Speaker update: Automation and Factories of the Future - where next?

This is the second in a series of postings highlighting our fantastic line up of speakers for our September event:   Automation and Factories of the Future - where next? Today, I am focusing on Jeremy Haddall - Jeremy is Chief Technologist – Digital Engineering, at the Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry - and is also the Chairman of the IET Design and Production Sector exec team. Jeremy has been working in the field of automation for manufacturing since leaving University, either as an Applications Engineer for ABB Robotics or as Senior Systems Engineer for Vanderlande Industries. Having joined the Manufacturing Technology Centre at its inception in 2010, he was responsible for the creation and development of the Intelligent Automation research theme. As the Manufacturing Technology…

The Robots are Coming!

Recently one of our TPN exec team members, Nick Hawes ,  visited the North Yorkshire Local Network to give a talk on "The Robots are Coming" as part of the York Festival of Ideas 2016.   Head on over to their community area to read more about it and watch the video.

The Robots are Coming - A Video using content from the York Festival of Ideas

The Robots are Coming – a video featuring a lecture from Nick Hawes held at York University Festival of Ideas, 2016, an event sponsored by the IET North Yorkshire Network. Dr Nick Hawes is a Reader in Autonomous Intelligent Robotics in the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham. His research applies techniques from artificial intelligence to allow robots to perform useful tasks for, or with, humans in everyday environments. He is particularly interested in how robots can understand the world around them, how it changes over time  and how robots can exploit this knowledge to perform tasks with more “intelligence”. View it from our Engineering Community vidoes (click on the "Videos" link, left) or directly from You Tube

How a sexist T-shirt harms us all

The Gap ad designates boys as brainy and girls as sociable – gender stereotypes that have been around much longer than pink Lego. But people are fed up with it. Read more...

Become More Involved in Your Local Community

The IET Yorkshire & Humber Local Networks organise an annual programme of events, which include technical lectures, technical and social visits, routes to registrations workshops and life skills events.   We are currently seeking to recruit new proactive volunteers across all four Networks i.e. Humber, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to join us for the 2016-17 session. Membership of the committee offers considerable scope for supporting engineering and technology activities and initiatives in many different ways across the region.   IET members of all ages and membership grades are welcome to help refresh our Networks and maximise our relevance in Yorkshire & Humber.   Here are some of the benefits of volunteering: committee engagement counts towards Continuing Professional…

Become More Involved In Your Local Community

The IET Yorkshire & Humber Local Networks organise an annual programme of events, which include technical lectures, technical and social visits, routes to registrations workshops and life skills events.   We are currently seeking to recruit new proactive volunteers across all four Networks i.e. Humber, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to join us for the 2016-17 session. Membership of the committee offers considerable scope for supporting engineering and technology activities and initiatives in many different ways across the region.   IET members of all ages and membership grades are welcome to help refresh our Networks and maximise our relevance in Yorkshire & Humber.   Here are some of the benefits of volunteering: committee engagement counts towards Continuing Professional…

Become More Involved In Your Local Community

The IET Yorkshire & Humber Local Networks organise an annual programme of events, which include technical lectures, technical and social visits, routes to registrations workshops and life skills events.   We are currently seeking to recruit new proactive volunteers across all four Networks i.e. Humber, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to join us for the 2016-17 session. Membership of the committee offers considerable scope for supporting engineering and technology activities and initiatives in many different ways across the region.   IET members of all ages and membership grades are welcome to help refresh our Networks and maximise our relevance in Yorkshire & Humber.   Here are some of the benefits of volunteering: committee engagement counts towards Continuing Professional…

Become More Involved With Your Local IET Community

The IET Yorkshire & Humber Local Networks organise an annual programme of events, which include technical lectures, technical and social visits, routes to registrations workshops and life skills events.   We are currently seeking to recruit new proactive volunteers across all four Networks i.e. Humber, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to join us for the 2016-17 session. Membership of the committee offers considerable scope for supporting engineering and technology activities and initiatives in many different ways across the region.   IET members of all ages and membership grades are welcome to help refresh our Networks and maximise our relevance in Yorkshire & Humber.   Here are some of the benefits of volunteering: committee engagement counts towards Continuing Professional…

Speaker Highlight - Automation And Factories Of The Future - Where Next?

