Autumn 2012

Newsletter of the School of Engineering at the University of Warwick

Welcome To the seventh edition of the School of Engineering Research Newsletter. Summer has flown by with the occasional glimpse of sunshine. As we all recuperate from Olympic fever it is time to ‘dive’ into a new academic year (or your sports metaphor of choice). This edition includes a focus on the School’s Energy research theme lead by Professor Phil Mawby. We also celebrate more grant successes and hear about summer conference highlights. If you have any stories, please email eng.research@warwick.ac.uk or see Sarah Pain in the Research Office. For latest news and updates, see the Engineering homepage.

Introduction from Professor Ian Guymer

Stop Press!

Ian was appointed as Deputy Head of School (Research) in July 2012. He also leads the University’s GPP in Sustainable Cities, including the CUSP programme, and was formerly Head of Civil Engineering.

“This past year has been a successful one for research in the School of Engineering. Staff have risen to the challenges caused by changes in the School management structure and the pressures of funding restrictions. The results are shown in a steady streams of successful grant applications, increased peer support and recruitment of top-quality academic staff. The number of applications for postgraduate places has also increased from last year. Academic staff have responded to the imminent change to EPSRC funding with a significant increase in applications over the summer, resulting in an additional internal Grant Review Panel being hastily convened!

There is no doubt that the next year will be a challenging one. As we are all too aware, funding sources are being squeezed ever tighter. Many of our major funding providers are moving towards larger, highly strategic calls. Therefore I encourage everyone to work together, foster external relationships and make the most of support facilities within School and University to enable us to exploit fully these funding opportunities. As you may know, we are currently preparing documentation for the interim REF report (due in November). It is worth noting that the provisional deadline for published papers will be early-Summer 2013 for the final 2014 submission. If you would like advice on the star ratings/rankings of journals for submissions, then please refer to Sarah Pain in the Research Office. Finally; I extend a warm welcome to staff and students who have joined us in 2012 and hope that you find the School a positive environment in which to develop and grow. The range of research topics and specialisms within the School is ever increasing, and the number of staff who are involved with the University’s GPPs in Energy, Healthcare and Sustainable Cities serve to highlight this. I am looking forward to getting to know more about the work of my colleagues and their students in my new role, and I know that the new academic year will be both busy and challenging for all of us. I am confident that we can continue to produce high quality research and make the most of the opportunities which our multi-disciplinary environment presents. “ Professor Ian Guymer Deputy Head (Research)

New funding awards Here are a selection of recent awards and new projects from the School (see ‘Energy Theme Focus’ for more)

Another winner from the Warwick IAS fund is Dr Tak Ming Chan, who achieved a China Partnership grant of over £8000 for his project ‘Performance of sustainable high strength steel and stainless steel structures under extreme loadings’. The funds will enable scoping for a new collaboration with Tsinghua University in Bejing and Tongji University in Shanghai. The three institutions share a mutual innovative research theme in sustainable materials for structural application under extreme loadings. The project aims to build industrial links with key steel companies in the UK and China.

Congratulations to Dr Theo Karavasilis on receiving his EPSRC First Grant to fund the project ‘Resilient and sustainable steel frame with innovative post-tensioned connections and rate-dependent passive dampers for multi-hazard design’.

Theo joined the School in Autumn 2011 from the University of Oxford, and leads the Resilient Structures Laboratory. The vision of his project is the development of a steel frame which can: decrease the construction cost, simple deconstruction and adaptability; enhance progressive collapse resistance and reparability against a sudden loss of column simulating bomb blast or heavy vehicle collision (terrorist attacks); and enable easy inspection/repair allowing almost immediate return to service after a strong earthquake as well as increased life safety under a very strong earthquake. The project will develop fundamental knowledge, design details and methods for the proposed steel frame by conducting integrated design, analysis and experimental research. Project partners include Arup Ltd, Edmund Booth Consulting Engineers, and the Steel Construction Institute . Theo says "the project will go beyond the state-of-the-art in the field of minimal-damage structural systems; significantly improve the UK's competitiveness in structural engineering; meet important national priorities related to sustainability and resilience; and align with EPSRC's global, economic and societal challenge themes“. For more information about the lab, visit: www.eng.warwick.ac.uk/staff/tk/researchers

Dr Mark Leeson has received £290k from the EU to support an International Outgoing Fellowship ‘Integrated Risk Governance via Spatial Complexity Inspired Models and Algorithms (IRGSCIMA)’ for Dr Xiaobing Hu, in conjunction with Beijing Normal University. This groundbreaking project will develop a methodological platform of models and algorithms for the study of Integrated Risk Governance (IRG) problems. A key element of the work will be to take account of important spatial and/or temporal features in real-world risk systems so that risk management considerations may be integrated into the development of modelling tools. The project builds on the methods developed inter alia by Dr Hu during his previous post doctoral work in the School on the EPSRC project ‘Network Coding via Evolutionary Algorithms’.

