WMG Research Fellow, Sid-Ali Amamra, has been selected to present his work at the prestigious STEM for BRITAIN event on Wednesday 13^th March.

The event takes place at Westminster with around 100 MPs in attendance to hear more about the current science, engineering and mathematics research by early-stage and early-career researchers in the UK.

Sid-Ali works within WMG’s Intelligent Vehicles research team focusing on the advanced energy management systems for electrical networks and power systems integrating plug-in electric vehicle with Li-ion battery technologies.

Sid-Ali’s poster on research about the Vehicle-To-Grid (V2G) technology supervision using internet of things (IoT) will be judged against dozens of other scientists’ research in the only national competition of its kind. He was shortlisted from hundreds of applicants to appear in Parliament.

Sid-Ali explains: “I feel happy to present WMG at this event. It is a fantastic opportunity for me to communicate my research to an interesting audience and to present the high impact of my project for helping government to reach the net-zero emissions UK’s target in near future.

“It gives me a chance to go to Parliament and be in the company of MPs, policymakers and key figures, as well as others researchers from around the country. At STEM for BRITAIN, I want to explain the promising results of using V2G technology to help achieve the UK’s zero emission target.”

Stephen Metcalfe MP, Chairman of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, said:

“This annual competition is an important date in the parliamentary calendar because it gives MPs an opportunity to speak to a wide range of the country’s best young researchers.

“These early career engineers, mathematicians and scientists are the architects of our future and STEM for BRITAIN is politicians’ best opportunity to meet them and understand their work.”

Sid-Ali’s research has been entered into the engineering session of the competition, which will end in a gold, silver and bronze prize-giving ceremony.

Judged by leading academics, the gold medalist receives £2,000, while silver and bronze receive £1,250 and £750 respectively.

The Parliamentary and Scientific Committee runs the event in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Biology, The Physiological Society and the Council for the Mathematical Sciences, with financial support from the Clay Mathematics Institute, United Kingdom Research and Innovation, WMG, Society of Chemical Industry, the Nutrition Society, Institute of Biomedical Science, the Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research and the Comino Foundation.

WMG is proud to be sponsoring the Engineering section for the third year.

Find out more about STEM for Britain here.

Primary school children from three TSSMAT (The Small Schools Multi-Academy Trust) schools from Staffordshire will be building and racing their own Greenpower Formula Goblin electric cars with support from WMG at the University of Warwick. All three schools will compete at a national Greenpower race-day event in June.

Children in years 5 and 6 at The Howard Primary School in Elford and St Mary’s CofE Primary in Colton will join pupils at The Richard Crosse School in Kings Bromley in this challenge, building on the successful launch of the initiative at Richard Crosse in 2018.

The children, aged 9-11, began assembling their cars from a kit of parts received back in January. When the kit is complete they will design and construct bespoke bodywork for their cars before moving on to driver training in the school playgrounds to ensure they are fully prepared for race day in the summer term.

The project embodies key practical engineering skills, working together as a team, and writing up their progress in their individual project portfolios to earn Greenpower STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) awards from the AQA examination board.

Each school team also produces regular video diary updates to share their progress online with peers, siblings, parents and the wider community. Their Twitter handles are @StMarysRacing, @TheHowardRacing and @RCrosseRacing.

Formula Goblin is one of a series of age-graded motor-racing challenges set up by the Greenpower Education Trust to address the skills gap that is growing in the UK automotive industry. It is designed to engage students with maths, science and design technology, at early age and promoting equality and team working regardless of economic background or gender. The project aims to raise pupils’ awareness and enjoyment of STEM subjects and inspire them to consider STEM careers in their future.

This year TSSMAT wanted to expand the project across more of their schools to create a larger local community of budding young engineers. The project is funded by the UK Advanced Propulsion Centre, a government body established to support and promote the development of next generation automotive technology here in the UK. Direct support for the schools is delivered by WMG at The University of Warwick who are a member of the APC’s higher-education spoke community.

Dr Antony Allen from WMG who will be working closely with the schools comments:

“It’s fantastic to expand this project to two more schools within TSSMAT. One of the best aspects of my role here at WMG is the wonderful experience of working with future engineers of all ages, from my post-graduate Warwick automotive students through to excited year 5 and 6 pupils at our local primary schools. It’s a very rewarding experience for everyone involved”

Executive head teacher of the trust, Mr Paul Lovern, comments:

“I am thrilled that once again, The Small Schools Multi Academy Trust is involved in the Greenpower initiative.