We are very pleased to announce that Alan Norbury, Industrial CTO, Siemens PLC, will be presenting  at our Automation and Factories of the Future - where next?  event taking place on 14th September. Alan is the CTO for Siemens UK industrial activities - a leading global supplier of industrial plant and software, manufacturing automation and drive technologies to industrial customers across the UK and Ireland. Alan started his career as an Apprentice in Siemens Congleton in 1978 moving into the role of Technical Specialist for Siemens automation and low voltage products. In 1992 Alan spent time in Germany acting as Global Account Manager for key accounts such as Philip Morris & ICI. He later became the UK Product Specialist for a number of advanced technologies, developing into the role of Applications…

PATW UK Final

Once agian it is congratulations to Charlotte Levey from Devon and Conwall who went from winning the PATW Area final in Salisbury in early June to winning the UK Final.  We all wish her good luck in the forthcoming world finals

Society Blog: Drones, IT Security And Mental Health

Local Networks have been covering a variety of hot topics over the last several months including IT security, technologies to improve mental health and drones. Drone technology  Surrey Local Network   As use of drones has grown in recent years there has been a growing amount of publicity and about their pros and cons. Much has been said about privacy concerns and public misuse, however in his recent talk, IET Aerospace Network member Lambert Dopping-Hepenstal discussed the societal benefits of drones.    “They have been associated with ‘dull, dirty and dangerous’ activities – for examples the initial survey of the Fukushima nuclear power station after the tsunami,” he notes. “However, the public may not be aware of their widespread use in news reporting, sporting events and documentaries. …

Speaker Highlights - TechAAL 2016

The 2nd IET International Conference on Technologies for Active and Assisted Living (TechAAL 2016) will be taking place on the 24-25 October 2016 at IET London: Savoy Place. The first keynote speaker for the Tuesday (25th October) has been announced! We are delighted to have confirmed Professor Arlene J. Astell (PhD, BSc, CClin Psychol),  Professor of Assitive Technology and Connected Healthcare at the University of Sheffield. About Arlene: Arlene is Ontario Shores Research Chair in Dementia, University of Toronto, Canada, and Professor of Health Services Research in the Centre for Assistive Technology and Connected Healthcare (CATCH: http://www.catch.org.uk ), University of Sheffield, UK. She has over twenty-five years’ experience developing and evaluating interventions to support people to…

Afghanistan's First Ever All-Female Coding School Breaks Gender Barriers

As one of the few women working in Afghanistan's small but growing tech sector, Fereshteh Forough wants to give girls' access to the freedom and opportunities that careers in programming can provide -- and she's opened the country's first all-female coding school to help make it happen! After completing her master’s degree in computer science in Berlin, Germany, Forough returned to Afghanistan as a professor of computer science at Herat University. Last year, she founded Code to Inspire and, in its first year, the school taught 50 young women between the ages 15 and 25 programming skills in a free year-long program. And, not only will these graduates have "better chances to find jobs based on their skills," according to Forough, such training also helps raise the status of girls and women in…

A Thank You Note From FN2016 Event Organizer

You may not have heard of these 5 women. Which is why this Lego set needs to exist.

''Maia Weinstock knows a thing or two about women in science. She's a science writer, researcher, and a deputy editor at MIT News, who fell in love with biology and astronomy at an early age. "I've always been interested in understanding how our world and universe works," Weinstock said. She also has a self-described "mission" to inspire young girls to pursue science careers.'' Read more...

Science careers not only for boffins, says Prof Brian Cox

Science careers are not "boring or only for boffins", says Prof Brian Cox. The physicist and TV presenter says it annoys him "that people still have these perceptions". Prof Cox has lent his support to Engineering Open House Day where major engineering organisations open their doors to the public. Read more...

