ERPem news archive (Sep 06 - Dec 08)
Dec 2008
A group involving researchers from the IIS JRI at Heriot-Watt University has won £4.8m funding for the new Optics and Photonics Technologies Centre. Professor Andrew Harvey is the leader of the new Centre, to be run in partnership with St Andrews, Strathclyde and Glasgow Universities. More.
Dec 2008
Harald Haas of the SIP JRI has been invited by Professor Zhang Ping (Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications – (BUPT)) to join the Chinese “111 program”. The Program is established and supported jointly by the National Bureau for Foreign Experts of China and the Ministry of Education of China. About 100 Guest Academic Talents Bases will be established in some selected universities in China during the period from 2006 to 2010. More.
Dec 2008
Mansour Ahmadian and Jila Nazari, former SIP JRI research students, received the IET 2008 innovation award in November for "Software in Design". They are shown in the photo at right (click on the thumbnail for a larger version) being presented with the award on behalf of their employer Sundance DSP for their entry "Generating Parallel Applications Automatically From Simulation Models". More.
Nov 2008
The workshop 'Mathematical Problems in Fire Safety Engineering' was organised by Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh on Oct 31st 2008, at the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Edinburgh. Six speakers gave invited talks on the topic and more than 30 people attended. Some of the presentations are available on the workshop page (link below). Funding was provided by the ERPem Bridging the Gaps programme.
More information:
http://www.icms.org.uk/workshops/fire
http://edinburghfireresearch.blogspot.com/2008/10/maths-fire-engineering-workshop.html
Oct 2008
A statue of scientist James Clerk Maxwell will be unveiled in Edinburgh on 25th November. Senior staff in the Maxwell Institute made a substantial personal contribution to the appeal for funds to finance the statue.
For a scientist of James Clerk Maxwell’s stature, there are few memorials to him. In 2006, the 175th anniversary of his birth raised his profile in his home city and the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), of which Maxwell had been a Fellow, initiated plans for a statue of him. A prime site was identified on George Street, in the heart of the “New Town”, and close to the present building of the RSE. Showing Maxwell seated, and dressed in costume of his time, the statue will be cast in bronze. Planning permission has now been obtained and the project has widespread support. The statue will be unveiled by the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament on 25 November 2008 accompanied by a major international conference on Maxwell.
More information here.
Sep 2008
Professor Peter Grant, the Director of ERPem, was invited and sponsored by UK Trade and Investment to join a 12 company delegation to Japan in September 2008. He presented keynote addresses on MIMO research at the Institute for Digital Communications (IDCom), School of Engineering & Electronics, University of Edinburgh (part of the SIP JRI) in both the Osaka and Tokyo seminars. He also gave a press interview with Dempa Publications, to be published (in Japanese) in their 15002 edition of “Radio and Data Communications”.
At left is the press interview from the Dempa Shimbun newspaper. The two other people pictured in the article along with Prof. Grant are Prof. Hanzo from Southampton University and John Davies from UK Trade and Investment.
Click on thumbnail for larger image. Japanese language.
Professor Grant was also interviewed by Semiconductor Portal Inc. who will also shortly feature University of Edinburgh IDCom research at: http://www.semiconportal.com.
Sep 2008
ECOSSE forges ahead
On its third birthday ECOSSE has been able to report significant successes in its annual report to the Scottish Funding Council.
Total income this year, from joint projects with partners in ECOSSE or the parent Edinburgh Regional partnership in Engineering and Mathematics and awards to new staff, was £5,758,741. Cumulative research income from ECOSSE is now £9.7M over three years, compared to a total initial SFC investment of £1.8M, a gearing of over five to one so far, with two years still to run on the initiative.
Twelve new PhD students jointly supervised by two or more of the collaborating institutions started in 2007/8. ECOSSE’s graduate School now totals 21 PhD students. This is the single largest area of joint research activity at present. The portfolio is broad and covers a variety of funding sources and collaborations, all in collaboration between Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt, SUERC and the BGS.
For a full report see here (requires authentication; contact Edward Boyle at edward.boyle@ed.ac.uk for access).
Aug 2008
New ERPem Chair joins IIS
Professor Ron Pethig, ERPem Chair in Micro Nano Systems, has now joined the IIS JRI. Appointed in May, Prof. Pethig took up the position on Monday 1st September 2008 following a summer researching at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory. His main research area is bio-sensors.
