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The Rt Hon Lord Kenneth Baker, founder of the University Technical College Programme, visited the WMG Academy for Young Engineers in Coventry last week to meet the first cohort of students.

Accompanied by Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya, Lord Baker enjoyed a tour of the new school on Friday 24 October and spoke to staff and students.

The Academy, in Mitchell Avenue, opened its doors for the first time in September 2014 to 230 Year 10 and Year 12 pupils.

WMG Academy Principal Kate Tague said:

We were delighted to welcome Lord Baker and Lord Bhattacharyya to the WMG Academy for Young Engineers. They spent all morning touring the new building and talking to our staff and students about their experience and technical education. It was a wonderful way to end our first half term with the drivers of new 14-19 technical colleges both nationally and locally.”

Today WMG was pleased to welcome a technology business delegation from the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC). The mission was led by Dr Roy Chung, Co-founder of Techtronic Industries (TTI), Chairman of the HKTDC Innovation and Technology Advisory Committee and an alumnus of WMG.

Meeting with Professor Lord Bhattacharyya, the visitors were interested to understand the breadth of research undertaken by WMG, how the Group develops partnerships with industry and the significant economic benefits of such partnerships.
 
The visitors also had the opportunity to take a tour of WMG’s impressive R&D facilities which included Metrology and Visualisation, Lightweighting and Sustainable Materials research within the International Manufacturing Centre. The group also toured WMG’s new Battery Scale Up facility within the Energy Innovation Centre.

The delegation were particularly keen to hear about WMG’s activities to support the acceleration of SME economic growth through the International Institute for Product and Service Innovation, polymer processing research activity within the International Institute for Nanocomposites Manufacturing, collaborative work with industry networks within e-Business and digital innovation areas and Steels Processing research.

Adit Jaiswal, an intern working with the SME team, was part of the winning team at the Euromoney Hackathon, and was also awarded an idividual prize for his efforts.

The Hackathon, which was held on 4^th and 5^th October, was organised by Euromoney PLC at CCT Venues, London, for which MarkLogic was the main sponsor. Teams had 36 hours to come up with a software tool, for which the winning team would be awarded a cash prize of £4,000..

Every team comprised of four members, each of whom fulfilled the role of either a back-end developer, front-end developer, tester, or a business analyst. Additionally, each team had an employee from Euromoney appointed as the team mentor.

Adit says: "During my discussion with our mentor, I identified two ongoing areas of concern in the company; realising full potential of their API’s, and identifying potential customers. I used both these issues to come up with a web tool which identifies potential customers using social media profiles. Moreover, this enables tremendous opportunities for cross segment and cross market selling.

The application not only won my team the Hackathon competition, but I was also awarded an additional title for the individual displaying “Best Efforts” along with a cash prize of £1000."

Ilke Uysal Unalan a visiting PhD student, who spent the last year working on under the supervision of Dr Chaoying Wan in the International Institute for Nanocomposites Manufacturing (IINM) in WMG has won the Best Poster Award at the 8th ECNP International Conference on Nanostructured Polymers and Nanocomposites held in Dresden, Germany recently.

The work, a collaboration with Dr Stefano Farris of the University of Milan, Italy describes the research ongoing in to the use of graphene in biopolymer nanocomposites for packaging and coating applications.

Margaret Low, Principal Teaching Fellow at WMG, has been awarded a Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence, granted by the University of Warwick to recognise excellent teaching and support for learning across its faculty.

Margaret was selected from a record number of nominations made in 2013/14 and was presented with her award at the University’s 2014 summer graduation ceremony. The award nominations are made by colleagues or students who wish to recognise and celebrate excellence in teaching throughout the nominee’s career at the University.

A key factor in Margaret’s award was her leadership of and contribution to Outreach and student support activities at the University. Margaret is a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) ambassador and Widening Participation officer at WMG and works with colleagues and students across the University’s Faculty of Science to encourage programmes which promote interest in STEM. She founded the highly successful Warwick Technology Volunteers programme for students across the University and continues to provide the academic leadership and coaching required for the student volunteers and their projects in the community.

The Manufacturing Excellence Awards (MX), run by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), were held at the University of Warwick on 30th September. Ahead of the ceremony, Professor Lord Bhattacharyya hosted a drinks reception for the nominees and guests in WMG's International Digital Laboratory.

Guests were welcomed by Lord Bhattacharyya and Colin Brown, Engineering Director at the IMechE, and given private tours of WMG's materials research and Energy Innovation Centre.

