Congratulations to WMG Professor of Sustainable Materials and Manufacturing, Kerry Kirwan, who has been appointed as the new Trustee/Founder Director of The Alan Turing Institute.

Professor Kirwan said: “I’m delighted to join the board of trustees of the Turing Institute which is a British flagship for data and artificial intelligence that Warwick helped to found. The breadth, depth and real world relevance of the work that the Institution and its community carries out is amazing and, at these challenging times, critically important to the UK and the wider world – I’m really excited to be able to support them.”

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.

Following the Institute’s university expansion and the growth of its research programmes and partners, the Institute now counts over 400 researchers in its community. This includes Turing Fellows (the largest group, made up of senior academics spending a portion of their time at the Institute), Turing Research Fellows (independent researchers employed by a partner university and based at the Institute), Doctoral Students (full time or spending an ‘enrichment’ period at the Institute) and visiting researchers from academia, business and government.

Three WMG Professors are currently part of the prestigious line-up of expert Fellows. These are

Professor Carsten Maple, Professor of Data Science Giovanni Montana, and Professor of Marketing and Service Systems Irene Ng.

You can find out more about The Alan Turing Institute here.

Professor Kerry Kirwan is looking forward to taking part in the fifth Royal Academy of Engineering’s Frontiers of Engineering for Development symposium, which takes place from 29th April to 2nd May.

The three-day event takes place at the Academy's home, Prince Philip House, in London, UK. Professor Kirwan, who leads our sustainable materials and manufacturing team, will be chairing a session on Frontiers of Engineering for Development: The Circular Economy.

The symposium is part of a series of international, interdisciplinary workshops that aim to facilitate network building, encourage collaborative work and promote international development and cross-disciplinary thinking among the future leaders of engineering from the UK and around the world.

More information on the symposium can be found here.

Professor Kerry Kirwan, Head of Sustainable Materials and Manufacturing, will be representing WMG at SMMT’s International Automotive Summit on Wednesday (29 June).

The Summit takes place at IET London and is one of the key events in the automotive calendar. Professor Kirwan will sit alongside experts from Jaguar Land Rover and TRW Aftermarket UK on the Automotive and the Circular Economy Panel.

More information and the full agenda can be found here.

Dr Kerry Kirwan is proud to be representing WMG at a special seminar for The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) Coventry and Warwickshire Materials Society on Monday 3 November.

Dr Kirwan’s ‘Dispelling The Myth That Sustainable Materials Are Inferior…’ will use Warwick’s WorldF3rst racing project to show what can be achieved with sustainable, natural and recycled materials.

We are very pleased to announce that Professor David Greenwood and Dr Kerry Kirwan have been appointed to EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) Strategic Advisory Teams.

Professor David Greenwood will be serving on the Energy Scientific Advisory Committee and Dr Kerry Kirwan will be serving on the Manufacturing the Future Strategic Advisory Team, representing the EPSRC both nationally and internationally.

Their roles will be to provide Theme Leaders at EPSRC with strategic advice to develop their themes and will cover areas such as policy, training, funding priorities, etc.

Both Professor Greenwood and Dr Kirwan will take up three-year appointments commencing 1st April 2015.

The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Materials and Manufacturing was officially launched yesterday (17 December) at a reception, hosted by Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya, at the House of Lords.

An exciting collaboration between the Universities of Warwick, Exeter and Cranfield, the new Centre will offer an International Engineering Doctorate (EngD (Int)) in Sustainable Materials and Manufacturing, awarded jointly by the three institutions. It is supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and industry partners.

Invited guests from both industry and the education sector heard how the Centre will address industry-driven research challenges around sustainability; including establishing natural or recovered materials as feed-stocks, reducing process inputs and outputs without compromising performance or economic viability, extracting high value materials from waste streams, and ultimately establishing economic and environmental sustainability.

It was announced today, Friday 28th March 2014, that WMG is to lead a new “EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Materials and Manufacturing”. The Centre will be a partnership between universities of Warwick, Exeter and Cranfield.

Dr Kerry Kirwan, Director of the new EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Materials and Manufacturing, said:

The new Centre will produce the next generation of manufacturing business leaders with a high level understanding of interdisciplinary enterprise, the research experience essential to compete in a global low carbon environment, and an international view of Sustainability and the Circular Economy."

This is the fifth such Doctoral Training Centre (CDTs) to be awarded to University of Warwick leadership by the UK’s research councils. The expected total investment by the research councils for all five CDTS led by Warwick will be around £19 million.

On Tuesday 25 June, Drayson Racing’s lightweight electric racing car set a new world land speed record for an electric vehicle. The Lola B12/EV hit a maximum speed of 204.2mph (328.6kph) in its attempt at RAF Elvington in Yorkshire, breaking the previous record of 175mph which was set in 1974.

Over the last 6 months, WMG has worked with Drayson Racing on the car’s development, drawing on WMG’s expertise in sustainable materials and energy management.

WMG researchers developed recycled carbon fibre panels which were used on the Drayson car, research which was the result of a WMG EPSRC Challenging Engineering grant. Through WMG’s Energy Innovation Centre, testing and characterisation work was carried out on the vehicle’s electric motor to enable the maximum power possible to be achieved. This helped to contribute to the success of the Drayson racing vehicle.

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.

A consortium of researchers led by WMG at the University of Warwick are to embark on a £3 million research programme called “Cleaning Land for Wealth” (CL4W), that will use a common class of flower to restore poisoned soils while at the same time producing perfectly sized and shaped nano sized platinum and arsenic nanoparticles for use in catalytic convertors, cancer treatments and a range of other applications.

A “Sandpit” exercise organised by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) allowed researchers from WMG at the University of Warwick, Newcastle University, The University of Birmingham, Cranfield University and the University of Edinburgh to come together and share technologies and skills to come up with an innovative multidisciplinary research project that could help solve major technological and environmental challenges.