Professor Alexei Lapkin and Dr Xiaolei Fan were awarded Warwick IAS International Partnership funding of £7,600 for the networking project ‘Exploring cooperative research on nanomaterials and applied catalysts’ between Warwick and NTU. The partnership with NTU (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) was instigated by Dr Fan following a fortuitous meeting with Dr Zhili Dong at a conference in 2011.

Dr Dong’s group at NTU undertakes research in developing, synthesising and characterising novel materials, and exploring the potential applications in catalytic, environmental and biomedical processes. This work aligns with, and complements, the work of Prof Lapkin’s group as well as extending to work of colleagues within the Department of Chemistry. Future funding applications are planned, to build on the partnership beyond the two-year funding period.

Dr Tardi Tjahjardi has received £171k from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (part of the Ministry of Defence) for the project ‘ISTAR2 Support To Urban Operations: Action-triggered warning system via action recognition and activity prediction’. This exciting project aims to develop a system for using live video action to interpret the outcome of a human activity. A ‘tree’ of movements linked with possible consequences will enable advance warning of potential threat in a protected outdoor urban environment. If the sequence followed through the tree of action leads to a negative ‘intentional’ activity, such as gun-threat or planting a bomb, an alert would be triggered. Dr Tjahjardi’s funding award follows from another DSTL/MOD project: ‘ Video enhancement and automated recognition of human subjects via gait recognition and face verification’.

Research News | Autumn 12 | Pg 3

Energy Theme Focus

Congratulations to Dr Layi Alatise on the award of his EPSRC First Grant. Layi’s research will be around “Modelling the Electrothermal Stability of Silicon Carbide MOSFETs in Grid-Connected Voltage Source Converters” and the goal is to model and characterize thermal runaway in fast switching SiC (Silicon Carbide) MOSFETs (metal-oxide-semi-conductor field-effect transistors) as a basis for predicting the reliability of voltage-source converters (VSC) in grid connected systems. The novelty lies in the coupling of electrothermal and thermo-mechanical degradation models for predictive reliability modelling taking account of semiconductor process variability and converter mission profile. The proposal is partially based on a recently accepted IEEE Electron Device Letters publication by Layi (where certain criteria for electro-thermal stability were presented) as well as previous research he undertook in industry (NXP Semiconductors). The programme of research is broken down into several work packages and the methods involve both theoretical modelling and experimental characterization. The deliverable is a reliability estimation/ prediction capability, and project partners include ALSTOM Grid and Dynex Semiconductors.

During Year 2, the aim is to broaden the partnership and establish a wider cross-university interaction in the energy area, aligning with Warwick’s Energy GPP strategy. The Energy research at NTU is well developed and integrated across the University and the two institutions will learn a great deal from each other. It will also provide an opportunity to open up discussions with Rolls-Royce (who have recently built a $1b state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Singapore) and to highlight the aerospace research currently being undertaken at the University. Prof Mawby has also received a Warwick IAS Frontiers Award of £3700 for the project ‘Wide band gap semiconductor materials and structures for power electronics in energy technologies’. Professor Li Ran has received funds from the Royal Academy of Engineering under the Distinguished Visiting Fellowship, and also from Warwick Institute of Advanced Study (total of £6300). These funds will support collaborative visits by Professor James Kirtley of Massachusetts Institute of Technology with the focus on future electrical power systems.

Professor Jihong Wang has continued her award success with a grant from EPSRC of £300k for the project ‘New Control Methodology for the Next Generation of Engine Management Systems’. This ambitious three-year joint project with the University of Birmingham, also includes partnerships with JLR, Tata, Ford and SAIC. The overall goal is to combine expertise in engine technology, control technology and computing algorithms to develop and test a new engine control and calibration methodology with on-line intelligence built in. The project will provide advancements to industry at an international level, as well as contributing to the reduction of global energy consumption and promoting environmental protection.

Work within the Energy Research Theme, lead by Professor Phil Mawby, has gone from strength-to-strength in the past few months. Here is a round-up of recent news and award success.

