• First thing you must do on the day of your graduation is go to Spinnaker Sports Centre to collect your student and guest tickets (which you booked in advance) and your gown. Check below the dates and times of the ceremonies and make sure you arrive with plenty of time on the day.

• You can find all information about graduation at www.port.ac.uk/departments/services/graduation.

• The University will broadcast your graduation live on all campus plasma screens and online at www.port.ac.uk/graduationlive.

• Will you be tweeting? Please tag your tweets with #uopgrad.

Monday 16 July 2012, 11,30am

• Department of Accounting and Finance (Undergraduates)
• Department of Strategy and Business Systems (Undergraduates)

Monday 16 July 2012, 2.30pm

• Institute of Criminal Justice Studies

Tuesday 17 July 2012, 10.30am

• Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation
• Learning at Work
• School of Engineering

Tuesday 17 July 2012, 2.30pm

• Department of Economics (Undergraduates)
• School of Computing

Wednesday 18 July 2012, 10.00am

• School of Civil Engineering and Surveying

Wednesday 18 July 2012, 1.00pm

• School of Languages and Area Studies

Wednesday 18 July 2012, 4.00pm

• School of Education and Continuing Studies

Thursday 19 July 2012, 10.30am

• Department of Sport and Exercise Science
• School of Earth and Environmental Sciences
• Department of Mathematics

Thursday 19 July 2012, 2.30pm

• Department of Geography
• School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences

Friday 20 July 2012, 10.00am

• School of Creative Technologies

Friday 20 July 2012, 1.00pm

• Department of Psychology
• School of Creative Arts, Film and Media

Friday 20 July 2012, 4.00pm

• Department of Accounting and Finance (Postgraduates)
• Department of Economics (Postgraduates)
• Department of Human Resource and Marketing Management (Postgraduates)
• Department of Strategy and Business Systems (Postgraduates)
• School of Law (Postgraduates)

Monday 23 July 2012, 10.30am

• Portsmouth School of Art, Design and Media
• School of Biological Sciences
• Dental Academy

Monday 23 July 2012, 2.30pm

• Portsmouth School of Architecture
• School of Health Sciences and Social Work

Tuesday 24 July 2012, 10.30am

• Department of Human Resource and Marketing Management (Undergraduates)
• School of Law

Tuesday 24 July 2012, 2.30pm

• School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies

Dr Craig Storey

Scientists at the University of Portsmouth have won a £400,000 grant to try and find out when Earth’s surface started moving.

Many scientists believe the way that the Earth’s crust is moving and pushing the continents apart changed around 700 million years ago. But Dr Craig Storey and Dr Mike Fowler believe that the evidence for this is not reliable. They believe that this style of movement could have begun hundreds of millions of years earlier and if they are right, the models showing how the planet has evolved will need to be rewritten.

The project leader, Dr Storey, said: “The continents we have now were once one supercontinent, a single land mass, which has broken up and reformed many times since Earth was formed.

“Tectonic plate movement, responsible for earthquakes and volcanoes around the globe, is difficult to measure if you want to look back hundreds of millions of years. But we think we might have found the key to unlocking the story of when the planet has changed in two minerals, rutile and zircon.”

He and colleagues in the university’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences will spend three years examining deposits of these minerals to pinpoint where an oceanic plate has collided with a continental plate in the past. Rocks formed at the same time have been lost to erosion over hundreds of millions of years, but certain minerals have survived the erosion and end up buried in sediments.

Dr Storey said: “When an oceanic plate collides with a continental plate the forces are so peculiar to that location, a rock called blueschist is formed which contains rutile. It is a brilliant blue and can be seen on the Greek island of Syros. Blueschist is one of the fingerprints of modern plate tectonics and tells a story of the violence and dynamism of the earth’s crust movement that is undeniable.

“Volcanoes are also formed when oceanic and continental plates collide and the rocks produced in them contain zircon.

“Using our new methods, rutile and zircon can be used to provide reliable diagnostic evidence that the plates moved in a certain dramatic way much earlier than in just the last 700 million years.”

If modern plate tectonics is found to have started earlier than 700 million years ago, science’s understanding of how fast Earth has cooled and evolved would undergo a major tectonic shift of its own. Dr Storey said: “Such a result would be surprising for a large number of geologists.”

