Posts tagged as 'Academics'

Loughborough academic listed as a finalist for the 2018 FDM Everywoman in Technology awards

9 January 2018

• Academics
• Loughborough University

Dr Will Whittow has been listed as a finalist for the 2018 FDM Everywoman in Technology awards.

Dr Whittow, senior lecturer at The Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering, and one of our PhD supervisors, has been named as one of three finalists for ‘The Male Agent of Change’ award.

This brand new award will be presented to a male recipient who has shown a commitment to encourage and champion women to progress in the world of technology.

Maxine Benson MBE, co-founder of everywoman comments: “At everywoman, we recognise the role that men also play in ensuring a strong pipeline of female talent, which is why this year we have introduced the Male Agent of Change Award.”

The awards are in their eighth year and celebrate some of the most inspiring individuals that have changed the world of technology both in the UK and internationally.

This year’s theme was Improving Tomorrow’s World, which aims to highlight the significance of supporting girls and women into studying STEM subjects, despite the dominance of men in the sector.

The winners will be announced on Thursday 8 February at the awards evening which will take place in London.

Dr Whittow has previously won the Women’s Engineering Society ‘Men as Allies’ award for his efforts to support female colleagues and students in the field of engineering.  

Good Luck Will!

• Read More

Collaboration between CALCE and SSG at Heriot-Watt University

22 December 2017

• Academics
• Heriot-Watt University
• Cohort

Cohort 3 researcher, Darius Roman, visited the Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE) to attend the Failure Analysis short course, present his research to CALCE students and faculty, and to discuss his research challenges with the CALCE team.

Darius’ PhD research project involves a fusion prognostics approach that incorporates failure analysis, modelling, condition monitoring, machine learning and prognostics techniques to predict the remaining useful life in bottom hole assembly electronics for oil and gas companies, including Baker Hughes a GE Company—his current project sponsor. Following the presentation, Prof. Michael Pecht met individually with Darius to discuss best methods and ideas to contribute to the success of the research and the project. Darius is a member of the Smart Systems Group (SSG) at Heriot-Watt University, where he acts as an ambassador. The group is led by director, Dr. David Flynn, an Associate Professor at Heriot-Watt University and Co-Director of the CDT-EI. The SSG’s view is that global society is placing increasing demands on its critical infrastructure, systems that deliver vital services such as energy, transportation, telecommunications, food and water, the built environment and healthcare. The systems within these sectors are increasingly complex and interdependent, interacting at a global scale. This complexity is required for efficient operation, but also makes them more susceptible to cascading failure under stress. The Group believe we must transform data into actionable information and utilise this insight to create innovative, data informed, Smart Systems that can assess, adapt and respond to dynamic conditions.

The collaboration between CALCE and SSG began with the seminar titled “The Era of Embedded Intelligence” where Prof. Pecht acted as a key note speaker on PHM. The seminar brought together global leaders and innovators in Embedded Intelligence from industry and academia on how this field of research is influencing future product development, business models, resilience of critical infrastructure and exploration within extreme environments. The seminar aimed to promote the importance and impact this area is making to society, and to engage the audience on how we innovate and train the next generation of engineers, scientists and business people – to prosper in this data driven age. CALCE and SSG are currently looking for future collaboration where students and academics alike could visit, exchange research ideas and discuss research challenges. Prof. Pecht will be visiting HWU periodically in an advising and educating capacity to further straighten the collaboration.

To read more about the collaboration visit here

To learn more about SSG visit here

• Read More

Loughborough Doctoral College Research Conference

18 December 2017

• Academics
• Loughborough University

On 7th December 2017, the Doctoral College hosted the annual Loughborough University Research Conference (#LboroResConf17) for doctoral researchers, research staff, academic staff and professional service staff. The event provided attendees with an excellent opportunity to network with one another whilst learning more about the vast range of research conducted at Loughborough University and Loughborough University London.

The theme of this year’s University Research Conference was ‘Building Research Excellence'. In total, there were 19 oral presentations, including Cohort 1 researcher Joe Holt, and 41 poster presentations, inlcuding Cohort 2's Gaj Sivayogan and Cohort 3's Marcus Pollard.

Joe Holt has said “I enjoyed the opportunity to present my work to a wide and varied audience. Trying to tailor my presentation to a general audience helped me to distil down the more important points of my research and really focus on the parts that matter.”

• Read More

The UK-RAS Network Conference on Robotics and Autonomous Systems: robots working for and among us

18 December 2017

• Academics
• The Centre

We are a founding member of UK-RAS Network and delighted to have taken part in the first UK-RAS Conference on ‘Robotics and Autonomous Systems’ (RAS 2017). Cohort 2 researcher Rhys Comissiong, Cohort 3 researcher Christos Kouppas and our Centre Manager, Donna Palmer attended the inaugural event.

The conference aimed addressed the synergetic interaction of human and robotic technologies. As robots and agents have begun to enter our everyday lives they begin to do so in an increasingly autonomous way. These increasing levels of interaction will pose serious challenges to the capability of robots to interact with humans in an increasingly autonomous way. The talks were categorised into three general topic areas including 'Assistive robotics' and 'Aerial robotics'. Talks covered a range of application areas from the nuclear industry to health and life sciences.

