Dr Rehan Shah
BEng (UCL), MSc (Oxf), PhD (UCL), SFHEA, MIMA
Research Funding
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Current Funded Research Projects
Levelling Up Maths for Engineering ProgrammeFunding source: London Mathematical Society, Heilbronn Institute of Mathematical Research and Dr. Tony HillStart: 04-02-2025 / End: 02-02-2026 Amount: £4,500 The new Levelling Up Maths for Engineering programme launched in SEMS, supported by the Institute of Mathematics and the Royal Academy of Engineering follows on from its parallel counterpart, the Levelling Up Mathematics programme (supported by the London Mathematical Society) which has already been running successfully for two years within … |
Inclusive Commonwealth Learning for Interdisciplinary Development and Education for Sustainability (INCLIDES)Funding source: Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU)Start: 04-11-2024 / End: 31-10-2025 Amount: £2,500 This cross-institutional project featuring three ACU member universities aims to use inclusive pedagogy to enhance HE educators' understanding of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in interdisciplinary learning curricula. The project will develop a joint toolkit on practice-based research to evaluate the role and quality of SDGs in postgraduate education. The … |
Nonlinear mechanics of rods subject to surface constraintsFunding source: Quaterly Journal of Mechanics and Applied Mathematics Fund (QJMAM)Start: 16-10-2024 / End: 16-10-2025 Amount: £1,700 Slender, elastic rod-like structures on or inside constrained rigid surfaces are prevalent in a wide range of engineering (drill strings in borewells, pipelines under the seabed, ocean cables), medical (stents in angioplasty of arteries), biological (DNA toroidal condensates, bacterial flagella), electronic (carbon nanotubes) and robotic (soft robots for in-pipe inspection) … |
SustainAbility in the QMUL curriculumFunding source: QMUL President and Principal's Fund for Educational ExcellenceStart: 01-08-2024 / End: 31-08-2025 Amount: £20,000 This project addresses sustainability, the most urgent global issue facing the world today, which is also a key strategic priority for Queen Mary’s 2030 Strategy. Its primary aim is to enhance the Queen Mary curriculum through establishing a platform for discussions and collaborative learning on sustainability. This space will … |
From Classroom to Community: ‘Engineering Meets History’ at The Brunel MuseumFunding source: QMUL Centre for Public EngagementStart: 28-02-2025 / End: 31-07-2025 Amount: £1,000 The Brunel Museum is an educational charity located in Rotherhithe in South London, dedicated to telling the story of the world’s first underwater tunnel and the lives of those who built and used it. Construction of the tunnel began in 1825 and took 18 years to complete. It was built … |
Development of a Cross-National Mathematical Reasoning Skills Inventory for EngineersFunding source: London Mathematical Society (LMS)Start: 19-03-2025 / End: 31-07-2025 Amount: £400 This project outlines the development of a mathematical skills inventory for engineers. In education literature, threshold concepts, are discipline-specific concepts that act as learning bottlenecks due to their troublesome and transformative nature. These concepts encompass sets of knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that often seem unfamiliar, contradictory, or inconsistent, … |
CAISE Inclusive Curriculum Student Voices Co-Creation ProjectFunding source: EECS Educational Scholarship Centre Working Groups GrantStart: 06-01-2025 / End: 30-04-2025 Amount: £1,000 The QMUL Centre for Academic Inclusion in Science & Engineering (CAISE) is committed to supporting academics from across the 5 Schools within the Faculty of Science and Engineering in integrating inclusive STEM teaching practices by raising awareness of inclusivity among its staff and students, championing … |
Previous Funded Research Projects
Empowering students by making STEM curricula more inclusiveFunding source: Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA)Start: 11-04-2024 / End: 31-12-2024 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 … |
Promoting equity in education for sustainable development through community-based learning and teachingFunding source: Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (ALDinHE)Start: 09-10-2023 / End: 31-10-2024 Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) plays a crucial role in equipping learners with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to create a sustainable future. Community-based learning and teaching provides a platform for learners to engage directly with local communities, enabling them to develop a holistic understanding of ESD through firsthand … |
Identifying and recognising threshold concepts in undergraduate mathematicsFunding source: London Mathematical Society (LMS) and SEMSStart: 08-01-2024 / End: 30-09-2024 This scoping study project aims at identifying and recognising key threshold concepts inherent within undergraduate mathematics-based courses at university. Following this, it seeks to examine the pedagogical implications that knowledge and awareness of these concepts can lead to for teachers and educators, both with regard to curriculum development and assessment … |
Empowering local community groups in university-community partnershipsFunding source: QMUL Centre for Public EngagementStart: 08-11-2023 / End: 12-08-2024 This project involves organisation of a workshop at QMUL featuring 20 existing local community partners involved in community-based learning and teaching (CBLT) in current undergraduate modules at QMUL to explore how they experience such community-university collaborations. The intention of this will be to develop and extend CBLT by foregrounding the voices … |
Community-based placements in higher education (follow-on project)Funding source: UCL Centre for Engineering EducationStart: 18-09-2023 / End: 31-07-2024 This follow-on project on community-based placements in engineering education will complement and build on the findings of its scoping study project carried out across UK universities such as UCL and QMUL. While the scoping study focused on community-based placements occurring as credit-bearing activities within the curriculum, the follow-on project will … |
Community-based placements in higher education (scoping study)Funding source: UCL Centre for Engineering EducationStart: 30-01-2023 / End: 31-07-2023 Community-based placements in engineering education have the potential to generate benefits for students, universities and communities alike and are increasingly being formally included into the curriculum, particularly at universities like UCL and QMUL that have campuses within underrepresented geographical areas in East London. This co-creational project (in conjunction with student … |
Other Research Projects
University-industry partnerships in engineering educationOver the last few decades, a wide range of works have featured case studies documenting successful pedagogic collaborations in the form of university-industry partnerships in the field of engineering education. In light of this, this project is aimed at conducting a systematic literature review of these studies centred around five … |
The mathematics of playground swingingThis undergraduate student project involves modelling a playground swing system as an elaborated pendulum to investigate the mechanism of frequently adopted swing pumping strategies that are used to increase the amplitude of swinging through the input of additional energy into the system. An example of this, is the standing pumping … |
Investigating the dynamics of a yo-yoThis undergraduate student project involves mathematically modelling the motion of a yo-yo using a combination of theoretical, computational and experimental approaches to investigate the dynamics of various spinning maneuverers. In addition to the standard gravity-induced vertical upward and downward motion of the yo-yo, it is also possible to model the … |
Embedding ethics and sustainability in mathematics coursesFor the last 20 years it has become increasingly obvious, and increasingly pressing, that mathematicians should be taught some ethical and sustainability awareness so as to realise the impact of their work. This extends even to those more highly trained, ranging from graduate students to academic staff. But what should we … |
Diversifying the curriculum through community-based learning and teachingCommunity-based learning and teaching in higher education, and other versions of it such as service learning, are now part of many syllabi worldwide. Diversification of the curriculum in this way can allow students to be exposed to different groups of people as well as develop a greater sense of confidence, … |
Co-creating a Python toolkit to develop students’ programming proficiencyIn response to student feedback from previous runs of the first-year undergraduate SEMS mathematics module, Dr. Rehan Shah, in conjunction with three former students (Mr Muhie Sultan Faisal Al Haimus, Mr Yash Vaghela and Mr Ilanthiraiyan Sivagnanamoorthy) from his modules, have co-created a Python Common… |