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ECS Engages with Engineers of the future
March 2013
How would you go about powering your phone on a desert island, or designing a hoist for a rescue helicopter? Staff and Students from the School of Engineering and Computing Sciences have helped over 350 pupils from 20 local schools to answer these questions at the recent Durham University Schools’ Science festival.
ECS ran two very popular activities at the festival, giving groups of pupils the chance to design and test miniature wind turbines or to design and build aluminium structures that could be used in helicopter rescue operations. The activities were both very practical, and saw the pupils developing their design and practical skills using tools ranging from graph paper to rivet guns.
The ECS contribution was led by staff members Gary Parker, Peter Swift and Steve Robertson, with support from undergraduate and postgraduate volunteers Joe Smith, Rector Mukwiri, Lydia Chan, George Olesen and Fred Hamlin who had the chance to develop their communication skills in a very dynamic setting. Steve Robertson said: “It’s great to see so many pupils getting involved with practical engineering tasks and coming up with some really elegant solutions. I think we’re seeing some real engineering stars of the future in action here!” Read more about the Science Festival 2013
Bikes in Bits at St Bede’s
April 2013
Students at St Bede’s school in Lanchester will never look at their bikes in quite the same way again, after a university Lecturer gave them an insight into the science and engineering tied up in bicycle design. Dr Steve Robertson from Durham University’s School of Engineering and Computing Sciences spoke to groups of pupils from the school during his recent visit to St Bedes, after being invited along by the school’s head of science, Mr Saunders. Steve took along two bikes and several broken bits to show the pupils how something as common as a bicycle can give interesting insights into the science they learn at school. He said: “The basic design of a bike frame or a spoked wheel is an incredibly elegant piece of engineering that we’ve hardly improved on in 100 years. I hope I’ve shown the pupils how even something so commonplace can bring to life the scientific principles they learn every day.” Down load the whole story here.
Prestigious fellowship award from the Royal Academy of Engineering, UK
April 2013
Dr Dagou Zeze is awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship (2013-14) to introduce semiconductor nanowires research in Durham on the nanotechnology research theme: “Nanoscale characterisation and integration platform for nanowires”. More information regarding the Leverhulme Trust can be found here
Durham hosts International Conference on Computational Mechanics
March 2013
This years International Conference on Computational Mechanics was held at durham and Chaired by Dr Ashraf Osman of ECS. The conference was jointly organised by the ECS at Durham and the UK Association of Computational Mechanics in Engineering (ACME). Recent developments in the field of computational mechanics were highlighted the conference and Non-linear computations and new discretisation methods were at the centre of the conference where researchers in computational mechanics sucessfully interacted. Pictured here a group photograph of the delegates. More photographs of the event can be fond at the conference website
Conference website: http://www.dur.ac.uk/cm13.conference/
IET Northern University Student Competiton
March 2013
Once again this year ECS has seen the sucessfull entry of some of our top students into the IET Northern Universities final year students, project presentations and poster competition. Congratulations to Adam Parrott studying MEng New and Renewable Energy, Francesco Guariglia, and Ben Anscombe both studying MEng Electronic Engineering. All three will be graduating in June of this year.
Durham students win papers competition
March 2013
The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) North East has named Durham University student Elis Wilkins as the winner of its 2013 Graduates and Students papers competition. Elis impressed the panel with his written paper and presentation on ‘The effects of high winds on overhead power cables’. In recognition of his efforts he received a £250 cash prize. Third place went to Paul Chambers, a QUEST student engineer at Skanska UK Plc who is studying MEng (Hons) General Engineering at Durham University, with his paper on ‘Aerodynamic loading and its structural implications’.Read the entire article here
Biomedical engineering develops diagnostics tool to predict tissue quality
March 2013
Congratulations to Dr Junjie Wu from ECS on winning a £261K grant from EPSRC for a project entitled ‘A Novel Diagnostic Tool: from Structural Health Monitoring to Tissue Quality Prediction’. Dr Wu a Biomedical Engineer is part of the energy research and teaching group within the school. You can learn more about Dr Junjie Wu's research interests here at her web page
Embracing one dimension semiconductor nanostructures (NanoEmbrace)
March 2013
Congratulations to the Durham University team pictured here: far right clockwise, Dr Budhika Mendis from the Department of Physics, Dr Dagou Zeze, Professor Mike Petty and Dr Andrew Gallant all of the School of Engineering and Computing Sciences. The team has won 3.48 million Euro grant from the European Commission, Framework Programme 7 (FP7), to coordinate an international consortium (NanoEmbrace) involving 10 of Europe’s leading research groups (from the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Russia and Italy) and 8 industrial partners (from Austria, UK, Finland, France and Italy). This FP7 Initial Training Network (ITN) programme will train 12 highly skilled PhD students who will specialise in nanotechnology with a focus on semiconductor nanowires.