Prof Mawby (left) with some of his team

Phil Mawby has been successful in winning funding from the International Partnerships scheme – an internal fund administered by the International Office. The project will support a series of visits to Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore over a two year period, from August 2012. The aim of the planned partnership is to allow a two-way exchange of knowledge leading initially to collaborations in the area of electrical power and power electronics (Year 1). The partnership will also look to develop joint research projects (funded by Singapore) and to have jointly supervised research students. Particular areas of mutual interest are: • More energy-efficient data centres, for example using dc power distribution and ambient temperature operation requiring higher temperature electronics; • Lowering the costs of solar PV systems; • Higher temperature power electronic systems to reduce cooling needs

Jo Tuck joined the School of Engineering in early spring, but with her base down in the Science City suite, you might not have met her yet. Here is a brief introduction, along with where you can find her:

After graduating with a Masters degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Leeds, Jo worked for Arup for several years. On leaving industry, she came to work at the University of Warwick in 2004 and initially worked with WMG as a project manager. Jo then went on to work as a Research Development Officer within RSS supporting many departments across the Faculty of Science. She was also the administrative lead on several high profile applications including some of the Science City projects.

In April this year, Jo moved to the School of Engineering to provide senior administrative support to Professor Phil Mawby and his team. Her role involves project managing large inter-institutional projects as well as seeking out and supporting potential funding opportunities to develop and enhance the group's funding portfolio and facilities. Jo sits in D0.32 and can be contacted on extension 75492.

Energy Theme Focus

In July, a team of researchers from the Power and Control Systems Research Laboratory (part of the Energy Conversion Research Group within the School) visited Tsinghua University and North China Electric Power University in Beijing. The team comprises two staff (Prof Wang, Dr Jacek Wojcik) and three PhD students (Shen Guo, Mihai Draganescu and Yue Wang).

The visit was organised as part of scheduled activities of two UK-China joint EPSRC collaborative research projects in thermal power plant modelling, simulation and control. The aims were to review project progress, having face-to-face discussions, work on development of simulation software, exchangie research ideas, hold joint student workshops, visit research facilities and a power plant.

Prof Junfu Lv, Prof Qirui Gao and Dr Yali Xue arranged all the activities at Tsinghua; Prof Xiangjie Liu and Prof Guolian Hou organised activities at North China Electric Power University.

Student collaboration at Tsinghua

The visit was kicked off by the first joint workshop at Tsinghua University on 2nd July. Around thirty research students attended the workshop with ten presentations contributed from two universities. The second joint workshop was held at North China Electric Power University on 5th July. The research students from three universities have had interesting and active interactive discussions; this will, no doubt, lead to more student exchange activities in the future. The Warwick team has visited the research laboratories and power system simulation facilities at both Universities.

lunches, dinners, accommodations, tours around the campuses, demonstration of research facilities and the long journey trip to the power plant. PhD student, Mihai Draganescu, said “I have to admit that I had my worries before leaving to China, thinking that it is so far away in distance and culture from Europe, but once I got there the warm welcome from our hosts wiped out every bit of my concerns. I was mostly impressed by the technologic level of the research equipment from North China Electric Power University. It was a fruitful experience both for our research project and for my culture, the only thing that still needs to be tackled is the hot weather and the increased humidity in the air.” Yue Wang, a PhD student who graduated from Tsinghua University, said: “Aiming to chase the dream of clean coal technology and low carbon future, I joined the trip to China. I was so pleased to come back to Tsinghua working on a UK-China joint research project. It is so nice to have lunch in the student canteen again!” It was a great opportunity to make new contacts for students and researchers, get better ideas of the industry needs, host face to face discussion for problem solving and discuss further collaboration as well as future grant applications. During the visit, Prof. Wang met the Director of International Office at Tsinghua University, Professor Yi Zhang, to explore potential opportunities to extend the current research collaboration between the research groups to school or university level. It’s clear that exciting research will come out of the ongoing collaboration – watch this space for more news.

Thanks to Professor Junfu Lv at Tsinghua University and his partnership with power industry, the team was invited to visit Cangdong Thermal Power Plant (part of Shenhua Guohua Power Group) in Hebei province. The power plant has two supercritical and two subcritical power generation units with the total generation capacity of 2.52GW. There are no supercritical power plants in the UK so this was a unique opportunity for the team from the UK to strengthen their understanding to supercritical power generation process.

