Dr Isabel Sassoon

YouTube video by Heriot-Watt Learning and Teaching Academy Heriot-Watt Inspiring Learning New Year Lecture 2026 by Helen Beetham

Really valuable and interesting perspective on teaching and learning in the age of generative AI www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZI...

Evolution of the median time under review of articles with female first authors, male first authors, female corresponding authors, and male corresponding authors.

#Women are underrepresented in academia, especially in #STEMM fields, top institutions & in senior positions. Analysis of millions of biomed & life science articles reveal that female-authored articles spend longer under review than comparable male-authored ones @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4658FZN

Why We Should All Be Data Quality Detectives – Real World Data Science Data serves as the foundation of our work. So why isn’t its quality given the prominence it deserves?

Data wrangling is undervalued, and the consequences can be huge. Rosemary Tate & Roger Halliday call for a culture shift in data science, including “data amnesty” & editorial reform.

Read more on our Real World Data Science site: realworlddatascience.net/foundation-f...

#DataQuality #RWDS

Shana tova’ - Happy New Year 🍯🍎

I’m reaching out as a follow-up to our previous email, to which we have yet to receive your response. We understand that there could be several reasons for the delay, such as: A busy schedule No manuscript ready for submission The journal may not align with your current research focus Our message may not have reached you at the right time A decision not to respond While any of the above might be the case, we cannot know for certain unless we hear directly from you.

#academicSPAM another example for the collection, following up on something "sent" to me on the 10th of March. Signed off with "A brief confirmation from you—regardless of your decision—would be greatly appreciated and will help us avoid further follow-ups. "

The Journal sent the following message on the 10th of March, 2025. You either did not receive this message or are intentionally not responding (I apologize if I am mistaken). Kindly request your immediate attention to this email and respond within 24 hours to avoid the unnecessary email communications or maybe spam.

...on the topic of #academicSPAM this is one of many that purport to an email on the 10th of March. I wonder if the phrasing used in these even works?

Reblog: How To Convince Students To Use Effective Study Strategies? — The Learning Scientists I’m currently preparing teaching for the upcoming academic year. One focus for me has been student self-regulated learning and time management skills. So, as I’m developing resources for students and...

NEW POST: "Reblog: How To Convince Students To Use Effective Study Strategies?" by @drckt.bsky.social

www.learningscientists.org/blog/2023/6/...

📣Our Real World Data Science platform is back

The world of data science has been a dizzying place lately, so we paused to take stock. Now we’re back - ready to rejoin the conversation with renewed clarity & purpose

Read our editor's blog & call for ideas
realworlddatascience.net/the-pulse/ed...

Back to #parkrun after a few weeks of university open day visits (requiring a different type of stamina 😂)

Your First Draft Is Supposed to Be Bad. Congratulations! Letting Go of Perfection So the Real Work Can Begin

Wise words from @catherinedevries.bsky.social on the crappy first draft open.substack.com/pub/catherin... #research #academia

Last year we ran a survey on UK HE redundancies.

Based on 349 responses, the UNIVERSITIES DEGRADED REPORT uncovers awful conditions, targeting of marginalised groups, & far more cuts than estimated.

People's stories matter. We can hold leaders to account. Please share widely tinyurl.com/48nzf7ew

Senate House opens the doors to Brunel's brightest ideas Brunel Research Showcase and Impact Awards

We don't win awards very often, but we won a Policy Impact Award the other day for our work :).

www.brunel.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

Brunel's Department of Computer Science awarded Athena Swan Silver The department has been awarded Athena Swan Silver Award by Advance HE, in recognition of the department

The dept of computer science at Brunel University of London was recently awarded #AthenaSwan silver! Proud to be part of the team - read about it in the press release www.brunel.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

A biblical hatred is engulfing both sides in the Gaza conflict – and blinding them to reason | Jonathan Freedland Israel starving Palestinians, two killings at a Jewish museum: both are atrocities. But vanishingly few can see it, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland

On hunger as a weapon of war, a murderous attack on a Jewish museum - and the blindness of hatred. Latest column www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Not read the article but how exactly are universities being irresponsible over public money? Is this informed by actually looking at how much universities and their staff do? 😡

Easter #parkrun done #41 🏃‍♀️

Universities call in clowns to stave off circus?

Another Saturday brings another #parkrun. This one is #40 🏃‍♀️

Today is Day One of humanity’s Idiolithic Era.

KLAXON 🚨: Indie SAGE has come out of retirement to release a new short report standing up for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the sciences!

DEI is not just the right thing to do, it *improves* the quality of the science. Please read and share.

independentsage.org/wp-content/u...

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Chilly but sunny #parkrun wonderful event as always 😊

Sunny #parkrun makes for a great start to the weekend and a welcome distraction from everything else 🏃‍♀️#academiclife

Instead of using ChatGPT, why not just get a family member to lie to you while they set fire to a tree?

In a first for any research council we know of, EPSRC shared their data with us and the Alan Turing Institute to delve into what it shows about equity and diversity in application processes.

📖 Read about our findings: rss.org.uk/news-publica...

Edinburgh University to seek £140m in savings Unions said the plans would result in "devastating cuts" and called for Edinburgh University to use some of its assets instead.

Today's university slashing and burning is Edinburgh, where about 10% of the budget will be cut. There'll be another case every single day until UK govts actually do something. A country so stupid it actively trashes one of things it's good at and famous for.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

UK HE shrinking This is a live page of all the redundancies, restructures, reorganisations, and closures taking place across the sector at the moment. Solidarity to all. This sector is vital to the country’s…

As predicted here for many months, the number of universities now making active redundancies has now risen to 90. It rise to 100 very soon. qmucu.org/qmul-transfo...

The Guardian view on campus cuts: academics pay a high price for Westminster’s mistakes | Editorial Editorial: The government should not stand aloof as a crisis unfolds in our universities. A new settlement is needed

Frustratingly sad state of affairs www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

You can read this paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2412.15177

CQoT significantly improves LLM performance on reasoning and math tasks compared to baseline and Chain-of-Thought (CoT) approaches. The method allows open-source models to compete with, and sometimes surpass, proprietary LLMs.

The approach prompts LLMs to create a step-by-step reasoning plan, then uses critical questions based on Toulmin’s model to check each step. If the answers to these questions are mostly positive, the LLM provides a final answer, otherwise, the LLM iterates.