£46,700
Centre for Research in Engineering and Materials Education
Funded Research Projects
The following are current funded research projects taking place within the research centre:
Visiting Professor in Inclusive Engineering Education and Professional Skill DevelopmentPrincipal Investigator: Folashade AKINMOLAYAN TAIWO Funding source: Royal Academy of Engineering Start: 01-10-2025 / End: 28-08-2028 Amount: £30,000 In 2022, QMUL was recognised for social mobility, supporting its Strategy 2030 goal to become the most inclusive university. With a diverse student body, QMUL emphasizes the need for visible role models to guide students, especially from underrepresented groups. Dr Nike Folayan’s expertise will be invaluable in facilitating conversations around diversity, equality, and inclusion, addressing how these issues manifest in engineering practice and education. She will engage the School of Engineering and Materials Science (SEMS) through a multifaceted programme aimed at fostering cultural competence, broadening global perspectives, and enhancing employability skills for students. This programme aligns with SEMS’s strategic goals of promoting diversity and inclusion by exposing students to a successful professional from an underrepresented group in engineering, which will inspire and break down barriers to entry in the field. The legacy of this programme will be establishing a framework for staff and student development around diversity and inclusion, ensuring that faculty continue to incorporate cultural competence into their teaching.** |
Development of an AI-Motivated Cross-National Mathematical Reasoning Skills Inventory for EngineersPrincipal Investigator: Rehan SHAH Co-investigator(s): Ilanthiraiyan Sivagnanamoorthy (SEMS undergraduate), Alexandra Werth (Cornell) and Gabriella Grandville (Cornell postgraduate) Funding source: QMUL, Cornell University and London Mathematical Society (LMS) Start: 19-03-2025 / End: 31-12-2026 Amount: £8,400 Artificial intelligence (AI) has had a profound impact on engineering. To stay at the forefront of these changes, higher education institutions are increasingly embedding AI-oriented instruction into engineering programs to ensure curricula remain relevant. As AI reshapes the engineering landscape, an important question emerges: are engineering students adequately equipped with the mathematical foundations and competencies necessary to effectively develop, fine-tune, deploy, and evaluate AI models? This project develops a framework for a skills-based mathematical assessment instrument that bridges the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical AI-oriented,engineering applications. Through this funded QMUL-Cornell Global Hubs Research Seed Grant project, this will be achieved through establishling a firm, lasting and synergistic collaboration between Dr Werth at Cornell and Dr Shah at QMUL through mutual research visits, joint data collection, and analysis involving student researchers from both institutions. The project will culminate in peer-reviewed journal publications, applications for external grant funding, and a proof-of-concept framework for a cross-national mathematical skills inventory for engineers. This inventory will aim to address the skills-based challenges encountered in the context of mathematics within first- and second-year engineering programs. This has been supported through findings obtained from a UK-wide one-day workshop led by Dr Shah (funded through an Interdisciplinary Collaboration grant by the London Mathematical Society) that featured discussions and interactions between 25 internal and external academics and colleagues from various UK universities on designing assessment questions around key mathematical proficiencies to inform the development of skills-based concept inventories in undergraduate STEM disciplines. Formulating assessment questions centred around critical mathematical proficiencies for specific concepts will also enhance mathematics lecturers’ understanding of assessment design and provide them with a solid foundation to make effective use of existing concept inventories as well as develop new ones to address skill deficits and enhance their students’ conceptual understanding.** |
‘AI in Academia’: An audit of educational developers’ use of, and attitude towards, Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in higher and further educationPrincipal Investigator: Rehan SHAH Co-investigator(s): Matthew Cole (Hartpury), Noleen Chikowore (Leeds), Leonie Faulker (SEMS undergraduate) and Maneeha Siddiki (SEMS undergraduate) Funding source: Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA) Start: 01-05-2025 / End: 31-08-2026 Amount: £1,000 The rise of Generative AI has led some institutions to provide student guidance on appropriate use, while a small number of studies have explored student perceptions of AI in Higher Education. However, there is limited research on AI usage and perceptions among educational developers. While some larger universities have started offering