Cangdong Thermal Power Plant The group’s enthusiastic hosts gave an excellent overview of the entire power plant process and a guided tour of the facility. The plant has the largest seawater desalination facility operating with the power plant – currently the company has formed a production scale of 33 000 tons of fresh water per day. As Dr Wojcik said “For everyone who went on the tour, it was an inspiring experience”. The weather was hot on that day, over 350C. On the way back to Beijing, the air conditioning system of the bus was out of order. The team had a chance to taste six different flavour ice lollies so the journey was turned to fun and unforgettable memory! In the second and third weeks, the three PhD students continuously worked together with Tsinghua University on solving the problems encountered in modelling supercritical power plant process and tuning the process simulator. All the team members greatly appreciated the great effort made from the partner universities for organising workshops,

Professor Jihong Wang has continued to develop her collaborative work with key universities in China. She has provided Research News with an exciting summary of a recent visit undertaken by her group. Photographs by Prof Wang and Dr Wojcik

Research News | Autumn 12 | Pg 5

Warwick hosts ICTON 2012

In 2008, Professor Roger Green offered to host the 14th Annual International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks (ICTON 2012). In July of this year, after 15 months of planning, the conference took place at the University of Warwick. Around 350 delegates from 40 countries across the globe joined the four-day event on the University campus in the first week of July.

The conference was a team effort between members of the School of Engineering and the National Institute of Telecommunications (Warsaw). Professor Marian Marciniak leads the team from the NIT in Poland, and is Chairman of ICTON. He provided this report of the event for Research News:

“ICTON 2012 was kindly hosted at the University of Warwick, School of Engineering. That happened following a kind invitation received from Professor Roger J. Green, Head of ComSysLab.

Owing to the devotion of ICTON 2012 General Chair Professor Green as well as that of his colleagues: Prof. Mark Leeson, Sarah Pain, Debbie Savage, Nicola Peel (HG3), Belvie Maxwell (HG3) and finally Warwick students; ICTON 2012 was extremely successful in view of technical contents, excellent logistics, and an extensive social programme.

The UK national attendance has to be especially emphasised. The main research centres working on photonics have contributed with their recent results.

The Opening Plenary session under an excellent chairmanship of Professor Polina Bayvel from University College London has been filled-in entirely by brilliant talks from UK:

• Peter Cochrane from Cochrane Associates shared with the audience his exciting visions about ‘Clear sighted transparency’; •Allan D. Boardman from Joule Physics Laboratory, University of Salford reported great advances in ‘Nonlinear and Magnetooptic Light Control in Photonic Metamaterial Waveguides and Superfocusing’; •Mauro F. Pereira from Materials and Engineering Research Institute, Sheffield Hallam University reported on ‘Impact of Intersubband Dispersive Gain in Semiconductor Quantum Optics’.

On the same day, an excellent review on ‘The Optical Fibre Internet: Where Next?’ was presented by David Payne, Director of Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton.

ICTON is known to be a community, not just a conference. The technical success of the Warwick event together with the offered opportunities of informal and friendly interactions during the extensive social programme has strengthened that community and allowed new

opportunities to enhance the international cooperation in Transparent Optical Networking field. ICTON is a collective effort and a collective success.

I have to specially acknowledge the spirit of cooperation the General Chair and the Warwick team have shown to Warsaw Organising Committee, to IEEE Photonics Society Poland Chapter Chair Prof. Elzbieta M Beres Pawlik, and to myself.

We have not to forget the valuable opportunity to see the Olympic torch passing by Warwick offered to ICTON participants at the beginning of the Conference!”

Thales Research kindly awarded funding prizes for two Warwick students to attend the conference. Research papers were judged by Dr Mark Leeson, Prof. Roger Green and Prof. Chris Firth (Chief Scientist at Thales & Honorary Professor at the School of Engineering). Papers submitted by PhD students Sandy Taramonli and Terry Lin were judged to be of highest merit and they were awarded the funding prize.

Speaking after the conference, Professor Green said that: “Delegates reported much appreciating the Warwick hospitality, in spite of the worst weather the British climate could throw at us all!”. Fortunately the rain broke long enough for conference organiser Sarah Pain to take the traditional group photo.

And Finally...

Postgraduate news

Congratulations to our latest postgraduate research students who have been approved in September 2012 for graduation

Dr Rami Zakaria has completed his PhD on ‘Jet Spray Characterisation Using Optical Methods’ under supervisors Prof Bryanston-Cross and Dr Brenda Timmerman

Dr Harita Joshi has completed her PhD on ‘Modulation for Optical Wireless Communication Systems’ under supervisors Prof Green and Dr Leeson.

Dr Christopher Jones has completed his PhD on ‘Development and Characterisation of Traceable Force Measurement for Nanotechnology’, under supervisor Prof Chetwynd.