Kingsgate Bridge
March 2013
ECS Professor David Toll has arranged for the President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Professor Barry Clarke, to visit Durham. The event will take place on Thursday 18th April 2013 and will be linked to the 50th anniversary of the construction of Kingsgate Bridge which was Ove Arup’s favourite design. Representatives from HE/FE/Employers/Graduate & Students will take part in a round table discussion about “Education and training of future Civil Engineers” which will be held in the Castle.
ECS technical staff supporting our ECS final year students
February 2013
Pictured ECS Level 4 Engineering MEng student, Josh Horwood with the device he has designed for his final year project. The aim of the project is to design a system for producing a pulsating exhaust flow for Formula 1 wind tunnel models. The rotary device pictured shows the two exhaust outlets along with the attached Electric motor. The device was machined by Paul Jarvis, ECS Mechanical workshop support technician. For more information on our undergraduate Engineering degrees and our support facilities visit our webpages.
Science, Engineering & IT Fair, sponsored by IBM
February 2013
Durham University Careers, Employability and Enterprise Centre, in association with the Department of Physics and IBM, invited undergraduates, masters, PHD and research students to get their feet on the ladder to career success with the SEIT Jobs Fair 2013. This event gave people the oportunity to engage face-to-face with some of the major UK and multinational employers anxious. Pictured here at the event in The Ogden Centre for Fundamental Physics were course directors Mr John Garside (MSc design and operations) and Dr Fredrick Li (MSc Internet and Distributed Systems and Advanced Software Engineering) giving valuble advice to potential postgradute students on the seven excellent Taught MSc Programmes available in the School of Engineering and Computing Sciences. For more information on ECS Taught MSc Programme follow the link
Durham Engineering at the IET Achievement Awards
January 2013
At the 2012 Institution of Engineering and Technology Achievement Awards, two of the three Young Engineer awards went to a Durham academic and a Durham alumnus. Dr. Chris Dent, Lecturer in Energy Systems Modelling, received the Mike Sargeant Young Engineer Career Achievement Award. Chris is a mathematician by background, and has worked in electrical power systems since 2007, joining Durham in autumn 2009. His main work is in integrating renewable generation into electricity transmission systems, including work with National Grid on both transmission planning, and also on designing technical modelling for the 2012 GB Electricity Capacity Assessment report (which was widely featured in the national press last autumn). He has made a particular contribution in the field of generation adequacy assessment and the capacity value of wind generation, and is currently extending this work to the planning of distribution local distribution networks; further interests lie across all aspects of power systems modelling, including economic analysis, and control of future smartgrids with much greater numbers of active market participants. In 2014, he will chair the International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems in Durham.
John Collins, civil engineer at Arup and Durham graduate, received the IET Sir Henry Royce for Young Professionals award. John received this award for his work on a scheme to replace the main span bearings of the Humber Bridge. The bridge’s 1410m main span’s movements make heavy demands on bearings connecting the carriageway deck to the towers. Following structural inspections, monitoring and an option selection exercise an ambitious replacement scheme was designed and will be constructed throughout 2013/14 at an estimated cost of around £4m.
Durham Engineering Students sucess at the IET Achievement Awards
January 2013
The School of Engineering and Computing Sciences is proud to anounce its winners at the recent Institution of Engineering and Technology Achievement Awards. The IET’s undergraduate scholarships and grants range in value from £1,000 for one year to £3,000 per annum for the duration of an IET accredited degree course and are available both to students who are in the process of a university application and to those who have already started studying. These scholarships are awarded only to the most outstanding candidates and to be in receipt of one of these awards is a particular accolade.
Three of the winners were current Durham undergraduate students. The students were presented with bursary awards as follows:
- Duncan Wooder - Level one Engineering undergraduate was presented with The National Electronics Council scholarship. Duncan achieved 2 A* and 2 As in his A levels before commencing his MEng course in General Engineering at Durham University. Duncan won prizes for both Design & Technology and Chemistry and was also awarded a Sixth Form Scholarship and an Arkwright Trust Scholarship. He has undertaken work experience with Sinclair Knight Merz.
