(Left to right) Dr Mark Ashton, Dr Jessica Gallagher, Mr Sean Fielding, Prof Tim Dunne, Prof Mark Goodwin, Prof Peter Høj, Prof Sir Steve Smith, Mr Rongyu Li, Ms Roz Pardee, Prof Stephan Riek

QUEX International Symposium, 25-26 July 2019 | University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.

The 2019 QUEX Symposium took place at the University of Queensland in Brisbane on 25 and 26 July, with over 30 staff and students attending from Exeter.  The Exeter group was led by the Vice Chancellor and DVC Mark Goodwin.

Themed around fostering global sustainability and wellbeing, this was a valuable opportunity for those involved in the QUEX virtual institute to come together, share knowledge and hear about the progress of QUEX-funded projects. Sessions for each of the three QUEX themes brought our academics, researchers, students and professional services staff together to discuss collaborative ideas and explore approaches and solutions to global and local challenges.

The Symposium programme provides details of the presentations, for which the audience included guests from industry and other universities. The Exeter visitors maximised the value of the trip through attending the many other events running alongside the Symposium. These included a commercialisation workshop, Sustainable Mining conference, KPMG/QUEX event, Professional Services meetings, programme for PGR students and research group meetings.

This symposium was also an opportunity to celebrate the strong relationship that exists between our two institutions. Since jointly launching the QUEX Institute a little over two years ago, our collaboration has progressed significantly. We have succeeded in connecting some of the world’s leading experts and have accelerated joint research through a range of initiatives and notably through the development of our joint research PhD Programme. While still relatively early days, these new initiatives are already reporting some very exciting outcomes, including several onwards funding and collaboration success stories, a growing portfolio of publications (including articles in Nature Genetics and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS)), and a wide range of public disseminations across a range of media outlets and online platforms.

The excellent progress made by the QUEX Institute will enable us to continue moving forward together and is an important part of achieving the aims of our Global Strategy. The University of Exeter will host the QUEX International Symposium 2020.  For further information regarding the QUEX Institute please visit our QUEX Institute website.

Date: 12 June 2019