JBA Trust Annual Report 2019-20

In a year that tested everyone’s resilience, JBA Trust was fortunate to have continued support from our sponsors and we were able to continue promoting research, supporting education and sharing knowledge by adapting our approach. We are pleased to be able to share our Trustees Annual Report and the highlights of 2019-20.

We have been learning, along with all our partners, about how to “do” research and knowledge-sharing through lockdowns, social distancing and working from home. Our engagement activities focused on providing online learning resource packs to support home learning whilst our programme of collaborative research continued to deliver outputs, with seven peer-reviewed journal papers published.

Our partners have made huge efforts to adapt and keep projects going; none more so than the graduate researchers we support, who have had to change planned lab work, field visits or physical model applications

Rob Lamb, Director of the JBA Trust, reflected on the year saying,

“The pandemic has caused almost everyone to take an immediate and pressing stake in risk analysis, modelling and data. It has concentrated attention on the connections between health, society, environment, economies and communities. Increasingly, there is a sense of urgency about our relationship with the environment. We need skilled, knowledgeable people across a wide range of scientific, engineering, technical and creative disciplines to tackle environmental challenges of resilience and sustainability, along with recovery from the pandemic.

We are very grateful to the JBA Group companies for their commitment to the JBA Trust, and, in particular, the individuals who have at various times offered and given extra in-kind support privately to help us with our work during a difficult year.”

Looking ahead to the coming year, we are adapting our plans and systems of work in the hope that we may be able to safely re-introduce some in-person engagement activities.

Meanwhile, we will continue to focus on digital content. Covid-19 is causing significant disruption to learning at all levels, which will doubtless have repercussions over the coming years. We will be exploring how we can keep helping students and educators through our digital resources, interactive online events and “virtual” placements.