RAE Annual review - Cover - Royal Academy of Engineering

Drive faster and more
balanced economic growth
The Academy is
committed to
supporting sustainable
and balanced economic
growth. It provides support
to excellent researchers
tackling problems of
importance to society and
industry, celebrates and
invests in outstanding
entrepreneurs and
innovators, and brings
together academia and
business to create the
conditions in which
innovation can flourish.
Right: Dr Karin Hing, 2011 Silver Medallist
The Academy’s programmes and
awards target multiple stages of the
innovation pipeline, from the ERA
Foundation Entrepreneur’s Award for
young innovators through to a suite
of research support schemes, the
prestigious MacRobert Award, the
UK’s premier award for innovation in
engineering, and the new international
Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.
This year the Academy also launched
its Engineering Enterprise Fellowships:
an important new way of providing
funding, mentoring and business
support to outstanding businessminded
researchers to enable them to
develop the commercial potential of
their work.
In addition to providing funds for
UK-based researchers, the Academy
also undertakes a range of activities
focused on supporting international
collaborations in innovation and
research.
Awards
The MacRobert Award is awarded
annually to an individual or team for an
exceptional engineering innovation that
has been both commercially successful
and delivered societal benefits. In 2011
the winner was a team from Microsoft
Research Cambridge for the human
motion capture system for Xbox Kinect.
Microsoft’s Kinect replaces hand-held
games controllers with a new method of
interaction between user and machine.
Movies and music can be controlled with
the wave of a hand or by voice, making
the user’s body the controller.
The Microsoft Research Cambridge
laboratory applied machine learning
techniques to build the system’s
capability to analyse depth images
independently, classifying pixels in
each depth image as belonging to
one of 31 body parts. The classifier is
then trained and tested using a very
large database of pre-classified images,
covering varied poses and body types.
Possible future applications include
medicine: surgeons could interact with
3D models of the body over a computer
system, without touching anything,
when planning surgery or even during
operations. It is engineered so efficiently
that it uses only a fraction of the total
available computing capacity – essential
to practical success. Kinect for Xbox
360 soon became the fastest-selling
consumer electronics device of all time,
with eight million sold in the first two
months after launch.
The Academy’s Silver Medals are
awarded to outstanding individuals
in recognition of their personal
contributions to UK engineering. The
awards recognise individuals’ success
in creating and bringing to market a
particular idea or innovation. One of the
four awardees in 2011 was Dr Karin Hing.
Dr Hing is a senior lecturer in biomedical
materials at Queen Mary, University of
London, and was the ‘technical linchpin’
Research Chair
Professor Robert Akid has been
appointed the BP/Royal Academy of
Engineering Research Chair in Corrosion
and Materials at the University of
Manchester. The problem of corrosion
is a critical limiting factor for materials
performance in the industrial sector,
especially for the oil and gas industry
and companies such as BP plc. Professor
Akid’s research aims to address a
number of prominent corrosion-related
structural integrity problems through an
understanding of damage mechanisms.
The main research areas that have been
proposed by Professor Akid include:
identifying underlying processes
that give rise to crack development
and growth; developing a better
understanding of the corrosion scales
formed in the oilfield environment;
and replacing established materials
with new metallic materials. A major
output of this research work will be the
development of more robust predictive
models for materials performance.
In addition to this, the overall benefits
of this particular programme include
behind an orthobiologics company sold
recently for more than £200 million.
She used her research into the bioactivity
of bone graft substitutes - materials used
in orthopaedic surgery as scaffolds for
guided bone regeneration - to develop
the hypothesis that bone healing could
be enhanced through optimisation of
both graft pore structure and chemistry,
and invented a novel production
route for the manufacture of these
pore structures. Her input into the
revolutionary bone graft substitute helps
show how the commercialisation of
research can create a successful business
while changing the landscape of
engineering and medical practice.
The ERA Foundation Entrepreneurs
Award seeks to identify, encourage
and reward early-career stage
engineering researchers working in
UK universities, in the broad field of
electrotechnology. This year’s award
was won by Dr Sithamparanathan
an improvement in the reliability of
operations and reduction in the costs of
energy production. This collaboration
with one of the world’s leading energy
companies will further strengthen the
engineering research portfolio of the
University of Manchester, as well as
enhancing research interests in the field
of corrosion engineering in the wider
scientific community.
Dr Sithamparanathan Sabesan and Dr
Michael Crisp, inventors of low-cost location
sensing systems won the ERA Foundation
Entrepreneurs Award
Sabesan and Dr Michael Crisp, both
from the University of Cambridge, for
their groundbreaking radio tagging
system, which has the potential to
deliver multimillion pound savings for
airlines and retailers. The pair collected
a £10,000 personal prize, with a further
£30,000 to invest in the development of
the winning idea.
Professor Akid’s research addresses the effects of
extreme environments on the materials used in
the oil and gas industry
Research
The Academy’s Research Chairs and
Senior Research Fellowships are jointly
funded by the Academy and industry
partners to enable leading-edge,
internationally recognised researchers
to develop a centre of excellence in
collaborative research. Despite the
challenging economic climate, this
scheme has continued to attract strong
support from industry and over the past
year 10 new appointments were made,
bringing the total number of Research
Chairs and Senior Research Fellowships
in post to 40.
A recent Academy Senior Research
Fellowship awardee is Dr Chris Gerada,
with Cummins Generator Technology
as the industrial sponsor. He has also
been appointed Research Director of
the new Cummins Innovation Centre
(CIC) at the University of Nottingham.
The CIC will develop the next
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Drive faster and more balanced economic growth 7