MX is a business improvement and awards programme that supports and promotes manufacturers in the UK ensuring industry productivity and worldwide competitiveness within SMEs, Mid-Caps and OEMs. WMG has been a partner of the MX Awards for many years and Professor Lord Bhattacharyya said:

The MX awards show the very best of British manufacturing, and I’m delighted to congratulate every company and every innovator who has had a part to play in the success stories being highlighted this evening"

On Wednesday 24^th September, WMG was pleased to host a visit from Janice Munday CBE, Director of Advanced Manufacturing and Services at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Meeting with Lord Bhattacharyya, Ms Munday was keen to hear how WMG develops partnerships with a range of industrial organisations and the significant economic benefits of such partnerships. She was also interested to understand the breadth of research undertaken by WMG, as the leading university centre for advanced manufacturing, towards development of innovation in manufacturing and the work in low carbon mobility delivered through the WMG centre High Value Manufacturing Catapult.

Ms Munday also had the opportunity to take a tour of WMG’s impressive manufacturing R&D facilities including: the Battery Materials Pilot Line and the Vehicle Energy Facility within the Energy Innovation Centre, materials lightweighting projects in the International Manufacturing Centre, and the new polymer processing facilities within the International Institute for Nanocomposites Manufacturing. Ms Munday also had an opportunity to see the site of the National Automotive Innovation Centre, due to open in 2016.

Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya, Chairman and Founder of WMG, has signed a collaboration agreement with Inner Mongolia University (IMU) during a recent visit to WMG by Professor XiaoChuan Guo, Dean of the School of Economics and Management at IMU. The agreement will enable long-term partnership between WMG and IMU in research and other knowledge transfer activities.

Agreement between WMG and IMU has initially led to an executive training programme, led by Professor Sujit Banerji, which welcomed its first cohort of participants from IMU earlier this year. Other jointly supported activities will include doctoral research, visiting academic exchanges and a Global Forum of Policy and Practice between emerging and developed economies in partnership with Economics and West Ontario University in Canada.

On Saturday 13th September, WMG was pleased to welcome His Excellency Ma Kai, Vice Premier of China, along with a delegation of senior officials including Liu Xiaoming, Chinese Ambassador to the UK, and Sir Sebastian Wood, Britain’s Ambassador to China.

Meeting with Professor Lord Bhattacharyya, the Vice Premier and the Ambassadors were interested to understand more about WMG and how the Group develops partnerships with industry and the significant economic benefits of such partnerships. There were also discussions on current WMG collaborations with China and how these can be further developed.

The delegation was excited to see the breadth of research undertaken at WMG, especially in lightweighting and energy. This was of particular interest to H.E. Ma Kai as this relates to his role leading economic development in China and he was impressed with WMG’s collaborative research projects with industry.

Researchers at WMG, University of Warwick, used 3D scanning and visualisation technology to help Dr Irving Finkel, the world’s foremost expert on ancient Babylonian languages, decipher a 4000-year-old tablet that sheds new light on the iconic biblical tale of Noah's Ark.

‘The Real Noah’s Ark’, shown on Channel 4, Sunday 14th September, documented the astonishing story of this significant find and Dr Finkel’s incredible journey of discovery. The ancient clay tablet, discovered on a mantelpiece in a UK suburban home and handed to the British Museum, is inscribed with the world's oldest language, cuneiform. It tells the story of a Noah-like figure and a great flood, giving detailed instructions on how to build an ark. However, due to its incredible age and some understandable wear and tear, parts of the tablet are difficult to read.

Having spent 20 years translating the tablet Dr Finkel, Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian Scripts, Languages and Cultures at the British Museum, set out to show that the biblical narrative originated from stories that had been embedded in Sumerian and Babylonian society and literature for thousands of years. He also cast new light on the shape of the ark, believing that it was round; closer in style to ancient coracles than the traditional long seafaring boat of popular imagination. After all, it didn’t necessarily need to sail anywhere, it just needed to float until the floodwater retreated.

WMG’s Professor Mark Williams assisted Dr Finkel with his detailed interpretation of the tablet by scanning it using cutting edge X-ray Micro-CT and 3D Laser Scanning technology, and projecting the image onto the UK’s highest resolution 3D power wall. The immersive technology allowed Dr Finkel to view the tablet from all angles and in high definition, revealing previously undecipherable characters and confirming his suspicions that the vessel being described was indeed round.