Glowing Together: Celebrating 10 Years of the Research Impact Management Office

An evening of celebration for RIMO’s decade of support for Imperial-led research and their vibrant exhibition, ‘Making Research Glow’

Making Research Glow  

The Research Impact Management Office, fondly referred to as ‘RIMO’, recently reached a big milestone: supporting large-scale, international research projects led by Imperial College London for over a decade. True to RIMO’s creative nature, the celebration was anything but ordinary.  

If RIMO were a ‘normal’ team, we might’ve marked the celebration with a cake or a team lunch. But RIMO isn’t a normal team; we like to do things our own way. To mark the occasion, we collaborated with artist, 72Kilos, to bring our portfolio of projects to life through his colourful and wonderful vignettes in an exhibition, ‘Making Research Glow’.   

“London hosted my vignettes for the first time in the exhibition 'Making Research Glow'. It has been months of diving, running and flying into 5 groundbreaking scientific projects led by Imperial researchers. Working with the teams who approach science with patience, curiosity and a drive to find solutions to the big challenges in society has been an amazing. I’m proud to have been part of this BIG project and the very people who made it all possible. More science, please!” - Óscar Alonso aka 72kilos

Take a journey with RIMO and discover our story and learn more about the artworks in the exhibition here.

An Evening to Remember

On Wednesday evening, we hosted a reception to celebrate the exhibition and to thank those who’ve walked alongside us on this journey: researchers, collaborators and friends. The space came alive with conversation and laughter, punctuated by moments of recognition as guests discovered their work depicted in the vibrant vignettes.  

Dr Marta Archanco, Head of RIMO, commented on the evening: 

"It was a fantastic opportunity to be at the heart of Imperial today with colleagues and friends who have been part of our journey. We are celebrating not only 10 years of RIMO but the fantastic work that other professional services working alongside academics do too. Impactful research can't happen without all these parts, and we wanted to use this opportunity to recognise the often not recognised support services.

What better way to mark this moment than with an art-science collaboration? My career has consistently involved bridging art and science. Art helps communicate and can reach places that science on its own cannot. There were lots of happy faces around us on Wednesday evening, and I can't think of a better way to celebrate this milestone."

Over 40 people came to join the celebrations on Wednesday, and we were touched to have representation from each of our projects: DIAMONDS, CoDiet, SONICOM and MUSICC.

Professor Aubrey Cunnington from the DIAMONDS project shared heartfelt praise of our team, '“It would be daunting, almost impossible, to start applying for one of these grants without RIMO. Your team allow us to focus on the research by taking on all the tricky, bureaucratic bits of the project”.  

A highlight of the evening was a fireside chat between Marta Archanco and Stephen Webster from the Good Science Project (and former Director of the Science Communication Unit at Imperial). Together, they reflected on what it means to make science impactful beyond traditional academia, the joy of bringing humanity into management, and the power that emerges at the intersection of art and science.  

‘It was a lovely evening! When you work with RIMO you have all the pleasures of collaboration, productive work and secure organisation. And then there is the little bit extra we have come to expect from Marta and her team: good stories; plenty of art; and imagination as an organising principle of good science. Put it another way: this is high-impact science at its best.’ - Stephen Webster, Director of the Good Science Project

The Next Decade 

As we move into the next chapter, we’re excited to keep growing, learning, and glowing, together with the incredible network that has shaped our first decade.  

To learn more about RIMO’s work and how to collaborate with us, click here.