Pupils from local schools have been taking part in a series of Royal Institution Engineering Masterclasses, hosted and delivered by staff and students from WMG and other Science departments at the University of Warwick.

Last weekend saw the end of the series, which concluded with an official presentation and awards ceremony for the children, attended by teachers and parents, to mark their participation in the series.

Year 9 students from several local schools have been attending regular Saturday morning masterclasses over a period of 6 weeks. The sessions were designed to spark their interest in a wide variety of engineering paths. Topics covered over the series included programming robots, understanding waves, intelligent vehicles and 3D printing.

As part of their support for the new WMG Academy for Young Engineers, engineering company Bosch helped Coventry and Buckinghamshire school children get a taste of the latest engineering technology at WMG at the University of Warwick.

The event, which took place on Tuesday 4 June, aimed to excite the interest of 10 to 12 year olds in a career in engineering – possibly with leading organisations such as Bosch as future potential employers.

The children from Joseph Cash and Coundon Court schools in Coventry and Carrington Junior School in Buckinghamshire got hands on experience with a robot search and rescue device, WMG’s 3D Virtual powerwall, sessions on how mobile phones work, and demonstrations of Additive Layer Manufacturing and Digital Healthcare technology.

WMG is pleased to welcome Professor Peter Halley to visit the department in June. Professor Halley is an internationally-recognised leader in the field of starch-based biopolymers and bio-nanocomposites, based at the University of Queensland in Australia.

Professor Halley will be visiting Professor Tony McNally and WMG’s Nanocomposites research team during his visit and will be giving a seminar, which all Warwick staff and students are invited to attend.

Professor Halley’s seminar, entitled ‘Translational Polymer Research for Sustainable Polymers’, will be taking place on Thursday 13^th June (from 12 noon) in WMG’s International Digital Laboratory.

Researchers at the University of Warwick have been awarded £1.1 million to develop the statistics needed to pool the vast quantities of data generated by brain scans.

The University has also been awarded £500,000 to improve quality control in 3D printing.

Both projects are joint between the Department of Statistics and WMG, exploiting the unique strengths of each group.

Dr Greg Gibbons, Head of WMG's Additive Layer Manufacturing group, was featured on BBC's The One Show last night in a piece about the future of 3D printing.

One Show presenter, Marty Jopson, visited WMG's facilities to see the range of work that is currently taking place and the number of different sectors that are are already benefitting from the technology.

The full piece on The One Show can be viewed on BBC iPlayer for the next 7 days:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01rjzcc/The_One_Show_27_03_2013/?t=31m46s 

Pupils from North Leamington School in Warwickshire have made it through to the national finals of the F1 in Schools competition for the second year running.

The team of six students spent six months designing and building a model Formula One car, which they raced at the regional competition at Aston University, finishing in second place (missing out on fastest car by 0.005 seconds!) The team also won the trophy for Best Engineered Car, sponsored by Jaguar Land Rover.

Dr Greg Gibbons, Senior Research Fellow at WMG, helped the team to manufacture the suspension and some aerofoil components using WMG's state-of-the-art 3D printing facilities.

The SME team from WMG, at the University of Warwick, have been working with Birmingham-based Barkley Plastics for the past year in a collaboration which has led to increased turnover for Barkley Plastics of over half a million pounds and the creation of three new jobs.

The WMG team are based in The International Institute for Product and Service Innovation (IIPSI), a building funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and University of Warwick that is dedicated for the use of small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) in the West Midlands region. Their in house Innovation Programme aims to encourage SMEs in understanding how new technology, processes and ideas can be implemented to develop new products and services to benefit their business. Companies can access three areas of support: Experience Led Innovation, Polymer Innovation and Digital Innovation.

WMG has an extensive portfolio of equipment and resources, which are available for companies to use for testing and research. The equipment, which can often be difficult for companies to access elsewhere, is coupled with a very broad technical capability available from staff within the WMG. Companies are able to use the equipment in a variety of ways from a fully-funded, free-of-charge basis, through to a facility day-rate charge.

Our facilities are state-of-the-art and, in all but the most exceptional cases, are provided with expert technician support. All are offered at competitive rates, where applicable. Some of our equipment, such as the Vehicle Energy Facility, a Science City Research Alliance funded project, is unique in terms of being available for use within the public arena.

Contact us for a copy of our WMG Equipment and Capability Directory, or for a quotation.

Visit our business pages for more information.

Warwick on Wheels will be at the Gadget Show Live featuring the very latest in engineering research and innovation from Warwick.

The Gadget Show Live 2011 is open to the public from 13 to 17 April 2011 at the NEC Birmingham