College of Engineering and Physical Sciences
Newsletter – February 2012
Commentary - Big Science is Big News for EPS
“This month I visited CERN, along with some
staff and students from School of Physics. It
highlighted for me the significance of the
University’s contribution to the development of
the Large Hadron Collider and our direct role in
the unfolding story of the hunt for the Higgs
boson particle - of which we have heard so much
in the news lately. Some of the history of our
involvement in CERN is featured in Buzz
magazine this month.
Along with the Vice Chancellor and some alumni
guests one could not be anything other than
amazed at the scale and quality of the science
and engineering. However the most astonishing
thing is that this long term project of such
enormous complexity has been achieved in a
European consortium and maintained the
principles of openness and transparency of
access to data and scholarship.
Birmingham alumnus Dr Mick Storr, explaining
the 27km helium filled tunnel pipe
Over 80,000 people visit CERN each year.
Over coming months we can all join in
continuing to celebrate the role of our
physics staff in the past and future research
at CERN. We may also like to look for new
ways of using these achievements and
contacts to bridge across into other Schools
in the College.
Vice Chancellor, prof. David Charlton and
guests outside the superstructure of ATLAS
We were fortunate enough to see the inside of
ALICE and ATLAS and to become acquainted
with some of the trigger technologies assembled
in the basement of the Poynting Building here at
Birmingham. We saw the new work at the CERN
Space Centre, as detectors (Alpha Magnetic
Spectrometer) now orbit Earth every 90 minutes also hunting for sub-atomic particle phenomena.
We met several other staff who were Birmingham
graduates, research students and one of our new
Birmingham Fellows, who (apart from being
rather good skiers I would suspect) were
passionate about their mission.
Dr David Evans explaining experimental
procedures at ALICE
EPS has been pioneering big Engineering
too - closer to home - in the form of the
establishment of the Manufacturing
Technology Centre . I hope that staff and
partners will be able to join me in a more
social occasion on 20 March in a open
evening and dinner. I look forward to seeing
many people there.”
Richard A Williams
People news
Staff news
Awards, grants and appointments
KeeHyun Kim from the School of Metallurgy and Materials has received the
'Best Paper Award' from a professional journal (not in a conference) published
by ASM International in 2010. It was the best paper of several hundreds of
papers published in 2010.This month Advanced Materials and
Processes magazine covered the ceremony and the article is available online.
Dr Susana Gutierrez has been awarded a significant EPSRC research grant:
"Singular vortex dynamics and nonlinear Schrodinger equations".
Dr Chris Good has been successful in being awarded a Marie Curie
Fellowship to bring a researcher into the School.
Professor Kamel Hawwash has been elected as Chair of the Association of
Civil Engineering Departments (ACED) for 2012-13. As part of its activities
ACED’s annual conference will be coming to the University of Birmingham in
the Autumn of 2013.
In the News
Professor Russell Beale featured in the Daily Mail in a piece about the world’s
browsing history, discussing how much the web has changed over time (18
January 2012.)
Dr Simon Goodwin (Mathematics) appeared on the BBC 6 o’clock News (9
February 2012), BBC 10 o’clock news and five slots on the BBC News
Channel discussing the probability of winning the Euromillions lottery in
Nottinghamshire as two couples have won in the county in the last two months.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01bsq11/BBC_News_at_Six_09_02_20
12/
Student Alina Burma was featured in USA Today having created the world’s
smallest valentine from gold atoms. This was also covered on the Discovery
Channel, International Business Times, Popular Science, PhysOrg and Yahoo
News (14 February 2012).
Professor Paul Newman’s (Physics) particle physics collaboration with Jammu
University in India appeared in the Deccan Herald (14 February 2012).
Welcome to:
EPS College
Sarah Myring
Hub Admin Assistant
Chemistry
•Mr Shahid Ali
Marie Curie Early Stage
Research Assistant
•Dr Etienne Baranoff
Birmingham Fellow
•Dr Mark Read
Lecturer
Civil Engineering
Mr Mark Carter
Public Health Engineering
Technician and School
Health and Safety Coordinator
Computer Science
•Dr Jia Liu
Research Fellow
•Professor Shishir
Nagaraja
Lecturer
•Mr Thomas White
Research Associate
Electronic, Electrical and
Computer Engineering
Mr Jeff Powell
Research Fellow
Marketing drop in sessions
Drop in sessions have been scheduled to provide an opportunity for you to get
to know the wider Marketing team and explore opportunities for you to promote
your area to a range of different audiences. The drop in sessions will be held
once a month in the College and the next session will take place on Tuesday
6 March 9.30am to 12.00 in the EPS Hub. If you would like to find out more
about the work the team does to promote the University’s strengths or how it
can help you to communicate your area of work or expertise to audiences
including students, staff, local community, businesses, research partners, other
universities, media, influencers and policy makers please drop in and meet
them.