Dr Michael Asante has completed his PhD on ‘Numerical Modelling of Nosocomial Infections in a Multi-bed Ward Environment’, under supervisor Dr Chung.

We wish all our graduands the very best in their future careers!

In the first of our series of PhD conference reports, student Hiep Vu Dang told Research News about his experiences at a recent conference in Denmark. I was fortunate to be sponsored by EPSRC and the School of Engineering (University of Warwick) to join the Expert Scientific Meeting (ESM) in Aalborg, Denmark in August 2012. The remit of this biennial conference, established more than 20 years ago, is research into dynamic load distribution in human body. This year, ESM 2012 had about 70 scientific presentations with a wide range of topics. Attendees were from different backgrounds including academia, software developers, medical researchers, and health advisors. At the conference, I joined a tour around the bio-mechanics labs at the University of Aalborg. As my research topic is related to analysis of walking locomotion, I found it very useful to learn how the labs in Aalborg are set up, what facilities they have, and what research subjects they are currently working on. This provided me with an overview of the research from biomechanical and medical perspective, complementing my research experience in structural engineering context.

My contribution to ESM 2012 was a presentation related to evaluating feasibility of modelling interaction between pedestrians and lively structures through combining a biomechanical model of human walking and structural dynamics knowledge (see picture left) After the presentation, I was approached by some attendees interested in the topic, and we had chances to discuss further my methodology and results. This experience enhanced my confidence in public speaking and my communications skills. Discussing my research with researchers outside structural engineering community, such as experts in biomechanics, provides me with some fresh insight into my research area and interesting ideas that I can apply in my future work. Attendees at ESM 2012 had ample time for networking (See picture below). Through various activities at the conference, I got acquainted with young researchers from other institutions. Knowing about other people's achievements and work progress and exchanging the ideas is a great source of inspiration for my own research. Overall, participating in ESM 2012 was a great research, networking and social experience for me.

Research News | Autumn 12 | Pg 7

Funding Opportunities

Here is a selection of upcoming funding opportunities. Brief introductions can be found below; see the funding calendar online for more information, as well as details of other new additions:

go.warwick.ac.uk/engcalendar

Research Office F306, extension 23610

eng.research@warwick.ac.uk

EU ERC Advanced Grant ERC Advanced Grants support the very

best research to be conducted in EU Member States and Associated

Countries. They provide an opportunity for established, innovative and active

scientists and scholars to pursue ground-breaking, high-risk research

that opens new directions in any field of their choice regardless of nationality,

age or current location. Closing Date: 22 Nov 2012

FP7 work programme deadlines

Transport: 14 Nov 2012

Security: 22 Nov 2012

Energy: 28 Nov 2012

ICT: 15Jan 2013

KBBE: 5 Feb 2013

Visit go.warwick.ac.uk/engfundinginfo

for FP7 summaries and more details

Research Fellowships Open to experienced researchers, particularly those who are or have been prevented by routine duties from completing a programme of

original research. Closing date: 8 Nov 12

Research Project Grants

These awards provide financial support for innovative and original

research projects of high quality and potential, the choice of theme

and the design of the research lying entirely with the applicant

(the PI). Closing date: 1 Dec 12

International Networks

These collaborations enable a Principal Investigator based in the

UK to lead a research project where its successful completion is dependant on the participation of

relevant overseas institutions. Closing date: 1 Dec 12

Innovative Engineering for Health

The Wellcome Trust and the EPSRC are looking to support a limited number of innovative,

multi-disciplinary projects designed to address a defined need in healthcare for which

current solutions are inadequate or lacking.

Closing date: 10 Dec 2012

Sir Henry Dale Fellowship For outstanding post-doctoral scientists wishing to build their

own UK-based, independent research career addressing an important biomedical question

Closing date: 1 Nov 2012

Brian Mercer Feasibility Award This scheme is for scientists who wish to investigate the

feasibility of commercialising an aspect of their research. The

scheme provides initial support of up to £30,000 to test the

feasibility of a project, enabling applicants to investigate the

technical and economic feasibility of commercialising an

aspect of their scientific research, possibly in

conjunction with a third party. No closing date – 8 awards are

available per financial year.

Faculty for the Future

The Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future program, launched in 2004, awards fellowships to women from developing and emerging economies to

pursue PhD or post-doctoral studies in the physical sciences, engineering and technology at leading universities abroad.

For full details on the scheme and the eligibility requirements, visit www.facultyforthefuture.net

Applications accepted: 10 Sep - 09 Nov 2012