The grant was awarded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and will fund a postdoctoral research assistant and a PhD student. Dr Storey and his team expect to report their findings in 2015.

Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen

More than 200 former students from the University of Portsmouth attended the first formal alumni event at the House of Lords in London last night.

Graduates of every discipline signed up to attend the event in the hours after it was advertised as an opportunity to catch up with old friends and renew their ties to their alma mater. The invitation to attend a formal get together was so popular a further 150 people asked to be placed on the waiting list.

The event was hosted by honorary graduate of the university, Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen, and included a tour of both houses of parliament followed by drinks and canapes in the Peers’ Dining Room.

Baroness Gibson was made an honorary graduate thanks to her work on trade unions and bullying and harassment at work, much of which she carried out with Professor Charlotte Rayner at the university’s Portsmouth Business School. She gave a speech about her strong relationship with the university developed over many years.

Vice-Chancellor Professor John Craven welcomed the more than 210 alumni. He spoke of the enormous value the university places on building and maintaining relationships with them and how they were the university’s ambassadors and champions.

The event was also attended by Deputy Vice-Chancellor Rebecca Bunting and the Deans of all five faculties.

One of the event organisers, Lauren McPeak, said: “It was wonderful to see so many former students from a wide range of courses and a wide range of graduating years come together at such a beautiful venue. The atmosphere was very convivial and there was a lot of fond feeling from many graduates about the great start that Portsmouth gave their careers.”

'Supercarrier on ocean' by Ben Smallwood (composite with MOD)

Computer game simulators will be used to train Royal Navy personnel thanks to support from students at the University of Portsmouth.

Computer games and animation students are reproducing 3-D models of military hardware, such as ships, aircraft carriers, helicopters and submarines, which are embedded in computer simulators reflecting real combat situations.

The Armed Forces regularly exploit commercial off the shelf technology and virtual reality environments to augment training, but the Navy required more up-to-date models of its latest hardware. Under an agreement signed yesterday, it will formally commission work from final-year students studying Computer Animation and Computer Games Technology.

Lieutenant Alex Smith Royal Navy, who works at the Royal Navy’s Technology Based Training Unit, said: “With new developments in technology, Serious Games and simulators offer an increasingly realistic environment for military personnel to develop and hone their skills. They can be used to train young recruits many of the procedures they need prior to using the real equipment onboard but in a ‘safe to fail’ environment.”

The Navy, which has a large base in Portsmouth, approached the University’s School of Creative Technology earlier this year and is already using some of the students’ work, including models of the new Queen Elizabeth Aircraft Carrier (currently under construction) and the WildCat helicopter. Future commissions are likely to include HMS Ocean and the new Royal Marine assault hovercraft.

Lieutenant Smith said that the quality of the work being delivered by the students was exceptional and comparable to anything they could commission professionally.

He said: “The student work we received under the initial brief far surpassed our expectations and prompted us to extend and formalise the collaboration. The arrangement works because the Navy receives an excellent product and the students experience working to a brief with a real-life client. It’s a win-win situation.”

Ben Smallwood, a graduate from the course in Computer Animation, was responsible for some of the first designs delivered to the navy, including models of supercarriers and superstructures, some of the largest vessels owned by the Royal Navy. He said that working on a real project for such a prestigious customer had been a fantastic opportunity.

“I feel like I’m graduating with more than just a degree but with real industry experience and exceptional exposure for my work. I’m thrilled that my designs will be seen by naval personnel all over the world and it’s great that future students on the course will have the same opportunity.”

The 23 year old spent time on HMS Daring to learn about naval architecture and see the technical specifications for himself.

He said: “Being invited on board the ship I was able to get a first hand impression of the sheer scale of some of these massive structures which helped me appreciate what I was dealing with. And I learned some crucial facts such as military vessels have few right angles to make them less detectable by sonar.”

Ben’s designs are now being incorporated into programmes for the Navy which will retain copyright over all the images for security purposes.

The Navy’s Rear Admiral Clive Johnstone CBE and the University’s Vice-Chancellor Professor John Craven signed a contract yesterday formalising the arrangement between the two organisations.

