IET EngX® Community Insights

Welcome to the Community Insights blog!

This blog features posts from and about the EngX community. Want to contribute? Read our blogging guide to help you get started.

Grid

List

Volunteers needed to help out on IET stand at RIAT 2017

The Aerospace TPN is planning to link up again with the Swindon Network in relation to RIAT 2017 at RAF Fairford. The joint stand has several interactive activities to promote STEM subjects to the complete age range from 5 to 19 and provide advice and guidance to other interested people and groups as well, on the Aerospace TPN, careers in aerospace/aviation, professional registration/membership etc. We have morning and afternoon slots for staffing the stand based on the show being open from 8am to 8pm Friday, Saturday and Sunday (14th, 15th & 16th July 2017). The times would be 8am – 2pm (morning) and 2pm – 8pm (afternoon) for each day. If you would like to be involved in the event this year, then please reply letting me know which day(s) you can help and your preference on morning…

Deborah-Claire McKenzie
Speaker Highlight - The 3rd Annual Future Of Medicine – The Role Of Doctors In 2027

Join us at The 3rd Annual Future of Medicine – The Role Of Doctors In 2027 hear Professor Shafi Ahmed, Laparoscopic and Colorectal Surgeon speak on " Disrupting Medical Education" See Professor Shafi Ahmed’s biography below: Professor Shafi Ahmed is a laparoscopic colorectal surgeon at The Royal London and St Bartholomew’s Hospitals. As a dedicated trainer, educator, and Associate Dean of Bart’s Medical School, he was awarded the Silver Scalpel award in 2015 as the best national trainer in surgery by the Association of Surgeons in Training. He is currently serving as an elected member of council of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and is a faculty member of the International Foundation for the Advancement of Surgical Telementoring (IFAST) He is always looking at ways of translating…

Former Community Member
Nuffield Research Placements are looking for project providers

Nuffield Research Placements provide over 1,000 students each year with the opportunity to work alongside professional scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians from a variety of universities, commercial companies, voluntary organisations and research institutions. Year 12 students (studying in their first year of their first post-16 course) will spend 4 to 6 weeks over the summer holidays in a placement where they will complete a STEM research project that contributes to the work of their host. The students will have gained good results at GCSE (at least 5 A* to B grades) and will be looking to study a STEM subject at university or have a STEM career. They are enthusiastic and motivated, and historically have produced outstanding work for their project providers. We prepare…

Julie
Science and the Universe!

If you were watching BBC News this morning, you may have seen one of the Particle Accelerator Network team members, Graeme Burt, from Lancaster University, talking about the Large Hadron Collider - which has recently undergone a mayor new, state of the art refit which will produce more collisions and therefore allow discoveries to be made faster. If you missed it, don't worry, you can catch it on IPlayer - fast forward to 2 hours 57 minutes.

Joanne Longton
Control & Automation Doctoral Dissertation Prize 2017

We are once again looking for nominations for our Doctoral Dissertation Prize - recognising a student for their research excellence in the field of Control & Automation. Do you know a student who deserves to win this year - the prize money on offer is £500! The award is open to all relevant students who were awarded their PhD in the general area of Control and Automation, at a UK university, between 1st October 2015 up to 30 September 2017 and nominations are now open. Nominations must be made via the nomination form which is available for download in our files section and returned by 30 September 2017. Need any more encouragement to nominate someone? Read what our previous winners have to say. Giordano Scarciotti, 2016 winner “I am delighted and honoured to receive the 2016 IET Control…

Joanne Longton
Women In Engineering – STEM.

Women In Engineering – STEM. Bahrain University if organizing a one day specific event, about Women In Engineering – STEM. This event will run from 9:00 am till 3:00 pm, Monday 8 th of May. The event will be attended by high profile directors, women in Tech and engineering, other specialties, and officials in Bahrain, in addition to a number of speakers from the region. Two IET female members from Bahrain will be participating also in this event. This include the IET fellow Dr. Marium Jamaan (as a keynote speaker), and MIET Dr. Hessa Al-Juanid, from IET Bahrain local network committee (as an organizing member). As IET member and a member of Bahrain local committee, I personally have been also asked to speak about the IET in its global prospects, and its support to women in terms of…

Prof. Ebrahim Mattar
Retired Members Visit The Wymeswold Solar Farm In Leicestershire

Wymeswold Airfield Solar Farm is one of the largest solar power projects in the country. Rated at 35MW, it occupies 150 acres of the WW2 Wymeswold Airfield. It is owned by the Foresight Group and in April hosted a well-attended visit by a group from the IET East Midlands Retired Members section. The visit started with an excellent lunch at the Windmill Inn in Wymeswold, after which Saadat Ullam, Foresight’s Asset Manager for the site, gave a presentation about the site and what we could expect to see. There are 130,000 individual solar panels on the site, arranged into blocks of 1.2MW. The DC power from each block is converted to AC by solid-state inverters and transformed up to 33kV. The site has a single 33kV connection to the local Grid. When we arrived at the site, Roy Strong showed…