Mechanical Engineering
•Dr Jose Martin Herreros
Research Fellow
•Dr Aziza Mahomed
Marie Curie Experienced
Researcher
Physics and Astronomy
Dr Kenton Arkill
Research Fellow
People news
Ben Clarke celebrates BUAFTA win!
Ben Clarke who works in the School of
Electronic, Electrical and Computer
Engineering, won the BUAFTA for Best
Support for our Working Environment at the
2012 ceremony. We spoke to Ben about
working at the University and winning the
award .
I’ve worked in my current role for four years.
There are two strands to the position,
Academic Administration Officer and Teaching
Operations Co-ordinator. I love the immediacy
of dealing with staff and students, solving
current problems and anticipating new ones.
The dynamic aspect of the role is something
that I really enjoy. I am also very passionate
about working for the University, I’m an
Alumnus myself, and I love the feeling of
working for an organisation that serves a
purpose, the overall motivation is to better the
students rather than to make a profit. I can’t
really say that there is anything that I dislike
about my role; the only thing that can cause
frustration is that there aren’t enough hours in
the day! You sometimes come up with a
fantastic idea but just do not have the time to
implement it so you have to find an alternative
way.
Winning the BUAFTA was an amazing feeling.
I’ve been nominated before and so have
attended the ceremony on previous occasions;
you go to enjoy a nice evening but try not to
expect anything. I was actually filming the
event on my phone when they called my
name. I wanted to capture the little film that is
played before they announce the winner, that
way I’d have a memento even if I didn't win
and then they said my name!
It’s quite a surreal moment one minute I was
sat filming, waiting for the winner to get on
stage, the next I’m making my way to the
podium to collect my award and then being
whisked away for a photograph, it was over in
a flash but for that moment when you are up
on stage and everyone is looking at you
acknowledging your hard work and applauding
you, the feeling is unbelievable, it’s something
I’ll never forget.
“Everyone is looking at you
acknowledging your hard work
and applauding you... it’s
something I’ll never forget”
The nice thing about being in a student facing
role is that I also received lots of lovely emails
from students offering their congratulations as
well as from my colleagues. Its quite a specific
award (Best Support for our Working
Environment) and definitely something I’ll
always be proud of, I just have to think about
where to display it now. I might have to source
a nice display cabinet!
To see the full list of 2012 BUAFTA winners
visit the website.
College News
Working with UK Science & Discovery Centres
The Midlands and East Anglia Spoke of the
HEFCE/HEFCW funded National HE STEM
Programme at Birmingham is working in
collaboration with national Science & Discovery
Centres on a flagship project to develop
groundbreaking ways of giving young people, their
parents and educators access to dynamic,
inspirational role models using a delivery
mechanism which is unique to UK public venues.
In Spring 2012 the National Space Centre,
Leicester will be the first UK Science and Discovery
Centre to have a new permanent exhibition
focussing on inspirational individuals from all walks
of life sharing their experience of the journey
through education and into the workforce. Using
multi-user, multi-touch tables visitors are able to
simultaneously access thirty-two pieces of
information via various mediums to create a
personalised experience of the rewarding career
opportunities available through studying Science,
Technology, Engineering or Mathematics. Users
can share the information with colleagues or family
members across the table or, package it for
reference at home/school later.
Various examples are included to engage young
people, from inventors and entrepreneurs to experts
in voice morphing techniques.
All examples highlight unexpected ways of using
STEM subjects in the workplace. Annette Smart,
the Programme’s Midlands and East Anglia Spoke
Regional Officer for Widening Participation and
Outreach said ‘A young lady recently summed it up
for us. She is the first in her family to go to
university. Many pupils from her school did not go
to university and even less chose to study a science
subject at ‘A’ level. She now has an idea of how her
studies affect her everyday life’.