Professor Lorraine Farrelly

A public lecture about the University’s influence on the region’s architecture is taking place on Wednesday 19 October.

Professor Lorraine Farrelly will talk about how the University’s School of Architecture has had an effect on the region’s built environment through student projects and by working with local businesses. At her inaugural lecture, Professor Farrelly will discuss the relationship between the way architecture is taught at the University and the effect of the institution’s physical presence on the city’s landscape.

She said: “The University has a strong connection to the region through practice and education with the city’s heritage helping to shape the learning experience of the architecture students here at Portsmouth and the students giving something back through their work on real projects in the city.”

Lorraine believes that students should work on real urban design problems and wherever possible involves students on projects in the city. Through the School’s Project Office, which acts as an architectural consultancy, local businesses can draw on the on the talent and expertise of staff and students who can fulfil their brief. Together they create design ideas and visionary solutions for clients, spending time understanding the real social issues, including the demographics of the area and the needs of the local community.

Last year ten student interns worked to develop ideas to revitalise two churches and designed a multi-purpose community building for a church in Havant and this year several students provided a design make-over for the Isle of Wight zoo.

Professor Farrelly said: “As well as providing a range of ideas for the clients, students gain invaluable work experience on real projects and see their skills appreciated and applied in the community.”

Lorraine is an architect who believes in promoting the architectural discipline from a grass roots level and who is passionate about the urban spaces in which we live. For five years she has been a member of the SERDP South East Regional Development Panel, a design review service which advises on strategic urban and architectural development across the South.

She is on several award panels including the Building for Life Housing Awards, a national scheme celebrating well-designed housing projects and neighbourhoods, for which she is an assessor, and the British Urban Regeneration Awards which encourages initiatives in developing sustainable design tools for cities. Last year she was a judge for the Solent Design Awards which recognise the region’s best public spaces and places.

Admission to the lecture is free, but places are limited so please make a reservation by emailing events@port.ac.uk or by calling 023 9284 3757.

China alumni, Professor John Craven and Joe Docherty

The first major alumni event in China for former students of the University of Portsmouth was held in Beijing on Friday.

Forty former students attended a celebration dinner hosted by Vice-Chancellor Professor John Craven and International Director Joe Docherty. Dr Ming-He Yang, the university’s China Director, and Dr David Ndzi of the faculty of Technology also attended the event at Xian Ling Tian Xia restaurant.

Mr Docherty said: “We were hugely impressed with the enthusiasm shown by our former students and shared in their obvious pride in their careers and social successes since graduating.  A number of them now work in senior posts in government; several have substantial roles in private investment and banking organisations; and there was even a wine importer.  All expressed their thanks and appreciation of the experience they had had in Portsmouth.”

China remains the university’s largest overseas recruitment market. The 527 new students who enrolled this month bumped the number of Chinese students currently studying in Portsmouth up to about 1,000.

Professor Craven gave an after-dinner speech, in which he toasted alumni and congratulated the three couples present who had met at the university and since married. The evening ended with a promise to meet again in October 2012 at the university’s graduation event in Beijing.

The first major alumni event in China was organised by Emily Weihua Peng and Jason Ming Hu, the secretary and president of the University’s Chinese Alumni Association.

The Judge and magistrates take notes. From L-R: Donna Jones, James Kirby and Nancy North

Local sixth form students observed a bail hearing staged in the University of Portsmouth’s mock courtroom yesterday to learn about human rights.

The event was organised by the School of Law to give sixth formers the opportunity to see exactly how an application for bail would be carried out in a Crown Court.

Two university drama students assumed the roles of a husband and wife involved in an abusive relationship while law students, dressed in wigs and gowns, played advocates in the hearing, which was carried out before a real judge and two magistrates.

Sixth form pupils from Peter Symonds College, Southdowns College and Portsmouth High School were invited to discuss whether they thought both parties’ human rights had been safeguarded and whether the judge had made the right decision.

University students Carmen Flynn, Craig McColl and Jack Lloyd

Lower sixth form pupils Millie Hunter and Lara Hardwick from Portsmouth High School said the whole experience was so real they felt like they were actually in a courtroom watching a genuine hearing. Lara said: “Being in a courtroom setting made it so believable. I’ve never thought about law as a serious career path for me before, but when I came up with the same bail conditions as the judge I was very surprised and really encouraged.”

