Launching this week for the summer of 2020; an exciting new 8 week long research internship program, run by the Department of Statistics. Projects across the fields of Statistics, Probability and AI aimed at giving successful applicants an ideal introduction to a career in research.

Candidates will be guided by an academic supervisor and they will also have the opportunity to participate in weekly cohort events. More information, including details of how to apply, can be found at http://warwick.ac.uk/stats-interns. DEADLINE for applications is 28 February, 2020.

On 10 December the European Research Council (ERC) announced the recipients of its latest Consolidator Grant competition: 301 top scientists and scholars across Europe. Funding for these researchers, part of the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, is worth in total €600 million. With this support, the new grantees will have a chance to build up their teams and have far-reaching impact.

Dr Mika Vesterinen from the Elementary Particle Physics group has been awarded over €1.8 million for a project to advance our knowledge of the fundamental physical forces of nature, using one of the particle detectors at the CERN facility. He said: “The Standard Model makes several precise predictions that are yet to be matched by experimental measurements of the same precision. The ERC funding allows me to build a team of experts that will confront this problem with innovative high-precision analyses of data from the LHCb experiment at CERN.

“A significant disagreement between our measurements and the predictions would indicate new physics beyond the Standard Model, which is the holy grail of particle physics.”

The School of Life Sciences is proud to announce that it has been awarded another 5 years of Royal Society of Biology (RSB) advanced accreditation for its 4 year integrated Masters (MBio) degrees. Our new Neuroscience degree has gained interim accreditation which should be awarded full advanced accreditation upon graduation of the first cohort.

Advanced Degree Accreditation by the Society recognises academic excellence in the biosciences, and highlights degrees that educate the research and development leaders and innovators of the future. The Advanced Accreditation criteria require evidence that graduates from the programme meet defined sets of learning outcomes, including gaining a substantial period of research experience.

Graduates from these programmes will receive one year of free membership to the RSB at Associate level. They can also apply for membership of the RSB at member (MRSB) level after two years of practice rather than the usual three years, due to the significant research experience gained.

The RSB is the leading professional body for the biological sciences in the UK. It represents over 17,000 biologists from all areas of the life sciences, as well as over 100 organisations which make up the diverse landscape of biology in the UK and overseas. It offers members unique opportunities to engage with the life sciences and share their passion for biology.

Royal Academy of Engineering Fellowship awarded to Dr Wei He.

The ability to reuse high numbers of Electric Vehicle Lithium Ion batteries for domestic and industrial use is becoming a reality for Nissan thanks to a new grading system developed by researchers at WMG, University of Warwick.

Once EV batteries have fulfilled their life-span for automotive applications, they are usually recycled by the manufacturer. However many automotive Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries have enough life left in them after the car is scrapped for ‘second-life’ uses both domestically and industrially.

To do this, it is necessary to “grade” the used batteries – identifying those suitable for use as spare parts, those suitable for “second life”, and those suitable for recycling of materials. This grading process is traditionally a long and expensive process.

Car company Nissan were keen to explore ways to make a much faster grading process for their used Li-ion batteries from the Nissan LEAF – allowing re-use of old battery packs or modules instead of disposing or recycling them.

They were challenged to demonstrate 1MWh of energy storage by the end of 2019.

Part-funded by BEIS (Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) the ‘UK Energy Storage Laboratory’ project was launched, where 50 Nissan LEAF batteries were used to develop the existing grading process led by Nissan, WMG at the University of Warwick, AMETEK and Element Energy.

WMG’s battery technology experts in the Energy Innovation Centre developed a safe, robust and fast methodology for used automotive Lithium-ion batteries, at pack level. This methodology, which was initially developed in WMG, was successfully transferred to a pilot second-life facility, where the target of 1MWh of second-life energy storage was achieved.

In addition, the team at WMG developed ways of grading modules – the sub-components of battery packs in as little as 3 minutes – a process which previously took over 3 hours.

Graded second-life battery packs can provide reliable and convenient energy storage options to a range of customers: from electric roaming products – providing electricity for customers on the move, to home storage products – enabling customers with solar panels to store their energy generated. More crucially, the packs can be used for storage allowing increased intermittent renewable energy sources on the grid, without putting security of supply at risk.

Professor David Greenwood from WMG, University of Warwick comments:

“Automotive batteries deliver some great environmental benefits, but they consume a lot of resources in doing so. Opening up a second life for batteries improves both the environmental and the economic value we draw from those resources before they need recycling. I’m delighted that by working with the partners in this project, we’ve been able to make it much easier to access those second life applications.”

