A group from the University of Warwick, including WMG, have recently presented a workshop at the Mozilla Festival 2013 in London (25th - 27th of October 2013) in collaboration with the University's Technology Volunteers. The workshop 'Connecting With Our World' was based on the Technology Volunteers outreach activities at the University of Warwick and formed part of the festival stream “Making the Web Physical”.

Workshop participants built a range of simple sensors and interfaces, developing programs to respond to events in the physical environment. Creativity and fun were key elements of the session, and towards the end of the workshop, there were demonstrations of the creations.

The aim of the Technology Volunteers outreach activities is to give young people a deeper understanding of the role of hardware and software, while having fun designing and making things. The team made contact with similarly minded people over the course of the weekend, running workshops and attending sessions, and hope to have the opportunity to work with them in the future.

WMG at the University of Warwick was delighted to host the inaugural lecture of Dame Julie Moore.

Professor Lord Bhattacharyya welcomed Dame Julie Moore who has been appointed as an Honorary Professor at the University.

Over a 100 people attended Dame Julie's lecture which focused on the use of IT in healthcare. She specifically showcased how University Hospital Birmingham has improved the quality of its service provision by taking inspiration from the car industry.

The Associate Parliamentary Manufacturing Group visited WMG on Wednesday (21 August) to hold a roundtable discussion with manufacturing leaders as part of its first Parliamentary Inquiry into the industrial culture and competitiveness of manufacturing in the UK.

The Associate Parliamentary Manufacturing Group (APMG) group, which is led by Chris White MP (Conservative) and Jonathan Reynolds MP (Labour), aims to examine how Government and industry can work together to achieve a resilient and world-beating manufacturing sector coming out of recession. The APMG aims to look at how Government, industry, and business support structures interact with the manufacturing sector to drive growth.

The first European Scratch conference took place in Barcelona at the end of July (27-29 July) bringing together educators, researchers and developers from the worldwide Scratch community to discuss and share experiences and knowledge. Margaret Low, Principal Teaching Fellow at WMG, has been part of the Organising Committee and Programme Committee for the conference and a number of staff and students from the University of Warwick led sessions across the days.

At the European conference, students from the University of Warwick, undertook a live demonstration of the power of Scratch. Andrew Sula, Sam Edwards and Tom Preece, student leaders of the University of Warwick’s Technology Volunteers project (part of Warwick Volunteers), built a dance mat and developed a game, all within five minutes, live on stage. Dr Claire Rocks from Computer Science ran a session 'The Robot Garden', a workshop where participants can program their own robot gardeners.

Pupils from local schools have been taking part in a series of Royal Institution Engineering Masterclasses, hosted and delivered by staff and students from WMG and other Science departments at the University of Warwick.

Last weekend saw the end of the series, which concluded with an official presentation and awards ceremony for the children, attended by teachers and parents, to mark their participation in the series.

Year 9 students from several local schools have been attending regular Saturday morning masterclasses over a period of 6 weeks. The sessions were designed to spark their interest in a wide variety of engineering paths. Topics covered over the series included programming robots, understanding waves, intelligent vehicles and 3D printing.

Staff and students from WMG were part of a University of Warwick exhibition stand at the Big Bang Fair West Midlands, which took place at the Ricoh Arena earlier this week.

The Warwick stand, sponsored by the WMG centre HVM Catapult, brought together staff and students from six departments - WMG (including the WMG Academy), School of Engineering, Life Sciences, Physics, Computer Science and Maths and students from the Human Submarine Project, Engineering Society, Engineers Without Borders and the Technology Volunteers.

The Big Bang Fair provides the opportunity for the Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) community to come together to enthuse and inspire young people to think about future education and careers involving STEM subjects. Teams from Warwick attended the fair and demonstrated exciting activities such as 3D printing, playing with electronics and sensors (Institute of Digital Healthcare and Technology Volunteers) and the Human Submarine project, which is being undertaken for the first time this year by Engineering students at Warwick.

Everyone involved had a fantastic day at the event. Hundreds of school children from the local area visited our stand and took part in some of the activities and learnt about the range of opportunities available through STEM subjects. With a stand featuring so many Science Faculty departments, the University team were able to demonstrate the real variety available across the disciplines.

See more photos from the day...

A Formula 3 steering wheel made from carrots and created by engineers at WMG, University of Warwick, has gone on display at the London Science Museum.

The Nano-cellulose wheel is the first of its kind and just one of several sustainable and renewable materials that have been used by WMG in the development of this F3 rated vehicle.

As part of their support for the new WMG Academy for Young Engineers, engineering company Bosch helped Coventry and Buckinghamshire school children get a taste of the latest engineering technology at WMG at the University of Warwick.

The event, which took place on Tuesday 4 June, aimed to excite the interest of 10 to 12 year olds in a career in engineering – possibly with leading organisations such as Bosch as future potential employers.

The children from Joseph Cash and Coundon Court schools in Coventry and Carrington Junior School in Buckinghamshire got hands on experience with a robot search and rescue device, WMG’s 3D Virtual powerwall, sessions on how mobile phones work, and demonstrations of Additive Layer Manufacturing and Digital Healthcare technology.

WMG is pleased to announce its hosting of the SecureWarwick 2013 conference, which will be held at the University of Warwick campus on 2^nd July 2013. The conference is being organised jointly with (ISC)² (The International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium) and will focus on the subject of Revolutionary Trends in Technology and their Impact on Security.

Speaking at the conference will be James Morris MP, member of the All Party Group for Homeland Security. Mr Morris came to politics from a business career in computer software and he will be giving the keynote address at the conference.

Other speakers already announced include John Colley, Managing Director of (ISC)² EMEA, Robin King, CEO of Deep Secure, and Ray Stanton, Executive Vice President of BT Advise.

The SecureWarwick conference aims to bring together practitioners, researchers, industry and government experts and solution providers to explore the scope and nature of the latest technology developments and their impacts on our security. The speakers will endeavour to anticipate the emerging vulnerabilities by offering a glimpse of current experience, exploring innovations coming down the line and outlining the management imperatives for securing the modern business environment.

For more information on the event, visit the (ISC)² website.

WMG at the University of Warwick has launched a new initiative to allow 25 West Midlands firms to take on a skilled intern to help them develop new products or services.

The Project Associate scheme is part of WMG’s Innovation Programme run by the new International Institute for Product and Service Innovation (IIPSI).

IIPSI’s core mission is to give West Midlands SMEs access world-leading technology to develop innovative products and services.