Drama graduate Carmen Flynn played the role of a wife fearful of her allegedly violent husband and Tom Harrison played the husband desperate to avoid being remanded in custody. Pupils only became aware as the hearing progressed that the husband was in fact the wrongly accused party.

Third year law student Jack Lloyd argued the wife had the right to life and the right not to be ill-treated using articles two and three of the European Convention for the Protection of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. Craig McColl, also a third year law student, fought on the husband’s behalf against the accusation of assault, using article five – the right to liberty – to support his case.

Drama graduate Tom Harrison awaits the verdict

Bernard Davis, Senior Lecturer from the School of Law, said: “It is fantastic to be able to show local pupils how a bail hearing is executed in court and having the mock courtroom means we can bring an event like this to life. The university is working hard to reach out to local schools and colleges to give young people a flavour of law in a real setting.

“Although the hearing was fictitious, it took place in a courtroom that is a replica of a crown court, complete with dock, witness box, public gallery, jury rooms and interview rooms making it as close to the real-thing as you can get.”

The event was organised as part of the European Local Democracy Week, which aims to celebrate human rights at a local level and runs from October 10-16.

(l-r): International officer Saf Jeevanjee, Leonora Hristova, Rebecca Bunting, Lyubomir Kyuchukov, Charlotte Ayres-Hill, out-going student society president Petar Vuchev, and Zdravko Isaev

An enterprising student at the University of Portsmouth secured a visit to the city by the Bulgarian ambassador during European Local Democracy Week.

The ambassador was invited to take part in Portsmouth’s celebration of local democracy by Bulgarian university student, Leonora Hristova, who is in her third year studying international relations.

Leonora said: “We very much looked forward to his visit because for us, he is one of the figureheads of democracy in our country. When a country such as ours has only lived under democracy for a short period, it is highly prized and valued. I was so pleased when he agreed to come to Portsmouth as part of the Local Democracy Week celebrations.

Lyubomir Kyuchukov was welcomed to the campus by Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Rebecca Bunting, and senior international officer, Charlotte Ayres-Hill. The number of Bulgarian students at Portsmouth has risen from just two in 2007, to 174 this year.

Students performed a traditional Bulgarian dance in local costume for the ambassador and the incoming president of the Bulgarian students’ society Zdravko Isaev presented him with Bulgarian bread he had made himself.

European Local Democracy Week aims to celebrate human rights at local level and runs until October 16.

Among the many free activities is a public debate tonight at the university with experts discussing ‘Blagging and hacking’ on phone hacking and privacy

Mr Kyuchukov is a leading light in Bulgarian politics and helped ensure Bulgaria was accepted as a member of the European Union when it joined in 2007, in what was described by the country’s president as a ‘heavenly moment’ 17 years after the fall of Communism.

The Bulgarian society in Portsmouth is one of the biggest communities from the EU in the city. It aims to spread the Bulgarian culture and traditions to the UK as well as help Bulgarian students integrate into the university and Portsmouth communities.

The university has a strong relationship with the City Council-run week because it has myriad experts on politics; European law, society and economy; social inclusion and policy; and enterprise and development.

The programme for the week with details can be found at: http://portsmouthlocal.blogspot.com/p/local-democracy-week-10th-16th-october.html

Dr Jo Corbett with a race participant in front of the virtual race course

We’ve all seen the moment an athlete pushes themselves at the last second to try and win a head-to-head race, and now a sports scientist has discovered how they do that.

Dr Jo Corbett from the University of Portsmouth has found the secret to that winning burst lies in the exhausted athlete’s brain tapping into the body’s anaerobic energy stores.

The results showed that even when an athlete had reached physical fatigue they were still able to dip into stored anaerobic energy. The anaerobic energy system provides energy in the absence of oxygen and is used for fast, powerful bursts of energy.

Dr Corbett, a senior lecturer in applied exercise physiology from the Department of Sport and Exercise Science, conducted a study to find out what exactly triggers a cyclist to go faster when they are competing against someone head-to-head.