“The children at all three schools have been inspired to take part and develop their engineering skills. This project embraces so many areas of the curriculum and demonstrates a curriculum that is enriching, at its best! I hope that from the ‘green shoots’ that are emerging, the children are inspired to become engineers of the future.

“I look forward to Race Day, however I will have to remain very neutral with regards to who becomes the overall winning school!”

The WMG centre HVM Catapult team attended the esteemed MIA Energy Efficient Motorsport Conference, earlier this month.

The event showcases leading figures from motorsport, automotive and beyond to discuss current and future technology development, and explores the many opportunities for business growth and success.

At the conference, our Professor Dave Greenwood joined other experts for a lively panel discussion entitled 'What's in it for me? Electric Power in Motorsport and Automotive'.

In the evening, the MIA held its prestigious Business Excellence Awards. WMG sponsored the ‘Export Achievement Award,’ with AP Racing crowned much-deserved winners. The AP Racing team were presented with their award by the CEO of our WMG centre HVM Catapult, Archie MacPherson.

You can read more about MIA events here.

Three WMG Professors have now joined the The Alan Turing Institute as Fellows.

Our Professor of Cyber Systems Engineering Carsten Maple, Professor of Data Science, Giovanni Montana, and Professor of Marketing and Service Systems Irene Ng; are now all part of the prestigious line-up of expert Fellows.

The Alan Turing Institute is a national body championing data science and artificial intelligence research. It was created by five founding universities - Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, UCL and the University of Warwick plus the EPSRC, with a further eight new universities – Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Queen Mary University of London, Birmingham, Exeter, Bristol, and Southampton – joining in 2018.

On 11 July, our Dr Antony Allen and students from Richard Crosse Primary School in Staffordshire went to Rockingham Speedway to compete in the Greenpower Formula Goblin event. We first met the children from class five back in January when they won a competition ran by the Advanced Propulsion Centre to become one of eight schools presented with a Greenpower Goblin kit car. Each winning school was then partnered with an APC Spoke, in this case WMG as the Energy Spoke, who provide financial support and mentoring throughout the electric vehicle build along with driver training ahead of race day.

On race day the team competed in six Slaloms, six Sprints and one Grandprix event. They picked up a fantastic four awards: IET Formula Goblin Participation Award; Rockingham Goblins 2018 Slalom: 3^rd place; Rockingham Goblins 2018 Best Presented Team; and Rockingham Goblins 2018 Spirit of Greenpower Award.

The Spirit of Greenpower was awarded in recognition of the way the school have embraced the Greenpower project this year, involving the whole school in the car bodywork design, entering individual and group portfolios of their work, their weekly video-diaries on YouTube, their twitter account, and articles in the village magazine and local district newspaper.

Maria Farrington, a parent of one of the students said ‘I just wish to express my thanks to Dr Allen and the School, for supporting the Rockingham Raceway Project. It was a pleasure to accompany the children today and feel that they also should be congratulated on their behaviour away from school. It was a thoroughly enjoyable outing and an experience the children will remember for a long while’.

Check out the video on their YouTube channel.

Yesterday we, along with our colleagues from the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) welcomed a group of 9 to 11 year olds from Richard Crosse Primary School in Staffordshire.

The students enjoyed a tour of the APC showcase and our engineering hall where they were introduced to the Warwick Racing student team and shown our state-of-the-art 3xD Simulator. They also took part in a number of activities throughout the day, including a steering wheel CAD design session and paper rocket making and launching.

We first met the children, from class five, back in January when they won a competition run by the APC to become one of eight schools presented with a Greenpower Goblin kit car. Each winning school was then partnered with an APC Spoke, in this case WMG as the APC Energy Spoke, who provide financial support and mentoring throughout the electric vehicle build along with driver training ahead of the race.

Construction of their go-kart kit car is now almost complete. The next stage of the project is for the children to race against other teams at Rockingham Speedway in July. We’ll keep you updated on how their race day goes.

