WMG News - Latest news from WMG

A new interdisciplinary research centre for industrial biotechnology and biorefining was launched at Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) on 21 March. The Warwick Centre for Industrial Biotechnology and Biorefining (WCIBB) builds on existing strengths in chemistry, life sciences, engineering and manufacturing.

Industrial biotechnology and bioenergy are key research priorities for funding councils. The centre will establish new links with the growing UK biotechnology sector in biorenewables, bioplastics, and renewable materials for manufacturing.

Research led by WMG at the University of Warwick is creating a physical personal digital repository that will record and hold data on both a person’s digital footprint and the physical patterns of their daily home life.

The repository is owned by the individual (much like money in our banks) and could be used to trade and shape future services and products to individuals.

The Research Councils UK Digital Economy Programme has given £1.2 million to a team of business researchers, economists, computing experts and arts academics from six UK universities (Warwick, Exeter, Nottingham, Cambridge, West of England and Edinburgh) to undertake the two-year study project, which will begin in June 2013.

The digital world will compel companies to provide us all with highly personalised services which will fit exactly with the ways in which we choose to live our lives in the future. This is the conclusion of Professor Irene Ng, Professor of Marketing and Service Systems in her new article for the University of Warwick’s Knowledge Centre.

Professor Ng, Head of Service Systems and Marketing and Director of WMG’s International Institute for Product and Service Innovation (IIPSI), has released the article on ‘Digital Darwinism’ to coincide with the release of her new book on the subject, Value & Worth: Creating New Markets in the Digital Economy.

Prominent businessman and former University of Warwick Pro-Chancellor John Leighfield has been named as the first Chair of Governors at WMG Academy for Young Engineers.

Mr Leighfield worked in the IT industry for many years, serving in high-level positions with Ford Motor Company, British Leyland, AT&T and RM Education. For the University of Warwick he has served as a lay member of the University Council, Pro-Chancellor and Chair of Council.

He will lead the Board of Governors at the WMG Academy, which is due to open in September 2014.

Professor Sridhar Seetharaman has this week taken up the new post of Professor of Low Carbon Materials Technology at WMG.

The new Chair is jointly sponsored by Tata Steel and the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Professor Seetharaman has a wealth of experience in developing ways of working with next-generation steels, including steels whose enhanced strength can help automotive companies meet their obligations to make lighter and more fuel-efficient vehicles.

The appointment of Professor Seetharaman is in line with the market differentiation strategy that Tata Steel is pursuing in Europe’s mature steel markets. A key element of this strategy entails the use of technical innovation, including the development of new products, to help customers achieve their business goals.

This week BCS Coventry held a Posters Evening and research students Simon Davies, Avishek Pal and Abhishek Das from WMG and Chao Chen from Computer Science represented the University of Warwick.

As with previous years, selected students from both universities presented their leading edge research.

Congratulations to Abhishek Das from the Digital Lifecycle Management team, who won the prize for Warwick for his poster on 'Software Architecture and Multidisciplinary Optimisation for Embedding New Production Processes'.

Slide show from event:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/78195623@N03/sets/72157632922273041/show/

The final speakers for the annual TEDxWarwick event have been announced this week, completing the full programme around the theme of Building Bridges.

We are pleased to announce WMG Honorary Fellow, Rick Robinson, is one of the speakers at this year’s event. Dr Rick Robinson is Executive IT Architect at IBM, responsible for the development and delivery of their Smarter Cities solutions. Dr Robinson will speak on the subject of Smarter Stories for Better Cities – how to develop sustainable city systems, such as transportation and water, in rapidly growing economies. Cities around the world are growing at a rate of two people per second; five billion people are expected to be living in cities by 2030; astonishing developments in science and technology such as 3D printing, brain-computer interfaces and predictive analytics offer the opportunity in theory to develop new models of business and city systems that can supply, manage and exchange resources in ways that are more sustainable; and that create localised personal and community value. Dr Robinson works closely with regional and city government organisations to unravel the problems faced by this rapid population growth.

TEDx, an off-shoot of the prestigious global TED event conference, is a programme of local, self-organised events that bring people together to share their experience. TEDxWarwick is organised by a team of 26 students from the University of Warwick, and this year is being led by WMG’s Professor Lucy Hooberman, Professor of Digital Media and Innovation.

Professor Hooberman is bringing her knowledge and expertise, gained from a career within the media industry and at the BBC, to the 2013 student organisers. She describes her role as one of a ‘mentor’ to the team.

This year’s line-up of speakers also includes:

· Kate Cooper – Feeding the City, Feeding the Mind

· Tan Lai Yong – The Broken Bicycle Chain

· Stefan Bon – Nano Materials: The Science of the Small

· Andy Miah – I Scientist: The Art of Future-Gazing

· Gilean McVean – A Thousand Genomes, A Thousand Stories

· Sir Philip Craven – Paralympic Sport: Society’s Great Educator

· Fabian Oefner – When Science Meets Art

….and many more from a range of fields.

Tickets for TEDxWarwick 2013, which takes place on Saturday 9^th March, are now on sale from the TEDxWarwick website: http://www.tedxwarwick.com/2013/

Students from across the University of Warwick have been nominating their 'top tutors' for fabulous feedback and, this week, Dr Ian Tuersley, Principal Teaching Fellow at WMG, has been announced as overall winner for the Faculty of Science.

Other staff from WMG were also successful in the final nomiations, including Graeme Knowles (Principal Teaching Fellow, WMG) who came fourth; all were nominated by their students for delivering excellent feedback.

Students were asked to tell the university about instances or patterns of fabulous feedback that they have received on their work - based on anything from speed of feedback to content or helpfulness. The three staff who topped the Faculty tables at the close of the competition will each be given access to a £1000 fund to support their own personal teaching.

Ian Tuersley commented:

Obviously I am really delighted to have been nominated at all – let alone top the poll in the faculty. I would extend congratulations to all our colleagues who were nominated – the students' comments have demonstrated the wide range of excellent practices that are already being deployed around the University to provide timely, useful advice to students. I'd like to apply the funds to find ways of using online facilities to enhance the feedforward facilities associated with some of my module assignments."

Read more about the comments made by the students in their nominations.

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 took part in the EEF National Manufacturing Conference 2013 in London on the 5th March 2013.

The conference, which featured addresses and debates from an impressive line-up of politicians and manufacturing leaders, focused on the topic of 'The Route to Growth' and looked at the challenges faced by UK manufacturing both today and in the future.

Representatives were available across the full range of WMG's activities, including for our involvement in the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, our work with SMEs at the International Institute for Product and Service Innovation and our Professional and Executive Education Programmes.

Included in the line-up of speakers were Rt. Hon. Ed Balls (Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer), Rt Hon the Lord Heseltine, Jim O'Neill (Chairman, Goldman Sachs Asset Mgmt), Mark Adams (VP, Corporate Planning at Toyota Motors Europe) and Deirdre Fox (Director of Strategic Business Development at Tata Steel). The event was chaired by Krishnan Guru-Murthy, presenter of Channel 4 News.

Updates of the event can be viewed on Twitter #ukmfgconf

More information is available on: http://www.manufacturingconference.co.uk/