In his study, published in the Journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, sportsmen racing against someone else managed to find an extra burst of energy that increased their performance by 1.7 percent. At top level sport this can be the difference between winning or being unplaced.

Dr Corbett said: “Most sportspeople know they perform harder and better when they are competing, but until now we didn’t know precisely why.

“We’ve found out that an athlete is able to dip further into their anaerobic energy reserves in order to beat their opponent.

“Whenever you do exercise you’re likely to think ‘how much am I willing to hurt myself?’ and there’s usually a point which holds you back because you don’t want to do yourself irreparable damage. But when racing someone head-to-head the athlete’s brain can manipulate this signal and keep on going.”

Participants were instructed to complete a 2000 metre cycle in the quickest time possible, in front of a computer screen showing an avatar of themselves doing the ride on a virtual race-course. They had to repeat this exercise on five different occasions.

On the final occasion the cyclists were told to race against another individual behind a partition whose avatar was also being projected onto the same virtual race course in front of them. Despite thinking they were racing someone else – participants were in fact competing against their own previous best time.

Out of 14 cyclists participating 12 of them performed significantly faster in the final race – when they believed they were competing against an opponent. They finished with a burst of speed to ensure their victory and the average speed of most increased from 38.4km/h per hour to 39km/h. Dr Corbett said: “In each race the participants cycled vigorously until they were completely exhausted but it was only in the last race, when they were unknowingly competing against themselves, they were able to race even harder.

“When an athlete finishes exercising they are almost always left with a physiological energy reserve but our results show that head-to-head competition provides the motivation to tell the brain to eat into a greater part of this reserve.”

Professor Bob Nichol

University of Portsmouth cosmologists are celebrating as a major new space mission to investigate dark matter and dark energy has been given the green light.

‘Euclid’ will see the launch of a satellite carrying a massive optical digital camera, one of the largest such cameras put into space and able to take pictures of the sky more than 100 times larger than Hubble.  Each frame is the equivalent of nearly 300 HDTV screens and one will arrive every 15 minutes resulting in imaging half the sky in around six years.

By analysing data from the camera, cosmologists hope to answer key questions fundamental to physics and cosmology, including the nature of the mysterious dark energy which scientists believe might explain why the expansion of the Universe is accelerating.

The project is one of just two European Space Agency (ESA) missions to make the grade from over 50 original projects and both are part of ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme to be built and launched between 2017 and 2020.  UK astronomers are leading efforts to design and build Euclid and funding has come from the UK Space Agency, space scientists and industry partners in the UK.

Scientists from the University’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation (ICG) are part of a European-wide team including nine UK institutions involved in Euclid and will be analysing data from the satellite.  The ICG’s Professor Bob Nichol said that astronomers and physicists believe Euclid will revolutionise our knowledge of the Universe.

He said:  “It’s been suggested that dark energy is behind the observation made by the Hubble Space telescope that – contrary to expectations – the expansion of the Universe seems to be faster now than it was billions of years ago.  Euclid will effectively look back in time approximately 10 billion years covering the period over which dark energy seems to have accelerated the expansion of the Universe and capture the light from distant galaxies to map their distribution and reveal the underlying ‘dark’ architecture of the cosmos.”

Images from Euclid’s camera will capture light from distant galaxies using a gravitational lensing effect which relates to a key prediction in Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.

The ICG’s Will Percival said: “It’s an amazing experiment for cosmology as it will make multiple measurements: in parallel with the optical observations, observations will be undertaken at longer wavelengths invisible to the human eye. This allows us to simultaneously discover all the mass in the Universe and the locations of galaxies within this structure.

“The Euclid dataset will be a treasure trove for all astronomers for decades to come, allowing everyone to stare anywhere in the Cosmos with Hubble-like clarity. The legacy value of Euclid will out-last its cosmological impact and may mean my grandchildren will do their PhDs using Euclid data.”

Dr David Williams, Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency, said: “With strong UK involvement in these ambitious projects, we are set to maintain our country’s position as a leader in space science within Europe. These exciting missions are a prime example of collaboration between academia and the UK high-tec industry and will not only further our knowledge of space science but could help us unlock some of the greatest mysteries of our Universe.”