Formula Goblin has been set up with help from the Greenpower Education Trust to address the skills gap that is growing in the UK automotive industry by engaging students in engineering at a young age. It is designed to engage students with maths, science and design technology in a fun way, promoting equality regardless of economic background and gender.

The initiative is supported by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council, the APC and the APC Spoke Community, made up of six of the UK’s leading universities each focussing on R&D of key technology areas in the automotive industry.

Notes to editors:

The APC is a £1 billion, 10-year programme to position the UK as a global centre of excellence for low carbon powertrain development and production.

The APC Spokes form a national network to support industry with specialist academic, technological and commercial expertise. The Spokes are designed to provide access to the best expertise and facilities the UK has to offer in key strategic technologies for the automotive industry.

Each of the Spokes is hosted by an organisation with recognised expertise in those key technologies, but the fundamental role of the Spoke is to coordinate a community of common interest. WMG at the University of Warwick is the Electrical Energy Storage Spoke.

The full list of school/Spoke partnerships are:

Advanced Propulsion Centre – Stoke Primary School

• DETC (Loughborough London University) – Curwen Primary School
• Loughborough University – Fairfield Primary Academy
• Newcastle University – Bournmoor Primary School
• Newcastle University – Kings Priory School
• Newcastle University – Northburn Primary School
• Nottingham University – Abbey Road Primary School
• WMG – The Richard Crosse C of E Primary School

Are you a business who could benefit from automating your manufacturing processes?

Breakfast session with our experts: Wednesday 27^th June, 8am to 10am

Our Business Team are holding a breakfast meeting, on Wednesday 27 June, to help businesses prepare and take advantage of the revolution in digital industry.

This session will show how collecting data can give you a greater insight into how to run your machines and operations more effectively, plan maintenance and introduce new processes without scarifying productivity. It will also show how new measurement techniques can give greater in-line data and how computer control has led to an entirely new way to make things.

Three senior figures from Jaguar Land Rover, AstraZeneca, and Associated British Ports will be giving their views on Brexit’s potential impact on Global Supply Chain at a special WMG debate and event at the University of Warwick on Tuesday 8 May 2018.

The confirmed speakers and panel members at the event include:

• Tim Sherwell from AstraZeneca, Regional Supply Director for Europe, and key member of the AstraZeneca Brexit team
• David Leighton from Associated British Ports, Group Head of Corporate Affairs, and a leading player in discussions with government in the UK and Brussels about the UK’s role as a Maritime Nation and the impact of Brexit

Robert Llewellyn hosted TV’s Scrapheap Challenge, starred as one of the crew of the spaceship Red Dwarf, and runs the popular ‘Fully Charged’ YouTube channel about renewable energy.

He spoke yesterday, Monday 19^th March 2018, at WMG, University of Warwick about his passion for renewable energy.

During his event, ‘In Conversation with Robert Llewellyn’, the famous advocate of clean technologies shared his experience of involvement with this field - particularly the move to electric, connected and autonomous vehicles, and how he sees the scale and pace of this technological shift first hand.

Robert also gave his thoughts on how the media covers one of the most transformational changes of our times.

While he was at WMG’s International Manufacturing Centre, he sat in a Tesla Model X - but unlike the other spaceman recently launched into space in a Telsa car, he a had a lot more to say about our clean energy futures.

As well as the Tesla Model X, Nissan Westway were at WMG with the new Leaf, demonstrating the new e-Pedal - and Jaguar Land Rover’s I-Pace completed the line-up of cutting edge electric vehicles on the campus.

WMG at the University of Warwick will be lending a hand to budding young engineers from The Richard Crosse C of E Primary School in Kings Bromley, Staffordshire, in their quest to build and race their very own electric kit car.

Class five at Richard Crosse won a competition run by the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) to become one of eight schools presented with a Greenpower Goblin kit car.

Each winning school is partnered with an APC Spoke - in this case WMG, who will offer guidance and support to the students.

The children, aged 9-11, have been given an electric kit car to design, build and race - guided by their teachers and WMG mentors. Once complete, the children will compete against each other in a regional Greenpower IET Formula Goblin race in summer 2018.

Formula Goblin has been set up with help from the Greenpower Education Trust to address the skills gap that is growing in the UK automotive industry by engaging students in engineering at a young age. It is designed to engage students with maths, science and design technology in a fun way, promoting equality regardless of economic background and gender.