Who can apply for 2021/22? This VIP welcomes applications from all University of Bath students.
Since 2020/21
In this VIP, team members will work with staff, peers and local stakeholders to inform the debate and provide solutions
Heating forms a large part of our energy use and GHG emissions (cooling will feature increasingly). Changing how we heat buildings is challenging as existing infrastructure and convenience makes the incumbent technology and difficult to change. In Bath we have the additional issues associated with historic buildings and the need to preserve these, whilst providing liveable home standards. Critical issues and reason for change in the Bath and North East Somerset area include:
- 65,000 homes need to be retrofitted by 2030
- 66% of the area’s GHG emissions are related to buildings (much of this in heating) (https://www.bathnes.gov.uk/sites/default/files/siteimages/climate_and_nature_emergency_action_plan.pdf)·
One of the priorities for the local authority is energy efficiency improvement of the majority of existing buildings (domestic and non-domestic) and zero carbon new build. The University and the Local Authority are looking to work more closely together to solve some of the biggest GHG issues facing the area. Changing the way we heat our buildings cannot be solved by one discipline alone. We need to understand the building physics, the economics, the embodied and lifetime greenhouse gas emissions, user behaviour and how to finance change. We can only do that if we have interdisciplinary teams working on this. This VIP will pull together students and staff across campus to work to identify the key challenges and how to solve them.
Academic Director: Prof Marcelle McManus (Professor of Energy and Environmental Engineering, Co-Director, Centre for Sustainable and Circular Technologies, Department of Mechanical Engineering)
Who can apply for 2021/22? This VIP is open to all University of Bath students, but we would particularly welcome applications from students enrolled on courses in the departments of Psychology, and Social and Policy Sciences, and the School of Management.
In 2021/22, this VIP project will build on initial work carried out by two VIPs in the previous year to further help develop and deliver a sustainable food policy for the University of Bath.
This VIP team will be involved with the testing of interventions to change dietary choices amongst students and staff to be healthier and greener, through ideas like food labelling, carbon tax, or nudges to change behaviour.
Academic Director:
Prof Lorraine Whitmarsh (Director - Centre for Climate Change & Social Transformations (CAST) and Dept of Psychology)
Who can apply for 2021/22? This VIP welcomes applications from all University of Bath students.
This VIP project will examine and critique the environmental impact of a major naval facility and dockyard within the UK. The team will work with major agencies to create and evaluate interventions that enhance the ways in which the facility engages with its locale, region and the wider world.
Academic Director: Brian Rutter (Department of Mechanical Engineering)
Who can apply for 2021/22? This VIP welcomes applications from all University of Bath students.
Since 2019/20
Concerns about student wellbeing and mental health continue to dominate national debate. This VIP addresses the issues at the local level, evaluating interventions and stimulating debate over how best to tackle these challenges in the future. Working with experts from the academic and professional realms, the VIP team will have an opportunity to make a difference to policy and practice at the University and beyond.
Academic Director: Professor Richard Joiner
Who can apply for 2021/22? This VIP welcomes applications from all University of Bath students.
This VIP aims to use expertise in robotics, electrical and electronic engineering in order to develop technologies and interventions that support and enhance the lives of those in social care settings. This VIP relies on disciplinary expertise from engineers, but also from social and management scientists who can investigate, analyse and relate the needs and experiences of different communities - from disabled people and families to those in care establishments. This VIP team will be involved in the design, testing and evaluation of cutting-edge technologies for social good.
Academic Director: Mr Brian Rutter
Who can apply for 2021/22? This VIP welcomes applications from all University of Bath students.
Previous Projects
This VIP aims to create a better understanding of the social and economic inequalities that blight the City of Bath. The VIP team will work with local stakeholders, including Bath City Football Club, to explore interventions that can build communities, inspire learners, develop opportunities and engage students in volunteering and enterprise.
Academic Directors: Dr Haydn Morgan, with Dr Lana Evans
Who can apply? This VIP is not currently accepting applications for 2021/22.
In this VIP, team members will work with staff, peers and local stakeholders to inform the debate and provide solutions for the transport challenges that affect the environment, communities and organisations in the City of Bath. Issues addressed will include pollution, congestion, active commuting, parking and traffic safety.
Academic Director: Professor Ian Walker, Department of Psychology (no longer at the University of Bath)
Sustainable Transport_E-Scooter Impact Report
E-Scooter Impact Report Poster
Who can apply? This VIP is not currently accepting applications for 2021/22.
This VIP project started in 2020-21. The students have designed a first walking tour and related map that engages with Bath' involvement in the transatlantic trade and plantation slavery. In 2021-22, we would like to develop and run a walking tour, design a guidebook for individual walkers, and work in collaboration with the city of Bath and an app designer to create a walking app. We would also like to work with minority ethnic communities to gather their feedback on our walk, create a debate about places and historical figures who should be included and use these contributions to finalise and improve our walk.
We are looking for contributors who would like to:
- learn to guide a walking tour
- work with communities and NGOs like BLM
- contribute to the app design
- contribute to themed creative and arts-based activities and the promotion of the walk
Skills we are looking for include:
- design skills
- computing
- understanding of urban and architectural development
- experience working with NGOs, BLM or minority ethnic communities
- experience with tourist walks
- an interest in these areas and desire to develop such skills
Academic Director: Dr Christina Horvath, with Dr Andres Sandoval, Dr Irene Macias, in collaboration with PhD candidates Ben van Praag, Eliana Osorio Saez and Vandana Singh.
Who can apply? This VIP is not currently accepting applications for 2021/22.
Benefits of Vertically Integrated Projects (VIPs)
VIPs offer students an opportunity to:
- Make a difference or make an impact
- Demonstrate their enthusiasm for your subject and its application
- Develop skills prioritised by employers, e.g., collaboration, negotiation and creativity
- Develop ideas for a project and improve research skills
- Innovate and use their imagination to create change
How to get involved
Students
Undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral students from across all courses can apply to participate in a Vertically Integrated Project.
Application for 21/22 are currently closed
Interested in finding out more before you apply? You can view a recording of the Vertically Integrated Projects (VIPs) information event held on 8th December 2021 for further information.
If you have any questions about VIPs, or about making an application, please email the VIP Team at: Vertically-Integrated-Projects@bath.ac.uk.
Please note: priority will be given to those students not undertaking a work placement year, as a means of providing other students with applied learning experiences and professional skills.
Take a look at our student blogs to find out about students’ experiences on the VIPs.
Staff
We are seeking to develop more VIPs to meet growing student demand. Please do get in touch if you would like to find out about what’s involved and how you can participate in the initiative.
Please contact Stephanie Kamffer or Jo Hatt at Vertically-Integrated-Projects@bath.ac.uk for more information.
You may find it useful to watch our latest VIP Information Session for Staff (April, 2021) to find out more about VIPs here at the University of Bath.
Watch our VIP Student Presentations (December 2021) to find out more about some of our existing projects.
External organisations
There may be the opportunity for external organisations to contribute to existing or new VIPs. Please contact Emily Richards if you would like to find out more.
Beyond Bath: the VIP experience
Find out about the University of Strathclyde VIP experience. Take a look at a presentation by Professor Ed Coyle:
Loading...
Reload document 
Open in new tab 
Contact us
See the How To Get Involved section for specific information.
For general queries please contact us at Vertically-Integrated-Projects@bath.ac.uk for more information.