IET Open House Day was a Success

Engineering Open House Day sees the IET joining forces with iconic venues and organisations across the country to give children and their parents an insight into what it’s like to be an engineer. The initiative is all about highlighting the important roles engineers play in everyday life, with  participating venues and organisations demonstrating the creativity and excitement behind engineering careers. We had a number of fantastic events take place up and down the country and a great turn out at IET London: Savoy Place, where girls and boys of all ages learned to code with Coderdojo and BBC Micro:bit and see examples of some of the newest tech on the market. Read more...

IET Awards - Engineering Horizons Bursary

For Apprentices and Students At least six (3 for apprentices and 3 for students) bursaries of £1,000 per year are available.  Who can apply? Apprentices or Students who have followed a vocational route into engineering (HNC, HND, Access to Higher Education Diploma and similar qualifications), or who have overcome obstacles or personal challenges to pursue an engineering education, mature students and part-time are encouraged to apply. Read more...

Attribution Of Value-add Mechanisms

Successful ecosystems constantly adapt, or to say, they constantly add value to existing mechanisms. The standardisation of cyber security models, whether technical or non-technical, have allowed the same adaptation of value add methods. The cyber landscape of technology is now far more responsive to any cyber-ontologies compared to five years ago. The ability to go to market with a solution is far more simpler, technologies like jboss have created an expectation on how product should intuitively work. More over, enterprise level organisations themselves see this as a default - without even much thought. Historically, an unprecedented cyber-ontology might have required propriety based approach to provide a solution whose costly approach would mean only a select few could implement the technology…

Low math confidence discourages female students from pursuing STEM disciplines

Female college students are 1.5 times more likely than their male counterparts to leave science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) after taking the first course in the calculus series, new research finds. The  study , published last week in  PLOS ONE , supports what many educators have observed and earlier studies have documented: A lack of confidence in mathematical ability, not mathematical capability itself, is a major factor in dissuading female students from pursuing STEM. Read more...

This tool gender-swapped the voices of tech job candidates. Here’s what happened.

When Aline Lerner worked as a tech recruiter, she saw a lot of biased hiring. “The kind of discrimination and bias I witnessed went beyond gender and race, though those are certainly palpable and very, very real. It was discrimination against people without pedigree as well,” she said, mentioning that a prestigious university or previous experience at a big tech company seemed to matter more than technical ability. Read more...

IET Media Image Library

To accurately reflect the dynamic, creative and progressive face of engineering today, the IET has produced a library of images. Read more...

Dr Carl Sandom Is The Chairman Of Both The IET Functional Safety TPN And The Systems Safety & Cyber Security Conference.

Dr Carl Sandom is the Chairman of both the IET Functional Safety Technical & Professional Network and the Systems Safety & Cyber Security Conference. He is a Fellow of the IET, a Chartered Engineer and a Chartered Ergonomist and Human Factors Specialist. Find out more by visiting the conference pages and to read Carl's Chair Welcome in full. Carl is the Director of iSys Integrity; an independent safety consultancy operating worldwide and specializing in safe systems acquisition, development and certification predominantly within the Aerospace and Defence domains. He has extensive experience of managing both programme and technical risks associated with systems safety programmes compliant with safety standards such as DO-178, DO-254, MIL-STD 882, IEC 61508 and Defence Standard 00-56. Carl has…

Product Service Systems Facilitated By Availability Contracts

I am researching the optimum design for availability contracting when seeking to facilitate a Product Service System (PSS) through a servitization startegy.  Kashani-Pour et al (2016) in their paper "Product-Service Systems Under Availability-Based Contracts: Maintenance Optimization and Concurrent System and Contract Design" propose that such contracts can take three forms: Fixed Price Contracts Capability Contracts Availability Contracts For me the issue with all of these is one of risk and how to mitigate and offset the risk to the revenue stream when seeking whole-live approaches.  Consider the scenario of a long life complex manufactured engineering product (i.e. Cars, trains, aeroplanes, and shipping etc).  A significant percentage of operators who use such products to provide a service…