Record number of Awards made in 2011

A large number of applications was received for the 2011 Award, and the selection panel was most impressed by the quality of the applications. The Trust has therefore made six Awards for the year.

Sarah-Jane Haig was awarded £500 for her research to determine the functional microbial ecology of slow sand filters by carrying out both field sampling and laboratory experimentation. SSFs operate at a slow filtration rate, which is integral to the mechanisms involved in purification. Regulating slow filtration rates in the lab is extremely difficult with the current valve-control setup; this problem was alleviated with the implementation of Watson Marlow’s 314MC 5-channel microcassette pumphead.

£250 was awarded to Zhixiong Hu for a device he fabricated to assist his research. Zhixiong tells us, “Arrayed Waveguide Grating (AWG) devices were initially proposed as optical multiplexing routers for communication network. Here, we have developed a compact visible AWG sensor to perform fluorescence spectroscopy, the most commonly used technique in biochemical analysis and medical diagnosis”.

An Award of £250 was made to James Minto for research into gravel filtration to remove pollutants from water. James says, “Gravel filtration is an important pollutant removal process commonly used in both potable water treatment and in Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS).  This highly novel and ambitious project will couple Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of filter media structure with numerical modelling to understand how SuDS systems designed to treat polluted road runoff perform and how this performance can be improved.

An Award of £300 was also made to John Macfarlane for research into developing an automatically activated, self-levelling device which is installed within the edges of solid core doors, to  dramatically reduce the occurrence of door misalignment with the added value of offering protection from fire, smoke and noise.

Jonathan Siviter received an Award of £250 to purchase an Eddy Current Brake and convert it to operate as a dynamometer to enable UGRacing to tune the engine of a Formula Student racing car the team has designed. UGRacing is a student team taking part in the Formula Student motor sport competition, which is designed to hone and test the skills of engineers in a real world design and build process.

Jamie Campbell was in charge of the Formula Racing Project from 3^rd year onwards and is now in the final year of a BEng. He is investigating polymer concrete as a material for making machine tools. He hopes to build a small polymer concrete milling and turning machine which will be mobile and apart from being used by the Formula Student team would also have a market in the hobby and educational fields. He received an Award of £300.

Awards for 2010

In 2010, Awards went to Juan Fang, a Mechanical Engineering PhD student, and a secondary award was made to Gavin Brown, a Final Year Product Design Engineering undergraduate.

The 2010 winner, Juan Fang

The main Award was made to Juan Fang to assist her research into the development of methods and equipment to aid the recovery of Incomplete Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) victims , and was of £500 for the purchase of actuators and force sensors required for the development of a Recumbent Gait Robotic Device for early rehabilitation of walking.

Rehabilitation of walking is an integral part of a therapy of such patients. However, patients with ISCI often find it challenging to maintain an upright posture and practice stepping during the early post-injury period. Stepping movement in a reclined position would enable an early rehabilitation after a spinal cord injury. Such training is essential for promoting early neural recovery much before the effect of function recovery becomes apparent.

Gavin received an award of £300 for the purchase of equipment to enable his Final Year project, developing a modular bioreactor, similar to the one making up the vertical post of the street light in the illustration, in which algae absorb sunlight and carbon dioxide as they grow. The bioreactor is used to produce sustainable biofuel by extracting the natural oils produced.

2009 Awards

The 2009 Trust Awards, for £500 each, were made to Elisa Vignaga, for the purchase of a flow controller, and to Sonia Holik to help with expenses in attending the European Doctoral School on Metamaterials.

Sediment erosion and transport in rivers has a destructive effect on engineering structures and their ecosystems. Most research has been based on clean sediment researchand there is poor correlation between experimental and real river sediment analysis, because river sediments are usually covered in a biological slime which affects its characteristics. Elisa’s research involves growing a bio-film over fine sediment in a hydraulic flume. Testing it under different flow conditions requires very stable flow, which the Jaguar VXR Controller has now enabled.

Sonia is working in a very specialised area of  metamaterial theories for the modelling of nanoscale integrated circuit connects, as part of a world wide effort to address issues associated with the increasingly complicated and reducing scale of integrated circuits. Attendance at the Doctoral School allowed Sonia to meet her peers and leading scientists in this field.

Awards for 2008

In 2008, the Trust was delighted to be able to make five awards. The successful candidates were…

Samuel Smith, who represented a team of Product Design Engineering undergraduates developing a racing car | Nita Nathan, a postgraduate student in Aeronautical Engineering | Rosa Uchima, a Mechanical Engineering undergraduate carrying out a Product Design project | Stefania Latorre, a postgraduate student in Aeronautical Engineering | Murray Simpson, a fourth year Civil Engineering undergraduate studying Environmental Design

2007: The Bumblebee Project and Clean Water for Malawi

In February 2007, seven applications were received, of whom three were interviewed. The major award of £500 was made to a student undertaking a research MSc in Aeronautical Engineering, contributing towards the costs in designing and building an Micro Aerial Vehicle for entry in an international competition. A smaller award was made to a third year student in Product Design Engineering, £300, towards travelling costs to work on the Chembe Water Project in Malawi.