RAE Annual review - Cover - Royal Academy of Engineering

A ‘self-portrait’ photo taken at an altitude
of 18km of an HTC Trophy smartphone
transmitting data to engineers on the ground
generation of electrical machines for
transportation, energy and industry.
The CIC draws together academic staff
and researchers from disciplines across
the Faculty of Engineering, including
leading experts in electrical machine
and drive technology specialising in
electromagnetics, energy systems,
power electronics, health monitoring,
heat transfer and mechanical dynamics.
Their work will aid developments in
reducing the UK’s carbon emissions,
Research Fellowship
Dr Andras Sobester, who holds
a five-year fully funded RAEng/
EPSRC Research Fellowship, leads
the Atmospheric Science through
Robotic Aircraft (ASTRA) initiative
at the University of Southampton.
Many branches of science depend on
accurate observation of the physical
and chemical parameters of the
atmosphere. These include routine
weather forecasting, predicting future
climate, observing volcanic plumes,
through more-electric transportation
and renewable energy generation.
Another flagship programme, the
Research Fellowship scheme, provides
young researchers with funding and
mentorship over a five-year period to
enable them to establish themselves in
careers at the highest level of research.
The scheme is highly competitive
and over the past year, 11 new
appointments were made. The total
and understanding extreme weather.
Current methods of obtaining such data
can be wasteful and expensive: each
instrument can only be deployed once
as they are lost or destroyed when they
parachute back to Earth from altitudes
of up to 35km.
Dr Sobester and his team are addressing
these issues by designing a generic,
adaptable, low-cost, trackable,
retrievable device with high-altitude
balloon launch capability. The
adaptation of smartphone technology
and encasing the instrumentation in
a protective structure enables it to
be tracked by GPS so that it can be
retrieved and reused. The first prototype
has already been successfully deployed
and recovered, after reaching an altitude
of 20km. The next stage is to add wings,
control surfaces and an autopilot to
the casing, effectively turning it into a
simple, lightweight, small glider that has
the capability to guide itself towards a
designated collection point, allowing
easier retrieval.
The summer of 2011 saw the
completion of the prototype of the
system and the first phase of testing.
The ultimate goal is to introduce a
range of new tools to atmospheric
science, which, by virtue of their
low operating cost, can make both
routine operations and complex
research campaigns more affordable
or considerably more extensive.
Engineering Enterprise Fellowship
Dr Susannah Clarke is a design engineer
specialising in medical devices. She
has degrees in both engineering
(University of Cambridge) and industrial
design (Royal College of Art) and has
won numerous awards for her design
concepts. She has been awarded a
Fellowship to establish a spin-out
company from Imperial College London
offering patient-focused solutions in
orthopaedic surgery.
The Enterprise Fellowship funding
will enable her to spend 12 months
number of Research Fellowships in post,
including those sponsored jointly with
EPSRC, is now 54.
The first Engineering Enterprise
Fellowships were awarded to six
outstanding innovators at UK
universities. The projects chosen
demonstrate the breadth of
opportunities within engineering,
with research ranging from an
innovative satellite dish to groundbreaking
medical tests. Providing up
to £85,000 of funding and support,
the Fellowships allow researchers to
spend 12 months developing the
commercial potential of their research.
The Fellowship awardees will receive
business training and mentoring from
Academy Fellows with entrepreneurial
experience, as well as access to
business angels and venture capitalists.
International
The Research Exchanges with China
and India scheme aims to facilitate
partnerships between researchers
in the UK and India or China with a
view to strengthening international
networks of excellence and granting
researchers access to world-class
expertise. Distinguished Visiting
Fellowships provide funding to
enable an academic engineering
department in a UK university to
developing product-based solutions to
improve surgical accuracy. Dr Clarke’s
engineering, design and research
background ideally places her to build
upon academic research findings
and translate them into commercial
products. She will be developing these
design concepts with Professor Justin
Cobb, Chair in Orthopaedic Surgery
at Charing Cross Hospital, Imperial
College NHS Trust. Professor Cobb
is globally recognised as a leading
surgeon and investigator into the use of
technology to improve surgical precision
and accuracy.
host a Distinguished Visiting Fellow
from an overseas academic centre of
excellence for up to a month. Both
schemes continue to be popular and,
in the past year, 30 new Research
Exchanges with China and India and 31
new Distinguished Visiting Fellowships
were funded.
In 2011, a new method for the
points-based system for visas, the
Tier 1 Exceptional Talent route,
was introduced in the UK. The
Academy is one of four designated
competent bodies advising the
UK Border Agency on applications
for these visas and over the past
year has endorsed five applications
under both the Exceptional Talent
route, for world-leading researchers,
and Exceptional Promise route, for
researchers who have the potential to
be world-class. Among the engineers
who have successfully applied through
the Academy are an Iranian chemical
engineer, Dr Roghieh Azerinezhad,
who will take up a research position
at Hydrafact, a spin-out company of
Heriot-Watt University, and a Korean
researcher, Professor Jong Min Kim,
currently at Samsung Electronics,
who will take up a Chair in Electrical
Engineering at the University of Oxford.
In November 2011, the Academy
and the US National Academy of
Dr Susannah Clarke working on orthopaedic
surgery techniques
Engineering jointly hosted the second
EU-US Frontiers of Engineering
Symposium on behalf of Euro-CASE,
the umbrella group for European
national engineering academies. Sixty
of the best engineers under the age of
45 from the US and Europe met at the
Beckman Center in southern California
to discuss cutting-edge research
and potential future collaborations
in fast-moving areas at the verges of
traditional disciplines.
Participants learned how architects
are drawing on the latest materials
and engineering advances to create
solar-powered buildings which
purify their own wastewater, how
biologists are seeking help from
computer engineers to model
processes of gene expression in the
cell, and how bioengineers hope
that recent advances in personalised
manufacturing may lead to individuals
printing their own spare organs.
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Drive faster and more balanced economic growth 9