Aug 2008
New Professor appointed to ECOSSE
Prof. Dorrick Stow, currently of the University of Southampton, will take up the ECOSSE Chair on 1st October 2008, at Heriot-Watt University. His is the final and most senior of 8 new staff appointments enabled by ECOSSE. Dorrick's main research area is in deep sea sedimentary processes, their interactions with deep ocean environments and currents, and past environmental change.
July 2008
Prof. José Torero, of the Institute for Infrastructure & Environment, School of Engineering & Electronics, University of Edinburgh (part of the CEE JRI) has received the 2008 Arthur B. Guise Medal from the Society of Fire Protection Engineering. More.
July 2008
Researchers in the Institute for Integrated Micro and Nano Systems, School of Engineering & Electronics, University of Edinburgh (part of the IIS JRI) have developed a technology that allows a variety of biological cells and therefore tissue types to be grown along chosen pathways on silicon chips. Following a large collaborative project with Glasgow and Stirling Universities, funded by EPSRC, PhD work performed by Evangelos Delivopoulos, with Alan Murray, has shown that neurons can be grown along pathways on silicon defined as part of the chip's design process. More.
July 2008
Vijayabaskar Narayanamurthy, a first year PhD student supported through the CEE JRI recently won the ‘Best Poster in Structures Award’ at The International Conference on Structures and Granular Solids: from Scientific Principles to Engineering Applications hosted by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The title of the poster was ‘A novel method for the interfacial stress analysis of plated beams’ and the project is jointly supervised by Dr. John Cairns, Senior Lecturer in the School of the Built Environment at Heriot Watt University and Dr. Jian-Fei Chen, Reader in the Institute for Infrastructure and the Environment at the University of Edinburgh.
June 2008
Finn Donaldson, a PhD student in the Institute for Infrastructure & Environment, School of Engineering & Electronics, University of Edinburgh (part of the CEE JRI), has been awarded the Robertson Medal by the Carnegie trust for submitting the most outstanding research proposal in the 2007 competition. In addition to the Medal, he will receive a Carnegie Scholarship to pursue his PhD at Edinburgh University under the supervision of Dr Pankaj Pankaj and Prof Hamish Simpson. More.
June 2008
Dr Barbara Lane (formerly of the Institute for Infrastructure & Environment, School of Engineering & Electronics, University of Edinburgh, part of the CEE JRI), now Associate Director, Arup, has been awarded The Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal 2008. This award recognises outstanding and demonstrated personal contribution to British engineering, which has resulted in successful market exploitation. Barbara's achievement is in establishing an innovative design skill based on advanced analysis and the latest research knowledge which has led to practical and commercially valuable solutions for Arup's major clients worldwide. More.
June 2008
The Royal Society of Edinburgh is organising a major two day conference in Structures and Granular Solids. The event will bring together a significant group of eminent researchers from around the world for an important scientific meeting in these two related and interacting fields, with a unique theme of bridging the gap between the development of new scientific understanding and its application to solve practical engineering problems. The conference will be held at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, in the heart of the city's New Town. This conference is also being held in celebration of the 60th birthday of Professor J. Michael Rotter, deputy director of the CEE JRI. More.
June 2008
John Gormley, Irish Minister for Environment, Heritage and Local Government, visited the first large-scale Integrated Constructed Wetland (ICW) treating domestic wastewater at the Castle Lesley Estate near Monaghan, Ireland. The Irish ICW Concept is a novel environmentally friendly and sustainable ecological engineering technique that provides effective, robust, economical and low maintenance systems for the treatment of all water-vectored pollution including effluents and runoff. In fundamental contrast to traditional wastewater treatment plants, which are cut-off from the public and wildlife, ICW are also designed for sustainable drainage, good landscape fit, and biodiversity, habitat and amenity enhancement.
Dr Miklas Scholz, Senior Lecturer at The University of Edinburgh (Institute for Infrastructure & Environment, School of Engineering & Electronics, part of the CEE JRI) and Visiting Professor at Nankai University (China), emphasized in lively discussions with Minister Gormley that “The ICW Concept confidently addresses stringent treatment targets set by drivers such as groundwater protection regulation, the Urban Wastewater Directive and the Water Framework Directive.” Minister Gormley was impressed by the innovative ICW Concept and subsequently enquired about the required footprint of large-scale ICW systems. Dr Scholz replied that “The site-specific design by Dr Rory Harrington and Mr. Dan Doody is based on simple but robust design calculations incorporating the source to wetland area ratio, wetland cell geometry and total cell number with the aim to minimize land take.” More.
