online final 31 - Imperial College London

Imperial news_Engineering
Prime Minister views
innovative health technology
The benefits of applying technological
know-how to patient care were
demonstrated to the Prime Minister,
Gordon Brown, at Imperial College in
October 2007. Sir Richard Sykes and
Lord Ara Darzi, Professor of Surgery
and Department of Health
Parliamentary Under Secretary, took
the Prime Minister on a tour of the
College’s newly launched Institute of
Biomedical Engineering.
The Prime Minister took a special interest in the virtual operating
theatre used for cardiac microsurgery. The College’s Director of
Medical Imaging, Professor Guang-Zhong Yang, discussed the
applications of robotic surgical devices whilst Lord Darzi carried out a
virtual medical procedure in front of Mr Brown.
This was the first visit by Mr Brown to a UK university since becoming
Prime Minister. It followed the launch of the Imperial College Healthcare
NHS Trust, the UK’s first Academic Health Science Centre, formed
through the merger of Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust, St Mary’s NHS
Trust and Imperial College. You can read more about this on page 18.
IAN GILLETT
A new vision is outlined for
engineering education
The Minister of State for Science and
Innovation, Ian Pearson, along with
leaders in industry and academia
gathered for the Global Sustainability:
the future for engineering education
forum to discuss the direction of UK
undergraduate engineering.
In partnership with Arup, BP,
Engineers Against Poverty, the Institute
of Education and Schlumberger,
Imperial held the high-level strategy
forum to set the agenda for changes
that will embed sustainability in
engineering education.
The forum formed part of Imperial’s EnVision 2010 project – a major
initiative by the Faculty of Engineering to promote excellence in
teaching, learning and academic leadership.
Keynote speaker Jonathan Porritt, Chairman of the UK Sustainable
Development Commission, said there was a need for new mindsets,
technologies, responsibilities and business models and that higher
education needed to be at the forefront of this change. He praised
Imperial’s EnVision 2010 initiative as a great step in the right direction.
Read more on page 11 of building the connection.
Search for life in
Martian ice relies on
UK technology
Dr Tom Pike and his
team from the
Department of
Electrical and
Electronic
Engineering
witnessed the US
launch of the NASA
Mars Phoenix
Mission in August
2007. The team had
micro-machined
substrates that will
hold dust and soil for examination in a microscope station attached to
the Phoenix lander.
When the Mars lander touches down in May 2008, Dr Pike and his
team will join international experts at mission control in Phoenix,
Arizona, to begin their search for conditions favourable for past or
present life. Dr Pike and his team will dig and analyse soil excavated
from the Vastitas Borealis region.
“Nobody has looked at Mars at this type of resolution. It is very
difficult to predict what we might find, but if you wanted to look for
the earliest forms of past or present life we will be the first to look
closely enough,” said Dr Pike.
“This is the first chance since the Beagle mission that the UK will
be able to help explore the surface of Mars. It is great to have the
resources and the people at Imperial to enable us to take part in this
mission,” he added.
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The Engineer honours lifetime of
achievement_Emeritus Professor
Colin Caro, Department of
Bioengineering, was celebrated at The
Engineer magazine’s inaugural
Technology and Innovation Awards in
September 2007. He was given a
special award for outstanding personal
achievement, voted for by engineering
professionals, in recognition of his
work on physiological and medical
research. “It gives me enormous
pleasure to be honoured by engineers.
I started life as a medic and it is ‘fun’
to be recognised for my work in
engineering,” he said.
New Head of Bioengineering_
Professor Ross Ethier, previously
Director of the Institute of Biomaterials
and Biomedical Engineering at the
University of Toronto, joined Imperial
as the new Head of the Department of
Bioengineering in August 2007.
Professor Ethier is a Fellow of both the
American Society of Mechanical
Engineers and the American Institute
of Biology and Medicine in
Engineering. “Bioengineering is a
wide open field with huge potential.
I look forward to working with my
team, and further developing a great
department,” he said.
First female scientist to win top
award_Dr Molly Stevens,
Department of Materials, was the first
female scientist ever to be awarded
the prestigious Royal Pharmaceutical
Society of Great Britain’s Conference
Science Medal in August 2007. Dr
Stevens received the honour for her
independent research in
nanomaterials for bio sensing of
disease related proteins, and in selfassembling
nanomaterials to help
bones and cartilage quickly repair.
She said: “I think it is an important
milestone for women in the field.”
Blue dye could hold the key
to super processing power_
Dr Sandrine Heutz, Department of
Materials, has developed a technique
for controlling the magnetic properties
of a commonly used blue dye known
as metal phthalocyanine (MPc). Her
experiments with MPc have the
potential to revolutionise computerprocessing
power. The team
experimented with crystals containing
MPc in different conditions and were
able to exploit their magnetic qualities
to reorder the molecules, which they
believe could be used for information
processing at the nanoscale.
4 IMPERIALMATTERS_WINTER 2007–08