- Rebecca Madden Level one Engineering undergraduate was presented with the IET Jubilee Scholarship. Rebecca first became interested in engineering in year 6 when she took part in the Shell EcoMarathon competition. Since then she has carried out work experience at several engineering companies including BP, BA and McLaren, and is now studying for a General Engineering degree at Durham University.
- Michaela Bousfield level three Engineering undergraduate was presented with the Belling Grant. The Belling Engineering grants are worth £3,000 and are open to British citizens who are due to commence the final year of an IET accredited mechanical or electrical engineering MEng degree course in the next academic session and who have achieved a 2.1 or higher in their end of year exams. Michaela is commencing her fourth year studying Design and Operations Engineering at Durham University. She has just completed an internship with Schlumberger and before that spent her third year on exchange at the University of British Columbia.
All of the award winners will be recognised at a special seminar jointly hosted by the School of Engineering and Computing Sciences and the Durham IET branch.
ECS Students get all-expenses paid trip to London
January 2013
Level 2 Computer Science and Software Engineering students took part in an interactive workshop facilitated by Bloomberg PL. The workshop involved a number of scenarios simulating the software engineering process at Bloomberg. Each real-world scenario required each student group to make a decision on how to proceed with the software development project. Their decision had to include what the possible effects could be on the project scope, time of delivery, and quality of work. Marks were awarded for the correct decisions. At the end of the workshop eight students (two groups tied for first place) have been invited to an all-expenses paid trip to Bloomberg's in London where they will meet not only students from other universities but also teams of professional software developers.
EPSRC grant to research into 'Algorithmic aspects of intersection graph models'
January 2013
Congratulations to ECS Dr George Mertzios who has received funding for two years from EPSRC (grant value £124K) on 'Algorithmic aspects of intersection graph models'. This research will explore the geometric intersection models by which many important families of graphs can be represented, in order to devise efficient algorithms or prove computational hardness for fundamental optimization and recognition problems. In addition to its significance in theory, this research finds many practical applications, such as in bioinformatics, in mobile computing and sensor networks, in graph drawing and in computer graphics. For more information on Dr Mertzios research interests follow the link
Plans go ahead for the first of the prestigious annual Roberts lectures
January 2013
The annual lectures to commemorate the life and work of physicist Professor Sir Gareth Gwyn Roberts, will commence in Durham Universities W103, Appleby Lecture Theatre on Wednesday March 13th 2013 from 4.30pm until 6pm presented by Sir Richard Friend of Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. Sir Richard co-founded Cambridge Display Technology Ltd in 1992 to develop light-emitting diode displays, Plastic Logic Ltd in 2000, to develop polymer transistor circuits and Eight-19 Ltd in 2010 to develop plastic solar cells. Sir Richards presentation is entitled "Organic Electronics"
You can book your place by accessing the online form
You can read more about Gareths life at the following link
A publicity poster can be downloaded
- Gareth Roberts Lecture 2013 (last modified: 15 January 2013)
New X-ray Computed Tomography (XRCT) facility to be based in ECS
January 2013
Dr Charles Augarde has received a grant of £461K from EPSRC, and an additional £242K from the University, to fund a new X-ray Computed Tomography (XRCT) facility to be based in the School of Engineering and Computing Sciences. The new facility will allow researchers from a wide range of disciplines to investigate the internal microstructures of materials, down to the sub-micron level. The proposed XRCT machine permits the non-destructive analysis of material samples up to 300mm cube size with no specialised preparation or environmental conditions necessary and is ideal for material with voids or those comprised of different density fractions. The facility will be used by researchers in engineering, earth science, physics & archaeology and also by colleagues from similar areas at Newcastle and Sheffield Universities.
Transistors that can be printed onto surfaces
January 2013
Prof Mike Petty and Dr Chris Pearson of the School of Engineering and Computing Sciences, have received funding for four years from ETRI for a project entitled ‘Synthesis of oxide semiconductor and insulator ink materials & process development for printed backplane of flexible displays.’ ETRI is the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, which is South Korea’s largest government-funded research institute. The research will concern the development of transistors that can be printed onto surfaces. These can be used for a variety of applications in flexible electronics (e.g. displays, memories, chemical sensors).
Sucess of inaugrual Roberts lecture