May 2008
Clean water for children in the poorest places on earth could become a reality if engineers tackled the problem in new ways, an expert claims. Professor Andrea Schäfer of the University of Edinburgh (Institute for Infrastructure & Environment, School of Engineering & Electronics, part of the CEE JRI) claims that in many countries, one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of a lack of clean water, and many more, often girls, miss out on school because they have to walk for miles to fetch water or use a toilet. More.
May 2008
Buildings could be better designed against the dangers of fire thanks to research at the University of Edinburgh. Structural engineer and fire expert Dr Luke Bisby will join the Institute for Infrastructure & Environment, School of Engineering & Electronics (part of the CEE JRI) in May and is to focus on improving the fire safety of both traditional and new building materials and methods of building repair. More.
April 2008
Professor Janusz Bialek from the Institute of Energy Systems, School of Engineering & Electronics, University of Edinburgh (part of the Energy JRI) has been appointed a member of the Dispute Resolution Panel for the Single Electricity Market Operator in Ireland. The Panel aims to resolve any disputes arising in the newly-formed energy market in Ireland. More.
April 2008
Mr Henry Jeffrey, a Research Associate in the Institute of Energy Systems, School of Engineering & Electronics, University of Edinburgh (part of the Energy JRI) has been appointed to an international panel of renewable energy and business experts to evaluate applications for funding to develop marine energy in New Zealand. More.
March 2008
Two members of the School of Engineering & Electronics, University of Edinburgh, Professor Robin Wallace (director of the Energy JRI) and Iain Roberts, will be giving talks at the Edinburgh International Science Festival 2008. More.
March 2008
Congratulations to Professor Robin Wallace, head of the Institute for Energy Systems, School of Engineering & Electronics, University of Edinburgh (part of the Energy JRI) and Professor Jose Torero, BRE Trust/RAEng Prof. of Fire Safety Engineering, (Institute for Infrastructure & Environment, School of Engineering & Electronics, University of Edinburgh, part of the CEE JRI) who have been elected as Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. More.
February 2008
Researchers at the Institute for Integrated Micro & Nano Systems, School of Engineering & Electronics, University of Edinburgh (part of the IIS JRI) are developing a device that could be permanently implanted into the body and would be capable of delivering daily doses of a drug for up to one year. Patients who need regular medication could have it delivered by a microscopic implant controlled by wireless technology, according to research published in the Institution of Engineering and Technology Nanobiotechnology journal. More.
February 2008
Four researchers from the University of Edinburgh who played a key role in the development of the mobile phone camera will be honoured at a ceremony in London on Monday, 4 February. The electronic engineers will be awarded the Rank Prize for their work in developing and commercialising technology which is used every day by millions of people. Peter Denyer, David Renshaw (Institute for Integrated Micro & Nano Systems, School of Engineering & Electronics, part of the IIS JRI), Wang Guoyu and Lu Mingying will receive the £80,000 prize - set up by the late Lord Rank to recognise scientific advances that have benefited mankind - for their camera design work which began in the early 1980s. More.
25 January 2008
A new ERPem-funded 'e-classroom' facility has been constructed and is now ready for the use of ERPem Engineering JRIs. It is located in the Sanderson Building on the King's Buildings campus of the University of Edinburgh.
This e-classroom contains vidoeconferencing and multimedia tools to enable joint lectures and seminars to take place interactively and collaboratively between remote locations (such as between the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University). The SIP JRI will carry out the first seminar using the room on Wednesday 30th January (see details of this seminar here).
A similar facility for the ECOSSE JRI is currently in the planning stage and will be sited in the Grant Institute, also at the King's Buildings campus.
More information about the e-classroom is available here.
22 January 2008
The ERPem Annual Advisory Group meeting took place on the 17/18 January, at which the ERPem Annual Report was discussed. There was very positive feedback on progress over the past year, and a report detailing advice and findings from the meeting will follow in the future.
The ERPem Director, Professor Peter Grant, would like to thank JRI members who were involved in the posters and presentations given at the meeting and would also like to thank Advisory Group members who came from as far afield as the USA.
