WMG News - Latest news from WMG

Programmes at WMG have been supporting the development of Lightweight Vehicle Technologies, reviewing the introduction of new grades of aluminium and high strength steel materials within the vehicle structure. The Carbon rating of vehicles is now of critical importance and the assembly process cannot be excluded from this evaluation indefinitely. Evaluation of any new process needs to assess power consumption and environmental impact, as it may not be long before the legislation on CO2 emissions will take into account the manufacturing process. One of the emergent technologies we have been developing with industrial partners is Remote Fibre Laser Welding (RFLW) and the benefits that can bring.

The National B2B Centre, which is based in WMG at the University of Warwick has won Best Institute of Business Consulting Regional Practice of the Year. The achievement of this award recognised the shared promotion of best practice in business support for local enterprise in the West Midlands.

The University of Warwick's International Digital Laboratory has won two Coventry City Council design awards, Sustainable Design and The Peoples’ Choice for New Buildings.

Sir Roy McNulty, Chair of Advantage West Midlands was welcomed to WMG by Professor Lord Bhattacharyya, Director of WMG on Wednesday 16^th December.

Tours of the International Digital Lab and International Manufacturing Centre focused on the quality research that is undertaken by WMG and how this benefits regional companies.

Within the International Digital Lab, Sir Roy met with Dr Mark Swift from the Knowledge Exhange Team who works with SMEs within the region, Prof Darek Ceglarek highlighting research in healthcare and was shown how a car can heal itself by Ross McMurran.

During the visit to the International Manufacturing Centre, Sir Roy had the opportunity to test the vehicle simulator under the watchful eye of Prof Paul Jennings, tour the new Premium Vehicle Customer Interface Technologies Centre of Excellence with Dr Mark Williams and view new technologies in laser welding being led by Prof Ken Young.

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The Chinese Ambassador has seen for herself how leading-edge manufacturing in Coventry and Warwickshire is beating the economic downturn.

Madam Fu Ying visited Oleo International and WMG (formerly Warwick Manufacturing Group) on Friday (27 November) as part of a nationwide tour organised by UK Trade & Investment to see examples of British manufacturing excellence.

The Mayor of Indianapolis recently visited Warwickshire to see first-hand the manufacturing and engineering excellence here in the county.

Gregory Ballard, Republican Mayor of Indianapolis, USA, came to the UK as a guest of the Motorsport Industry Association (MIA). The MIA asked Warwickshire Investment Partnership, part of Warwickshire County Council, to arrange tours of select organisations in the county, these were Aston Martin and Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG).

The University of Warwick has won Royal recognition for the work of WMG (Warwick Manufacturing Group) with the award of a Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education.

The 21 winners of the eighth round of the Queen's Anniversary Prizes for Higher and Further Education were announced by the Founder and Chairman of the Royal Anniversary Trust, Robin Gill CVO at a special reception at St James's Palace on the evening of Wednesday 18th November.

Senator The Honourable Kim Carr the Australian Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research visited WMG's International Digital Laboratory, Thursday 15th October.

The Minister and his delegation saw a range of demonstrations of new technologies being developed with companies, before meeting with Professor Lord Bhattacharyya. The discussions concentrated on how WMG had developed with such success its collaborative research programme with industry, post-experience education for companies, how the impact of research can best be measured, and the benefits of international collaboration.

Siôn Simon MP visited WMG's International Digital Laboratory in September. The Minister for Creative Industries at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport was welcomed by Professor Lord Bhattacharyya, Director of WMG, and toured the Digital Lab meeting Professor Sadie Creese, Director of e-Security, and Professor Lucy Hooberman, Director Digital Media and Innovation.

A new study by a University of Warwick researcher has demonstrated that researchers trying to model a range of processes could use the power and capabilities of a particular XBox chip as a much cheaper alternative to other forms of parallel processing hardware.

Dr Simon Scarle, a researcher at the University of Warwick’s International Digital Laboratory (WMG), wished to model how electrical excitations in the heart moved around damaged cardiac cells in order to investigate or even predict cardiac arrhythmias (abnormal electrical activity in the heart which can lead to a heart attack). To conduct these simulations using traditional CPU based processing one would normally need to book time on a dedicated parallel processing computer or spend thousands on a parallel network of PCs.