Business and Climate Change Minister, Lord Ian Duncan, said:

“It’s great to hear that the University of Warwick and Nissan are collaborating in pursuit of a greener, cleaner future. Reusing the batteries from electric cars could provide a valuable contribution to the UK’s green revolution - helping us lead more efficient and smarter lives as we end our contribution to climate change by 2050.

“We’ve part-funded this project to help give manufacturers more options than recycling – meaning a battery that helped a driver get from A to B could then be used to help store energy used to power a home.”

Ametek developed specialist equipment, and worked with WMG to embed the algorithms developed into a robust and industrialised machine that can be used by Nissan and other companies to grade second life batteries.

Andrew Williams, AMETEK Advanced Measurement Technology Business Unit Manager comments:

“The algorithm was developed with assistance from AMETEK EIS analyzers. We are currently implementing the algorithm in our new family of Solartron Analytical Battery Analyzer products, including our flagship SI-9300R model, which we expect will reduce market barriers for second life applications.”

The novel process is now being trialled for grading of battery modules at the second-life pilot facility, through these two processes, Nissan hopes to be able to re-use the vast majority of packs currently assembled in EVs in Europe.

Francisco Carranza, Managing Director from Nissan Energy comments:

“The number of electric vehicle batteries reaching end-of-service is set to increase from thousands to tens of thousands per annum by 2025. These batteries typically retain significant capacity and power delivery capability, and their re-use in so-called ‘second-life’ applications has been proposed as a mean to extend the battery value chain and minimise waste by deferring recycling.”

Project managers Element Energy commented:

“Reconditioning car batteries has to become business as usual - it makes sense environmentally and commercially. This project has proven a scalable process to deploy reconditioning and represents a significant milestone in the UK pathway to net zero emissions.”

For more information on this project, please see the UKESL Public Report at: http://www.element-energy.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/UKESL-Non-technical-Public-Report_2020.pdf

ENDS

21 JANUARY 2020

NOTES TO EDITORS

High-res images available credit to the University of Warwick at:

https://warwick.ac.uk/services/communications/medialibrary/images/january2020/university_of_warwick_and_nissan_011.jpg
Caption: Two engineers with a battery pack at WMG, University of Warwick

https://warwick.ac.uk/services/communications/medialibrary/images/january2020/university_of_warwick_and_nissan_029.jpg
Caption: A battery pack in the lab

https://warwick.ac.uk/services/communications/medialibrary/images/january2020/university_of_warwick_and_nissan_033.jpg
Caption: From left to right: Dr John Harper Senior Development Manager – Ametek, Priya Raju Project Support Officer – WMG University of Warwick, Djovana Dantas Manzi Head Of Operations at Nissan Energy Service (Europe), Dr Maria Tsiamtsouri Research Fellow at WMG Univeristy of Warwick, and Dr Jonathan Sansom Lead Engineer WMG University of Warwick.

https://warwick.ac.uk/services/communications/medialibrary/images/january2020/university_of_warwick_and_nissan_055.jpg
Caption: From left to right: Dr Maria Tsiamtsouri Research Fellow at WMG Univeristy of Warwick, Djovana Dantas Manzi Head Of Operations at Nissan Energy Service (Europe), Dr Jonathan Sansom Lead Engineer WMG University of Warwick and Priya Raju Project Support Officer – WMG University of Warwick.

https://warwick.ac.uk/services/communications/medialibrary/images/january2020/university_of_warwick_and_nissan_058.jpg
Caption: From left to right: Dr John Harper Senior Development Manager – Ametek, Djovana Dantas Manzi Head Of Operations at Nissan Energy Service (Europe) and Dr Jonathan Sansom Lead Engineer WMG University of Warwick.

For further information please contact:

Alice Scott
Media Relations Manager – Science
University of Warwick
Tel: +44 (0) 2476 574 255 or +44 (0) 7920 531 221
E-mail: alice.j.scott@warwick.ac.uk

We are sorry to report that Professor Elmer Rees, from the first cohort of PhD students in Warwick, died on 4th October 2019.

Professor Matthew Gibson from the Department of Chemistry and Warwick Medical School has received €150,000 to develop methods to store and transport cells used in toxicity testing.

Each year, the Web of Science Group identifies the world’s most influential researchers. The select few who have been most frequently cited by their peers over the last decade. In 2019, fewer than 6,300, or 0.1%, of the world’s researchers, across 21 research fields, have earned this exclusive distinction.

Professor Dieter Wolke is among this elite group recognized for his exceptional research influence, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year (Cross-Field) in Web of Science.

Video: What it means to be a Highly Cited Researcher ➞