WMG News - Latest news from WMG

Phones and tablet computers are to be part of a new highly personalised heating and energy economy system thanks to an idea by Midlands company JSJS Designs Ltd, WMG and the Estates Office at the University of Warwick which has just won £495,000 in support from the UK’s innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board.

JSJS Designs Ltd and WMG will use the funding to work with The University of Warwick’s Estates Office to retrofit an innovative wireless Heating Micro-management System (HMS) to the University’s Social Sciences building. The novel system hands control over to both the building management team and the building’s occupants who will individually be able to use their smart phones and tablet computers to control heating at a room-by-room level.

The project will allow JSJS Ltd to test this technology on a large complex building and help them scale up the application of a technology that in the past has only be available to much smaller and simpler domestic properties.

WMG at the University of Warwick has appointed two new Professors who will be taking up key roles and leading research in the fields of E-Health Innovation and Operations and Supply Chain Strategy.

Professor Jan Godsell, a specialist in supply chain management, will be Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Strategy within WMG from the 1^st October and Professor Theo Arvanitis will be joining WMG in November to lead E-Health Innovation as part of the Institute of Digital Healthcare.

Professor Lord Bhattacharyya welcomed a delegation from UPNM to WMG.

Meeting with Professor Lord Bhattacharyya they discussed the success of WMG and the wider business and industry landscape. The delegation was also particularly interested to talk about the cyber security programme after the announcement that the Msc in Cyber Security will be delivered by WMG in collaboration with UPNM in 2015.

Earlier this month a three party MOU was signed between WMG, University of Warwick, DRB HICOM and UPNM in, Kuala Lumpuir, Malaysia, which is the first step towards a tripartite arrangement for research and academic collaboration.

Professor Christopher James, Professor of Healthcare Technologies and Director of the Institute of Digital Healthcare at WMG, University of Warwick, has been awarded the Sir Monty Finniston Award for Achievement, one of the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) Achievement Awards.

The Achievement Awards, which recognise some of the world’s top engineering talent, acknowledge individuals who have made an exceptional contribution to the advancement of science, engineering and technology in any sector, either through research and development in their respective technical field or through their leadership of an enterprise.

Professor James is a biomedical engineer and his research activity centers on the development of biomedical signal and pattern processing techniques, as well as the use of technological innovations, for use in advancing healthcare and promoting wellbeing. Professor James has published over 150 papers in neural engineering in varied biomedical engineering journals and refereed conferences. He is also Director of the Institute of Digital Healthcare, a collaboration between WMG, Warwick Medical School and NHS West Midlands with the aim of improving people's health and wellbeing through the use of innovative digital technologies in healthcare design and delivery.

Professor Christopher James, Director of the Institute of Digital Healthcare at WMG, has been named as Editor in Chief of IET's new journal, Healthcare Technology Letters.

The Journal’s scope will be interdisciplinary, primarily focusing on the latest advances in engineering and computer and information science for healthcare. It will be most relevant to biomedical engineers and electrical engineers and computer scientists working in the biomedical field from academia and industry. This journal may also be of interest to clinical researchers and those working in medical fields seeking engineering solutions to healthcare challenges.

The Royal Society visited WMG at the University of Warwick today (23 September) to hold a consultation seminar with subject experts from WMG and Jaguar Land Rover on the theme of promoting greater collaboration between industry and academia.

Professor Anthony Cheetham FRS, Treasurer and Vice-President of the Royal Society, said:

WMG is truly a model for excellence in university-industry partnerships."

The industrial seminar, held in conjunction with Jaguar Land Rover, discussed two main issues of importance: removing barriers to academic-industrial collaboration and developing research challenges which will help to re-energise UK engineering industries.

The seminar produced significant agreement between academic and industrial delegates that the UK has real strengths that it can build on. They praised WMG’s partnership with Jaguar Land Rover, Tata Steel and others, as an outstanding model of how research excellence can be combined with improved industrial competitiveness. The main areas of mutual concern were addressing the current shortage of skilled engineers in UK and the increasing need to attract the brightest and the best into engineering at all levels.

A 19-year old electric racing car engineer whose design triumphed in the national Greenpower race finals is using WMG’s 3D scanning expertise to build an even faster version for next year’s competition.

The Greenpower Electric Car challenge – sponsored by Siemens – supports the teaching and learning of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) at all levels of education, from primary schools through to universities. Teams of students design, build, and race single seat electric cars and compete in regional heats up and down the UK culminating in the nation finals held every year at the famous Goodwood Motor Racing Circuit.

Last year’s national final winner in the Formula 24+ category , which covers car designers between the age of 16 and 25, was Dave Cullimore from Cheltenham, who beat off stiff competition from 21 other teams from all over the UK.

Although many of his rivals made use of computer-assisted design techniques, virtual wind tunnels and the latest lightweight materials such as carbon fibre, Dave triumphed despite a more modest approach.

Chairman and Founder of WMG, Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya, has been recognised by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bhubaneswar with an honorary award which was presented to him earlier this month.

Professor Lord Bhattacharyya was conferred with the degree of D.Sc. (Honoris Causa) during the 2^nd Convocation of the Institute held on 7^th September.

The award was presented to him by the Honorable President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee, who also delivered the Convocation Address at the ceremony.

Bank card and other plastic product manufacturers will have access to a powerful new technology that will help the fight against counterfeiting of their products and which can provide an additional security feature for credit cards, thanks to new technology devised by researchers at WMG at the University of Warwick.

The technology will allow manufacturers to rapidly embed individual, unique and hidden individual pieces of data in each item made in large production runs of plastic products or credit cards as they are being created by injection moulding.

The researchers, led by WMG Professor Gordon Smith at the University of Warwick have just applied for patents to protect the new technology which uses the influence of a particular external force that exploits the polarity of particles and fluids, to very selectively influence those particles or a polymer fluid as a product is formed by injection moulding.

This week, WMG was pleased to welcome Mme Luo Ping, Deputy Director General of Anhui Provincial Department of Science and Technology in China.

Academic Director, Professor Richard Dashwood, welcomed Mme Luo and her party to WMG’s International Manufacturing Centre. Professor Dashwood gave the group an introductory presentation and update on the High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult along with Dr Nick Mallinson (Programme Manager of WMG’s HVM Catapult). The visitors also undertook a tour of WMG’s research facilities.