WMG at the University of Warwick is building a £2.3m centre to enable the West Midlands’ automotive supply chain to exploit the opportunities offered by lightweight vehicle technologies.

The new Automotive Composites Research Centre will provide local industry with hands-on technical expertise and equipment to develop its manufacturing capability for polymeric composites.

The requirement for lightweight structures will soon become the industry standard as automotive manufacturers seek to reduce emissions over the life-time of their vehicles.

By tapping into these new opportunities, the centre will help create jobs and growth in the West Midlands’ advanced manufacturing and engineering sector.

WMG's Professor Sridhar Seetharaman has been selected as the recipient of the Jerry Silver Award for Best Paper 2013 by the Association for Iron and Steel Technology (AIST) Metallurgy Technology Division. The award is for Professor Seetharaman's work entitled 'Effect of Silicon on Hot Shortness'.

The Jerry Silver Award is presented to the author of a process metallurgy or product applications technical paper judged to be the best of class by the AIST, where one of the authors is a student.

Professor Seetharaman has recently joined WMG as the RAEng / Tata Steel Research Chair in Low Carbon Materials Technologies.

The award will be presented to Professor Seetharaman during the AIST Metallurgy, Processing, Products and Applications Technology Committee Meeting in Canada, later this year.

WMG is very pleased to welcome a number of new academic appointments this month, who will take a leading role in some of our exciting research areas.

Professor Sridhar Seetharaman has joined WMG to take up the Research Chair in Low Carbon Materials Technologies, sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering and Tata Steel. Professor Seetharaman joins us from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he was the POSCO Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Co-Director of Center For Iron and Steel Research. Professor Seetharaman will be leading a new programme in the manufacture and application of advanced steels in low carbon technologies and setting up a new team, within WMG's existing Materials and Manufacturing theme, to work with Tata Steel to address the current international priorities of the low carbon agenda.

Professor Tony McNally has joined WMG to lead our developing research in the area of Nanocomposites. Professor McNally joins from Queen's University Belfast, where he was Associate Professor in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Director of the Polymer Processing Research Centre. The Nanocomposites team, based in WMG's International Institute for Product and Service Innovation, will span WMG's work in Digital Technologies, Materials and Manufacturing.

Dr Claire Dancer has also joined WMG this week to develop WMG's work in Nanocomposites. Dr Dancer joins from the University of Oxford, where she worked as a researcher in the Department of Materials, specifically looking at Manufacturing Methods for Metamaterials.

We also welcome Dr Kwabena Agyaping-Kodua who is joining WMG from the University of Nottingham where he has been Senior Research Fellow in Digital Manufacturing and Systems Engineering at the Precision Manufacturing Centre. As part of WMG's Digital Lifecycle Management team, Dr Agyapong-Kodua will be continuing to develop research activities in the digital manufacturing and systems engineering field, particularly within the remit of high value manufacturing.

WMG have today, Monday 12th of November 2012, announced that Professor Sridhar Seetharaman has been appointed to the Tata Steel and Royal Academy of Engineering joint Chair for research into Low Carbon Materials Technology.

Professor Seetharaman is currently the POSCO Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and Co-Director of Center For Iron and Steel Research, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He gained his undergraduate degree from the Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden) and his PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also spent a year as a research associate at Imperial College in London. He is currently the principal editor of AIST (Association for Iron and Steel Technology Transactions) and he is on the International advisory board of Steel Research International and ISIJ (Iron and Steel Institute of Japan).

WMG's International Institute for Product and Service Innovation is three quarters through its build programme and on schedule as planned. Funded by the European Regional Development Fund and University of Warwick, it is due for completion this summer, with official launch expected for September 2012. IIPSI is WMG’s fifth building and will be dedicated purely for the use of SMEs in the region, highlighting WMG’s continuing dedication to business support and innovation.

Work is soon to begin to build a £5 million home at the University of Warwick for a £12 million programme designed to help Midlands SMEs access some of the world's leading product and service design technology.

The Coleshill office of Willmott Dixon has been chosen to undertake the £5 million project to house the new International Institute for Product and Service Innovation (IIPSI) at WMG at the University of Warwick. The company’s surveyors were on site for the first time this week.

A new £12 million programme has just be announced to help Midlands SMEs access some the world's leading product and service design Technology.

The new International Institute for Product and Service Innovation (IIPSI) at WMG at the University of Warwick, is jointly funded by the European Regional Development Fund and the University of Warwick in a funding partnership brought together by the regional development agency, Advantage West Midlands (AWM).