Successful negotiations with a second regional
venue are being concluded. The project remains on
schedule for a major national launch of the new
resources at The National Space Centre in May
with facilities being fully available at both venues by
summer 2012.
e-marketplace … a new way of buying
After a successful pilot at the end of 2011, the
University’s Procurement and Finance Office
Systems Teams are now working with Finance leads
in Colleges and Corporate Services to roll out the
University’s new e-requisitioning and e-marketplace
system. This is an exciting project for all involved and
is fully supported by the University’s Executive
Board. When fully operational the system will benefit
all members of staff who are involved in some way in
the buying process, from identifying a need, through
finding a supplier to authorising an invoice.
The e-marketplace is a very similar concept to
Amazon and other on-line shopping experiences,
providing access to selected supplier catalogues and
enabling us to easily purchase from them
electronically. For the available catalogues it will
make the process of requisitioning and buying an
easy online process. The catalogues will be up-todate with current University pricing,
delivery information and real time product availability
from suppliers that are able to make this available. It
gives users the ability to fill a shopping basket with
goods and checkout back into the University’s
purchasing and commitment accounting system
(Proactis), then following an authorisation process
which results in the order being sent electronically to
the supplier. The e-requisitioning and e-marketplace
system will replace the current paper based systems
and make the entire purchasing process quicker and
more accurate. Training has started for Engineering and
Physical Sciences and will continue over the next
couple of weeks and if required you will be contacted
and offered the opportunity to attend a drop in session
for requisitioner and authoriser role training.
If you would like more information about the emarketplace please go to
http://www.finance.bham.ac.uk/purchasing/ or speak to
Anna Jenkin, or Helen Foster in Procurement.
College News
Brazil initiatives – An update
UoB Engagement
A working group on Brazil was established in the
Autumn with representatives from each of the
Colleges. The group meets regularly to oversee and
progress the University’s engagement with Brazil,
including planned Workshops on Bio-Energy and Oil
and Gas. A third workshop on the Olympic Legacy is
under development and colleagues are asked to
contact Nathan Hughes in CoSS
n.j.hughes@bham.ac.uk if they are interested in
contributing to this event. The PhD scholarship
scheme which provides 10 fully funded UoB PhD
scholarships for students from Brazil in 2012-13 was
launched on the CAPES website all
interested applicants are invited to submit their PhD
application to Birmingham by visiting this site.
Selections for the Brazil Visiting Fellows Scheme
have now taken place. There are still a couple of
places available on the April-June scheme, so
anyone with interested early career researcher
contacts in Brazil who would like to take advantage
of this opportunity should contact Matthew Reeve
m.c.reeve@bham.ac.uk for further information.
Science Without Borders
Colleagues will recall that the Brazilian
government has committed to sending up to
10,000 undergraduate and PhD students to the UK
over the next four years through their Science
without Borders Scheme. Students will spend
nine months studying or undertaking research,
followed by a three month placement in industry or
project supervised at the host University. UUK
have now negotiated for 77 UK institutions,
including Birmingham, to receive these scholars,
with the first cohort of students applying for study
in September 2012. The majority of students will
study at undergraduate level (around 1150 p.a. to
the UK) but it is predicted that there will be around
600 PhD occasional students (who will spend a
year at a host institution in the UK as part of their
Brazilian PhD) and 125 full time PhD students per
annum. Institutions will receive £15k per annum
per student to cover tuition fees, student support,
accommodation and the costs of the industrial
placement or supervised University project. The
Brazilian government will cover living and travel
costs.This is actually a significant achievement by
UUK as initially the Brazilian government were
against paying any tuition fees. UUK are still
finalising the common application process
including the identification of an agency to place
the students at their UK institution and are
developing with the input of partner universities an
FAQ which will be circulated once available.
Building industry links
Adopting
the Student-led Employability Audit Toolkit
In order to ensure that the opportunities available at UoB are promoted to attract a good cohort of students, it is
important to identify research groups and projects where we would like to receive science without borders
occasional and full time PhD students.
It will not be possible for institutions to charge additional bench fees or consumables for these students, but
applications
willCivil
be Engineering
processed through the occasional study abroad scheme so Schools will receive up to £8,000
The School of
per
student.
UUK
are
has made a successfulin discussion with corporate organisations to try to secure additional funding for PhD
scholarships
BGthe
Group have already committed to supporting 400 scholarships for Brazilian students, but at
application toand
adopt
this
stage
the
exact
details
are unknown, so it will be important to align these scholars with existing research
'Measuring the extent to which
projects
.
For
further
information
employability skills are embeddedvisit the website.
within existing degree
programmes through a studentled employability audit'
School News
Chemistry
Research Grant Success in Chemistry
In the past 2 months, four researchers in the
School of Chemistry have been successful in
attracting EPSRC funding and Marie Curie
fellowships.