general AI guidance to their staff, a gap remains in understanding how educational developers, especially from small and specialist institutions, currently engage with AI. This project aims to audit educational developers across 3 UK institutions to shape future AI guidance and contribute to ongoing research, including the 2024 SEDA-funded study on multimodal learning and AI. By leveraging a diverse team across multiple institutions, the project will provide a broad, interdisciplinary perspective. Research questions will involve examining how AI is currently used in practice by educational developers, what their attitudes towards AI integration in education are and what the existing gaps in their knowledge, competence, and confidence of AI use are. The study will employ a multi-phase, iterative approach to review literature to scope AI applications in educational development, survey staff to audit AI usage across the three institutions and conduct focus groups to gather qualitative insights on their attitudes and behaviours. The output resources will benefit educational developers across HE and FE sectors and serve as a valuable platform for the development of guidance for learner developers’ AI use in the future. ** |
Designing Effective Pedagogical Approaches for Teaching Mathematics to Large Student CohortsPrincipal Investigator: Rehan SHAH Co-investigator(s): Samantha Hayward (Bath) and Waleed Ali (Bath) Funding source: London Mathematical Society (LMS) Start: 12-02-2026 / End: 31-07-2026 Amount: £400 The persistent growth in undergraduate student cohorts has led to significant challenges in the effective teaching of mathematics across STEM disciplines. With student attention spans becoming shorter, the traditional teaching model featuring one lecturer engaging with a class of several hundred students is in dire need of reform. To ensure that students learn effectively amidst retaining high levels of learner satisfaction, it is crucial that educators investigate alternative approaches to teaching, specifically regarding large cohorts. The aim of this UK-wide one-day workshop led by Dr Shah and his colleagues (funded through an Interdisciplinary Collaboration grant by the London Mathematical Society) is to disseminate the learnings and best practices that have arisen the work of all the external collaborators and from the University of Bath’s ‘Cauchy Club’ to the wider, external community of mathematics educators with a view to expanding and creating an interdisciplinary cross-institutional community, while also motivating participants to form related staff communities among educators within their institutions. The workshop will provide a valuable opportunity for cross-institutional discussions about teaching, learning and assessment in mathematics and related STEM disciplines. The involvement of several influential mathematics educators delivering and leading various sessions will facilitate diverse discussion and sharing of ideas. ** |
Empowering students by making STEM curricula more inclusivePrincipal Investigator: Rehan SHAH Co-investigator(s): Ava Dahlia Belfatone (SEMS undergraduate), Allegra Celesia (SEMS undergraduate), Brigitte Stenhouse (OU), Amelia Stringfellow (SEMS undergraduate) and Nilah Holmer (SEMS undergraduate) Funding source: Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) and SEMS CREME Scholarship Funding Start: 11-04-2024 / End: 31-07-2026 Amount: £1,100 STEM disciplines have traditionally been taught as an exercise in memorisation and repetitive application of formulae, with the historical aspects often confined to the contributions made by white male European mathematicians, scientists, and engineers. As a result of this, very few students can relate to these mathematical figures, which consequently contributes to the stigma that studying STEM subjects is esoteric, inaccessible, and extremely difficult for them. To rectify this, there is a strong need for increasing students’ awareness of diverse representation within STEM disciplines; not just through exposure to mathematicians, scientists, and engineers from diverse and under-represented backgrounds (including those identifying as female, disabled, and queer), but also those applying their skills within academia and industry through non-traditional pathways. This project aims to co-design (with students) teaching toolkit materials featuring short biographies of past and present mathematicians, scientists and engineers from under-represented minority groups to embed within undergraduate STEM courses. It also seeks to provide opportunities for students to gain exposure to diverse STEM role models by inviting currently active, diverse STEM professionals, compile links to multimedia resources to highlight their contributions and produce a diversity and inclusion agenda to inform future EDI initiatives in STEM curriculum design.** |