14 December 2007
The ERPem website has been redesigned. The content of the existing website has remained, but some new links on the right-hand side of each page give information about news, events, seminars, publications and vacancies across the various research institutes that comprise ERPem. This information will hopefully be presented in a more standardised way in the future.
In the near future, the webpages of the JRIs will be updated and redesigned as well, and new sections like Research Themes will be developed.
8 November 2007
The Scottish Research Partnership in Engineering (SRPe) was launched today at an event in Glasgow.
A news article about the launch on the Heriot-Watt University website
ERPem posters from the launch event:
27 June 2007
Workshop to establish ideas for SRPe strategic themes (between ERPem, GRP and NRP) held at Heriot-Watt University. For more information see links below:-
1 December 2006
Engineering research to benefit from multi-million pound investment
SFC news release:
http://www.sfc.ac.uk/news/sfc/2006/sfcpr3506/sfcpr3506.html
December 2006
ERPem wins funding for 6th JRI
As part of the package that will fund the creation of the Glasgow Research Partnership in Engineering and the Northern Research Partnership in Engineering (and the overarching Scottish Research Partnership in Engineering), ERPem receives funding for a 6th JRI in Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Value = £1,020,000
Science and Innovation Award: Centre for Analysis and Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations
Nonlinear partial differential equations (PDE) are of universal applicability in the modelling of real-life situations from the flow of air around a wing to the behaviour of financial markets. They are also a natural language for describing the laws of mathematical physics and differential geometry. Their study poses profound intellectual challenges to pure mathematicians as well as important computational problems where accurate numerical data is required in specific applications.
Despite its international importance and intense research activity on several fronts, including important breakthroughs in recent years, the UK appears to lag behind its competitors in this area. The present proposal is to establish the Centre for Analysis and Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations, run jointly by the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University at Edinburgh.
This centre will improve the UK's current position through a number of specific actions:
- appointment of outstanding researchers in areas under-represented in the UK
- a programme of instructional workshops open to researchers in the UK and beyond
- two major research workshops on current trends and developments in nonlinear PDE
- a substantial visitor programme to bring the world's best researchers to the UK to give high-profile lectures and establish new research contacts
- development of new research links with industry and other interested parties
- development of new undergraduate and graduate courses in analysis aimed at meeting the needs of the next generation of researchers
The proposal comes from the Maxwell Institute of Mathematics, which is a new joint venture combining the strength of mathematical sciences at the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University. Funded by the Scottish Funding Council and the Office of Science and Technology, the Maxwell Institute aims to be a pre-eminent centre for research and post-graduate training in the mathematical sciences, offering an environment able to attract and foster the very best mathematical talent from around the world. The Maxwell Institute is one of five joint research initiatives, the others covering a wide range of topics in engineering and geoscience.
The present bid will take advantage of the Maxwell Institute's position alongside the other joint research initiatives to develop new collaborations and applications of nonlinear PDE in these areas. The other distinctive feature of this proposal is the presence of the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences (ICMS) which is a joint initiative of the mathematicians at Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt which was set up in 1990. Since then ICMS has developed a reputation for the running of high-level international instructional and research workshops, and the infrastructure it provides will be crucial in organizing the proposed workshops. At the same time, these workshops provide a broadening of ICMS's current activities and will add to its international reputation.
The new research grouping will be managed by a Scientific Steering Committee composed of two mathematicians from each of University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University, and also including at least one representative from industry and at least one person from overseas. The committee will be regularly consulted, especially on the workshop and visitor programmes.
Value = £1,299,378
September 2006
Bridging the Gaps Between Engineering and Mathematics in the Edinburgh Research Partnership
The Edinburgh Research Partnership in Engineering and Mathematics was established recently, linking key groups in Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt Universities. This is completely changing the research environment at the two institutions, and this period of change and realignment offers a unique opportunity to extend the commitment to multidisciplinary working in both institutions.
This project is focused on creating new collaborations between mathematical sciences and engineering through a range of pump-priming activities designed to break down the barriers (including lack of time and opportunity) to multidisciplinary collaborations, and to encourage the building of novel and lasting collaborations from the ground up. The activities include scoping workshops, working in pairs (a concentrated period for people from different subjects to work together), mathematician/engineer in residence (immersion in a different discipline) and a visitor and seminar programme.
Academic staff in the ERPem (and subject areas relevant to this call) will be encouraged to apply to our Selection Panel for backing to carry out pump-priming activities, and we will respond quickly with support for promising proposals.
Value = £388, 348