Dr Anna Peacock was awarded an EPSRC
First Grant “Ferrocene-peptide adducts for
DNA binding: Towards sequence-selective
electrochemical DNA sensors”. The project will
look at coupling biological recognition motifs
with electrochemically active ferrocene in an
effort to develop functional peptide adducts.
Two Marie Curie fellowships have been
awarded to join Dr Paul Davies’ research
group. Building on the group’s recent
developments, the fellows will be exploiting the
use of gold catalysis to synthesise key
molecular building blocks for bioactive and
functional materials, and in the design of new
bifunctional catalyst structures.
Dr John Fossey was awarded an EPSRC first
grant at the end of 2011 which will allow him to
develop new types of dyes for use in solar
cells. He has also been successful in attracting
European funding in the form of a Marie Curie
International Incoming Fellowship allowing
investigation into catalytic sensors. This novel
approach will deliver catalysts that are also
sensors for their own efficacy, which will be useful
in reaction optimisation for rapid drug synthesis.
Professor Roy Johnston is the PI on a 5 year
EPSRC Critical Mass Grant: "TOUCAN: Towards
an Understanding of CAtalysis on Nanoalloys",
which is a collaboration between computational
groups at the Universities of Birmingham,
Cambridge, Oxford, Kings College London and
University College, London. The grant will enable
the combination of a variety of theoretical methods
and simulation techniques to study catalytic
processes on bimetallic nanoparticles and to
design new catalysts with improved reactivity and
selectivity.
L-R Professor Roy Johnston, Dr John Fossey , Dr Paul Davies and Dr Anna Peacock
School News
Civil Engineering
Making sure that urban development remains
sustainable – whatever the future brings
In the considerable discussion over the ‘presumption
in favour of sustainable development’ in the National
Planning Framework proposals and what exactly is
‘sustainable development’ there has been little
discussion about how to ensure that the decisions we
make today remain sustainable – whatever the future
brings.
Given that the majority of our population live in urban
areas, we have to do whatever we can to make sure
that the decisions we take today do not lead to a
negative future legacy.
Led by the University of Birmingham, a group of
universities have developed an innovative approach to
help planners, councillors and communities make
decisions that are more likely to remain sustainable
over the longer term with a toolkit of scenarios against
which the impact and robustness of today’s decisions
can be judged.
A solution that remains robust and resilient after being
tested against four possible future scenarios is more
likely to remain sustainable over the longer term. Any
that fail the test can be examined to see how they
might be improved.
The changes outlined in the Localism Act make it even
more important that future sustainability is considered
upfront. It will be important to give support to
communities when they are drawing up a
neighbourhood plan as they will be able to use
neighbourhood planning to grant full or outline
planning permission in areas where they most want to
see new homes and businesses provided it is in line
with national planning policy, legal requirements, the
strategic vision set by the local authority and approved
by a local referendum. The highly visual methodology
developed by Urban Futures should help community
members produce more robust and resilient plans.
A practitioner guide is to be published with
BRE. The Guide titled Designing Resilient
Cities: A Guide to Good Practice will be
launched on the 18th April 2012 at an early
evening event at the prestigious Hoare
Memorial Hall, Church House, Westminster,
London (3.00 – 5.30pm). Registration is now
open. For more details contact the organiser:
Joanne Leach, Urban Futures Project Manager
on Email: j.leach@bham.ac.uk or email:
joanne@joanneleach.co.uk. Tel: 0121 414
3544; Mob: 07785 792 187. Web:
http://www.urban-futures.org
The Urban Futures team is a research project
funded by EPSRC led by the University of
Birmingham, and includes the Universities of
Exeter, Lancaster, Birmingham City and
Coventry.
School News
Electronic, Electrical & Computer Engineering
EECE welcome VIP
The School of Electronic, Electrical & Computer
Engineering hosted a VIP visit recently when the
Deputy Minister of Labour, Health & Social Affairs
from the sovereign state of Georgia travelled to
Birmingham specifically to discuss future
collaboration in the medical simulation arena. One
of only four institutions visited in Europe,
Dr Mikheil Dolidze was highly complimentary
about EECE’s research record and international
standing in simulation and virtual
environments and expressed a strong desire to
form collaborative links with the aim of establishing
a new medical simulation centre in Georgia over
the coming year. Accompanied by Professor
Kaloinai, a top Georgian anaesthesiologist and the
country’s technical authority for the new centre,
Dr Dolidze was provided with a comprehensive
overview of the School’s current virtual
environment and “serious games” projects by Prof.