Oral and poster presentations were given by PhD and early-career researchers from all members of the UK-RAS Network and illustrated the breadth of robotics and AI work taking place across the UK and the fruitful conversations taking place during the breaks demonstrated the importance and relevance of this conference taking place. Prizes were awards for the best presentations and posters, the winners being invited to present at TAROS 2018.

The Image below is of Christos Kouppas presenting his work.

• Read More

Guest lecture on human-robot interactions

21 November 2017

• Academics
• Loughborough University

Last week we were delighted to welcome Professor Shigeki Sugano from Waseda University in Japan last week. Professor Sugano gave a guest lecture as part of the CDT in Embedded Intelligence Foresight Series on mechanical intelligence for human-robot interactions. Following the lecture had the opportunity to tour department of Computer Science as well as the Autonomous Vehicle Lab, the Centre for Intelligent Automation and the Sports Technology Institute.

Staff and students attended from across both partner Universites as the talk was streamed online. Professor Max Zecca, who is a Visiting Professor of Robotics at Waseda University, took the opportunity to promote the JSPS Summer Programme, which provided MPhil and PhD students the oppportunity to a fully paid internship at a host institution in Japan for 2 months. 

• Read More

Loughborough academic wins Inaugural Men As Allies Award 2017

1 October 2017

• Academics
• Loughborough University

Loughborough University academic and CDT-EI supervisor, Dr  Will Whittow, won the inaugural Men As Allies Award at The Women's Engineering Society (WES) Awards 2017.

On receiving the award Will has said "I'm genuinely honoured to win this inaugural award. There are many amazing people who work tirelessly to promote STEM and Women in Engineering. We need to work together to change public perceptions. Engineering is millions of well paid jobs and covers incredibly diverse topics demonstrated by the PhD opportunities at Lboro! We need diversity of people to continue to innovate. My 1st PhD student won the Sir Robert Martin Prize for the Best Loughborough Student. If she can do it so can you."

More details about WES can be found here.

• Read More

BioMIM Expo

22 August 2017

• Academics
• Heriot-Watt University

Prof. Marc Desmulliez, HWU ex-CDT-EI Director and supervisor of several CDT-EI students, gave an invited talk at the latest BioMIM Expo at Senlis in July 2017. It was the first time in his 25 years as an academic that Marc presented a technical talk in French, his mother tongue.

The Conference, one of the few in the world devoted exclusively to biomimetics and nature-inspired engineering, was attended by over 1,000 people and combined scientific talk, exhibitions as well as presentations for the general public.

“It was quite a daunting experience for me, said Marc, as I had to look for French technical words in my dictionary. I never used French in the past to present my work. The format of the Conference was quite new but worked perfectly as there is an inherent affinity of the public for all things related to Nature.”

The talk was devoted to the latest advances made by his research group towards the 3D printing of multi-materials using green chemistry. The £1M EPSRC research is funded under the “Manufacturing with Light” programme, and is in collaboration with Dr Robert Kay’s research group, formally from Loughborough University, now at Leeds University.

The talk can be downloaded in YouTube at the following link  https://youtu.be/yBEJuBLte0w alongside all presentations made in 2017 and 2016.

• Read More

DEN social media advocate, Chira Tochia, reports on #SSEI17

7 July 2017

• Academics
• The Centre
• Cohort

The Digital Economy’s 2017 Summer School was hosted by CDT in Embedded Intelligence at their London Campus, the trendy, forward thinking area of Here East. The theme for this year was “Innovation insights for the digital workforce of tomorrow” and held over three days, 4^th-6^th July, focused on three stages; learn with seminars, do with workshops and practise with practicals. A breakdown and more details about the Summer School can be viewed here.

Around 75 students from a wide variety of the DEN CDTs attended including Embedded Intelligence, My Life in Data (Horizon), Cloud Computing, Digital Civics, Intelligent Games & Game Intelligence, Media and Arts Technology, Web Science and HighWire as well as having representation from Cyber Security at Royal Holloway. It was great to see everyone instantly getting along and really immersing themselves in their sessions.

There was such a variety going on from panels, speed networking, playing with Lego (we promise there were learning outcomes from this), producing films (watch the film here), pimping out their social media presence, practising their elevator pitch and creating posters. Everyone definitely left that Summer School with new knowledge and a new skill.

With the Olympic Park at our fingertips, some of the students and staff took advantage of our location and were brave enough to slide down the ArcelorMittal Orbit, and I heard of a few early morning swims in the Olympic pool too. Evening events had great views of London skyline, inventions of new drinks (Glushies, appearing in a bar near you soon) and great entertainment.

You can view the tweets from the Summer School using #SSEI17. Our friends at Tableu (who ran a workshop on “The beautiful science of data visualisation”) have prepared a data analysis on the event’s hashtag, which can be viewed here.

The Digital Economy Network would like to thank EPSRC, Professor Paul Conway, Dr Carmen Torres-Sánchez, the Embedded Intelligence CDT Manager Donna Palmer, DEN Manager Felicia Black, Event support and organisers Siobhan Horan and Finn, Loughborough London for letting us takeover their space plus all their lovely staff and all our panellists, guests and attendees for making it such a memorable and fun Summer School.

• Read More