SEED-AI: Social Enterprise Education Design with AI – A Student–Community Partnership ProjectPrincipal Investigator: Rehan SHAH Co-investigator(s): Anne Preston (UCL) and Sara Hamandi (SEMS undergraduate) Funding source: Researching, Advancing and Inspiring Student Engagement (RAISE) Network Start: 05-01-2026 / End: 31-07-2026 Amount: £500 This project focuses on the co-design of a new, shared social entrepreneurship module featuring students working with an E17 Films, a local East London community organisation to develop socially driven entrepreneurial ideas using ethical and creative applications of Generative AI. Our team comprising two student co-researchers, a community partner, and two academic staff members, will employ a participatory design methodology to collaboratively design the module structure, assessment, and GenAI learning activities. Our work builds on existing student–community engagement work at QMUL and UCL East and responds to student interest in learning that is locally relevant, socially impactful, and future-focused. By co-creating the curriculum with students and communities, we aim to model a more democratic and socially responsible approach to educational design. The final module blueprint output will provide a transferable model that other institutions can adopt to support student partnership, ethical GenAI use, and community-engaged curriculum development. ** |
Student-Led Mathematics Networking EveningPrincipal Investigator: Rehan SHAH Co-investigator(s): Nicole Kirk (SEMS undergraduate) Funding source: London Mathematical Society Student Representatives Activities Grant Start: 03-11-2025 / End: 31-07-2026 Amount: £300 This London Mathematical Society (LMS)-funded mathematics networking evening event aims to bring together new incoming first-year and returning undergraduate students studying mathematical science degrees (mathematics, physics, engineering etc) at QMUL to provide them with the opportunity to connect with their peers, learn about the LMS and its activities and take part in a fun, mathematics-inspired quiz activity. The event will be held?entirely in-person?on campus and will be?completely free to attend and open to all students. Students will arrive, register and network with each other over food and refreshments. This informal session will encourage attendees to meet fellow students from both varying STEM degree disciplines as well those from different undergraduate year groups. Sessions led by the QMUL Academic and Student Representatives, will provide an overview of the Society, outlining its role in supporting students and professionals, the benefits of obtaining student membership, and involvement opportunities for students through LMS meetings, events and conference events. The final part of the evening will involve student attendees partaking in a lively, mathematics-inspired pub quiz by forming small groups of teams. The quiz will mix problem-solving, logic, and fun trivia, making it inclusive for students from varying STEM degree backgrounds. A prize will also be awarded to the winning team. ** |
Who experiences experiential learning? Enhancing inclusion in experiential educationPrincipal Investigator: David Geiringer Co-investigator(s): Rehan SHAH, Aisha Abuelmaatti, Alison Brunt, Leslie James, Patrick McGurk, Lisa Diane Morrison, Kanishka Ratnayake, Lindsey Shirah, Karen Watton, Louis Platman (The Museum of the Home), Sadiya Ahmed (Everyday Muslim Project), Anna Maguire (UCL East) and Lubna Meer (SEMS postgraduate) Funding source: QMUL President and Principal's Fund for Educational Excellence Start: 01-08-2025 / End: 31-07-2026 Amount: £5,000 Experiential learning has become a major agenda in higher education over the last five years: it is either embedded, or currently being embedded, in almost all programmes across QMUL in line with the Active Curriculum for Excellence approach (ACE), the Student Experience Enabling Plan and the new QMUL Employability and Skills Framework. The benefits of experiential learning have been established for some time (Kolb 1984; Jonathon and Laik 2024) and the field has been heavily theorised (Bhajantri et al. 2016), but there remain multiple approaches to the design and delivery of such programmes in practice at QMUL and beyond. Moreover, we continue to know very little about the (in many cases hidden) barriers to participation in experiential learning and attendant issues of inclusion. Through student feedback, the project team have some knowledge of barriers relating to finances (e.g. associated travel costs – see below) time (e.g. those with employment or caring responsibilities) and culture (e.g. incompatibility with religious observations, anxieties and exclusions based on ‘social capital’). This project attempts to (i) generate data which surfaces these and other unknown barriers and issues (ii) develop resources that support the design and delivery of inclusive experiential education (iii) create a community of practice across QMUL and its partners which establishes us as a sector-leader in inclusive experiential learning. This project addresses the barriers, exclusions and inequities that students and educators experience in experiential learning. ** |