In June, we hosted a series of Insight into Engineering workshops for children from schools across Coventry and Warwickshire.

The children all took part in practical workshop activities including using Lego to create vehicles. Afterwards our staff, along with engineers from Jaguar Land Rover explained more about the career choices they had made and the variety of opportunities that a career in STEM can lead to. Dr Emma Rushforth also presented ‘Robots for Real’ exploring the use of robots in society.

The older children then enjoyed a tour of our engineering hall and Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) showcase area, whilst the primary school pupils took the campus sculpture trail investigating the materials and techniques used to create them.

Over the summer, our Outreach team took part in the Warwick Family Day organised by our colleagues at Warwick Arts Centre. The University hosted activities across campus and this year our team but put on a series of fun activities too.

This year’s theme was the Great Outdoors, and the children had a great time making pond slime, creating paper rockets, building Lego robots and using our virtual reality apparatus.

More than 3,500 families visited campus, and our team did a fantastic job helping to keep them all entertained. Our activities received some fantastic feedback including:

“WMG was the best bit” and “we loved the cricketers and all the stuff at WMG”.

It was a great day and we’re looking forward to playing our part again next year.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, the RT Hon Philip Hammond MP has announced today (Friday 10^th August 2018) that WMG, at the University of Warwick, has been awarded £100m in Government funding for WMG’s work in the High Value Manufacturing Catapult.

It forms part of a £780 million announcement of which £270.9 million has been awarded to the West Midlands (to WMG and MTC for their work in the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, and the Energy Systems Catapult in Birmingham).

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Sue Parr as WMG’s new Director of Apprenticeships.

Sue joined WMG in December 2015 as a Business Development Director, tasked with developing our Professional and Executive Programmes, following 12 years at the Open University where she was Director of Executive Education.

Following the huge success of our Applied Engineering and Dyson degree programmes we are now extending our Degree Apprenticeship provision across engineering, digital, cyber security and healthcare.

Our Degree Apprenticeship programmes complement our existing academic and professional courses and enable us to contribute to regional and national employment needs and to enhance our students’ employability and skills. Crucially, they help widen access and participation by introducing alternative entry criteria, new flexible modes of study and new models of delivery.

Tipton-based darkroom specialists Paterson Photographic Ltd have added daylight to darkness in their leading studio and theatre lighting equipment, thanks to LED technology support from WMG at the University of Warwick.

Having developed a global reputation for the quality of their darkroom equipment, they wanted to add to their product offering and re-enter the studio lighting market with a comprehensive range of Continuous Lighting units manufactured in their own UK factory.

Creating a studio lighting range that used LEDs with a colour temperature of 6000K (daylight) rather than the most common methods using fluorescent lighting would provide Paterson Photographic with a technological leap in their products.

The SME (Small and Medium Sized Enterprises) support team at WMG at the University of Warwick provided technical and research support allowing the company to launch the first batch of LED-based daylight products with bespoke coloured filters at the 2018 Photography Show at Birmingham’s NEC. The new products are expected to generate sales in six figures for Paterson over the next year.

Dr Michael Mortenson’s research paper ‘Operational research from Taylorism to Terabytes: A research agenda for the analytics age’, has been awarded the Euro Award for the Best European Journal of Operational Research (EJOR) paper 2018, in the Review category.

EJOR publishes high quality, original papers that contribute to the methodology of operational research (OR) and to the practice of decision-making. It is widely considered to be the top European journal and within the top three worldwide, in this specific area.

Dr Mortenson is a Senior Teaching Fellow on our e-Business Management MSc programme, his paper identified a significant lack of research into analytics in operational research orientated publications charting the history of operational research, analytics and a range of related disciplines. His work also paves the way for future research combining key themes in analytics and operational research. The full paper can be found here

Dr Mortenson was presented with his award at the European Conference on Operational Research (EURO) in July.

Jesse Norman MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Department for Transport, visited WMG today (Monday 30^th July 2018) to launch the Government’s “Call for Evidence on the Future of Mobility”. He announced six Innovate UK funded autonomous vehicle research projects, saying:

“We are beginning to experience profound change in how we move people, goods and services around the UK’s cities, towns and countryside. The Future of Mobility Grand Challenge – part of the Government’s Industrial Strategy - aims to capitalise on the opportunities presented by these changes to help reduce emissions, improve safety and wellbeing and place the UK at the forefront of global transport innovation. The Call for Evidence will help inform this programme, and seeks views from a range of audiences right across the country.”

Two of the six research projects he announced involve WMG, at the University of Warwick, with a total of £4.1m in research funding from Innovate UK

Professor Lord Bhattacharyya was pleased to welcome a delegation from Tata Sons to WMG recently.

The delegation led by Mr Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Tata Sons were given a tour of the National Automotive Innovation Centre (NAIC). The Centre, which is a long-term commitment between Jaguar Land Rover, Tata Motors European Technical Centre, WMG and the University of Warwick, is a unique resource and the first of its kind in Europe, providing an environment to foster collaboration, cohesion and sharing knowledge, combining automotive expertise nationally and internationally.

The visitors were also shown our state-of-the-art 3xD Simulator for Intelligent Vehicles where experts explained more about Midlands Future Mobility, a £25m project led by WMG which will see roads in Coventry and Birmingham become the UK testbed for developing the next generation connected and autonomous vehicles.

Finally, Mr Chandrasekaran and his colleagues were given a tour of our Energy Innovation Centre, which is going through significant expansion, and will see WMG to continue to provide a unique facility for industry and academia to develop innovative energy storage technology.

Mr Chandrasekaran and his colleagues was very interested to see for themselves some of the WMG projects and commented on the quality of research and innovative approach to R&D.

Dr Antony Allen, from our Energy and Electrical Group, delivered STEM workshops for 9-11 year olds, at two Staffordshire Primary Schools in June.

Firstly, Dr Allen visited Class 3 at The Howard School, Elford, followed by Class 4 at St Mary’s School, Colton.

Each workshop began with the children constructing paper rockets launched by air pressure by blowing through a drinking straw. They quickly realised that losing air pressure and not having a well-designed rocket are key factors hindering the ability to fly. After being introduced to the concept of forces and Newton’s three laws of motion they were able to explain this in a more technical way.

Next, the children considered the differences between rocket and aeroplane wings, before making a paper dart and experimenting with wing profiles’, they also added better propulsion by catapulting the planes using rubber bands!

In the afternoon, using their new skills, they designed and constructed a 3D paper rocket launched by air from stomping on a plastic drinks bottle. Impressively, several rockets reached heights greater than the school roof! Pupils experimented by changing the launch angle to maximise either their altitude or distance. In some cases designs were modified to balance directional disturbances and make the rockets spin during flight.

The pupils reflected on their engineering experience throughout the day and were further inspired when Dr Allen talked about Helen Sharman and how her background in science and languages were key in enabling her to become the first ever British astronaut.

The pupils loved the fun hands-on workshops, and Dr Allen has already been invited back to both schools to deliver more STEM activities.

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.