Bob Stone, including the new post-trauma and
rehabilitation research being conducted in
conjunction with the Royal Centre for Defence
Medicine and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Prof.
Stone then took the visitors to the Hollier Simulation
Centre at Good Hope Hospital (a Centre closely
linked to the simulation research of the School),
where they were able to witness a medical training
and debrief exercise using the Centre’s advanced
interactive mannequin systems.
HIT Team deliver simulation and visualisation solutions to the
Australian Defence Force
The School of Electronic, Electrical & Computer
Engineering’s Human Interface Technologies
(HIT) Team, led by Prof. Bob Stone, has been
selected by the Australian Defence
Company Sydac to support the delivery of
human-centred simulation and advanced
visualisation solutions to the Australian Defence
Force. The relationship between the
organisations was first established about 3
years ago and has developed steadily since.
The HIT Team is an important member
of Sydac's Team that includes a major US
Defence contractor, established to deliver
solutions for the Australian Defence Simulation
Modernisation Program through the Defence
Simulation Services Panel. The Defence
Simulation Modernisation Program is a major
initiative by the Australian Defence Organisation
and includes Joint Project 3028, a visionary
program to establish an enterprise-wide
simulation environment that commands a
budget of AUD500m plus and the personal
support of the Chief of Defence Force.
Recently working with Sydac, the HIT Team
made a major contribution to an interactive
simulation initiative pursued by the Australian
Army, and is currently teamed with Sydac on
a proposal to provide 3D Modelling and
Interactive Simulation guidance to the Royal
Australian Navy. The HIT Team's experience
with the Royal Navy and their role within a
range of UK human capability research
initiatives, including the Human Factors
Integration Defence Technology Centre
(www./hfidtc.com), were key discriminators in
this proposal and will strengthen in the
relationship going forward.
College life
College opportunities
Birmingham Enterprise
Network
Marketing yourself and your
idea
The next meeting of the
Birmingham Enterprise Network
(aimed at academics and
researchers) will be led by
Professor Jo Bradwell founder of
The Binding Site.
The meeting takes place
Wednesday 7 March 2012 12.002.00pm at the Institute of R&D,
Birmingham Research Park.
The network is a new initiative to
help academics and researchers
who are involved in business
collaboration and delivering
commercial outputs from research
to have a forum where they can get
together over lunch and discuss
issues that affect them.
To register to attend this event
please contact Debbie White:
d.white.3@bham.ac.uk
This workshop will be led by
Steve Jolliffe from Start2Finish
Marketing and Steve will be
working through the process of
developing an effective market
strategy.
This will be of use for researchers
who want to look at marketing
themselves and their idea to
potential business collaborators;
along with those who are involved
in spinning out companies,
consultancy and any other sort of
commercial development.
The workshop takes place
Wednesday 14 March
2012,12.00-2.00 pm at the
Institute of R&D, Birmingham
Research Park
For more information please
contact Debbie White:
d.white.3@bham.ac.uk
Newton international
fellowships Royal Society,
GB and other sponsors
This scheme enables earlystage postdoctoral researchers
from all over the world to work
at UK research institutions for
a period of two years. Funding
consists of £24,000 per annum
for subsistence costs, up to
£8,000 per annum for research
expenses and a one-off
payment of up to £2,000 for
relocation costs. Fellows may
also be eligible to receive up to
£6,000 annually for up to 10
years following completion of
the fellowship to support
networking activities with UKbased researchers. The
Closing date 16 April 2012.
For more information visit
http://www.newtonfellowships.o
rg/
College Calendar
March
April
College Committees
Tuesday 6 PGR
Wednesday 7 Quality Assurance
Wednesday 21 Education
College Committees
Monday 5 Resources
School Committees
Wednesday 28 Chemistry
Other dates
College Board
Tuesday 13 March
Other dates
College Board
Wednesday 18 April
University wide dates
March
Wednesday 14 Senate
Thursday 22 Spring term ends
April
Friday 6 Closed Day
Monday 9 Closed Day
Tuesday10 Closed Day
Wednesday 11 Closed Day
Monday 23 Summer term
begins
Contact
If you have any suggestions for College Newsletter or intranet content or if you would like to be added
as a contributor for future updates please contact Hayley Davis- Interim Internal Communications
Officer E: h.davis@bham.ac.uk