Former Community Member
IET NorCal learns all about Dropbox

On Saturday, April 29 th , Tom Manville gave one of the most interesting presentations that the IET NorCal committee has had the pleasure of hosting to date. About 20 people attentively listened to his one and a half hour discussion on the architecture and technologies behind Dropbox. His talk started by highlighting the size of the data problem that the engineers at Dropbox work with. For example, Dropbox has about 500 million users by the latest count and those users had access to about 500 petabytes of storage in 2016; a significant increase from 40 petabytes in 2012. 500 petabytes is a 5 followed by 17 zero’s worth of bytes. To put that into perspective, that is enough storage to hold 14,000 times the amount of text held in all of the books in the Library of Congress. (It’s a lot!). …

Allan Casey
The North West Electrification Programme - Crewe

If you didn't make it along to the IET Railway North West Electrification Programme event in Crewe, have a read over what you missed. The North West Electrification Programme The engineering team from Network Rail give an overview of the background to the programme, how the option development and designs has been progressed, and what the next steps are for the programme. Background The electrification programme in the North West will see over 300km of lines electrified, improving connections between towns and cities in our region and beyond. The first two phases of electrification are now complete with passengers enjoying new electric services from Manchester Airport to Scotland, Liverpool, and between Huyton and Wigan with subsequent phases well underway. The talk covered Phase 3, 4 and…

Lynsay Callaghan
Surgical Robotics - 27th April

[ View the story "Surgical Robotics" on Storify ]

Gemma Hadley in Robotics
Leadership Program 2017 Workshop #1

The first workshop of the 2017 IET Leadership Programme took place on the 22nd of April. Following the tradition of years past MBTI was the first subject on the billet. The Curtin Engineering Pavillion was a peerless site for the subject, the space feeling modern and open, with various engineering project of the students littering the ground floor. Hazel, the presenter from AIM, gave an engaging speech to the students, artfully weaving into her talk the likes of Father Ted , Spongebob , and Monty Python . All were laughing as she related anecdotes regarding her INFP husband's exploits. Each student determined their Myers-Briggs personality type by sessions end, and had gained an insight into the thought patterns of their peers. Unlike previous years, dominated as they were by STJs, a wide…

Former Community Member
New Book In The Control, Robotics And Sensors Series

The latest edition to the Control, Robotics and Sensors series is the Control of Mechatronics Systems, due to be published this month: Control of Mechatronic Systems Author: Levent Guvenc, Bilin Aksun Guvenc, Burak Demirel and Mumin Tolga Emirler This comprehensive book will introduce advanced students, with only a basic background in control theory, to an array of techniques they can easily implement and use to meet the required performance specifications for their mechatronic applications. Publication date: May 2017 15% early bird discount*: £72.25 / $114.75 Price: £85 / $135 You can see all the books available in this series online One of the books available is on Cyber-Physical System Design with Sensor Networking Technologies published in 2016 and authored by Sherali Zeadally and Nafaâ…

Joanne Longton
UEA Enterprise Centre Tour

Thursday 4th May, 18:00-20:00 The Enterprise Centre, TEC Lecture Theatre, UEA, NR4 7TJ The Enterprise Centre is one of the UKs most sustainable buildings and is one of the region’s hub for entrepreneurs, innovators and businesses that are committed to building a low carbon future. Led by a member of The Enterprise Centre delivery team, this presentation and tour will provide detailed insight into the design, construction and operational processes of this truly unique building. Located at the gateway to the University of East Anglia, this 3,400 m2 ground-breaking building was the first large scale building in the UK to achieve both Passivhaus Certification and BREEAM Outstanding, two of the most rigorous sustainable built environment standards. Through the innovative use of natural and recycled…

Alex Barrett
A Vision for Energy Storage

On Wednesday 10th May, Mark Goudie will be delivering a talk for IET London at Savoy Place on "A Vision for Energy Storage." It is going to be a great event and we hope to see you there. You can find out more details online . Did you know that the IET Standards team are publishing a code of practice on electrical energy storage systems, which is due out later this year? The code will give in-depth guidance and aims to review the underlying technical, operational and safety issues relating to the application of electrical energy storage systems in buildings and power systems. The scope covers all types of electrical and electrochemical energy storage systems; integration into low voltage power systems; industrial, commercial and domestic applications and systems aligned with existing…

Joanne Longton in standards
Field Robots, Cloud Networks And Next Generation Automation. (IET Bedfordshire And Hertfordshire).

Focusing on the theme of field based technologies; I took opportunity to attend a coherent event hosted by the IET Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire network. Derek Long of Cambridge Consultants explained how the concepts of cloud can be delivered to automate the functions of warehouse activities using robots over a private network using unlicensed radio frequencies. A few blogs ago, I attended a seminar that reviewed how edge technologies will need to provide scale, quality and immediate responses to effectively manage its field nodes in order for them to provide quality services. Keeping in line with the theme of field based technologies and cloud networks; this event described a working solution of robots, networks and next generation warehouse automation. The solution created by Cambridge…

Rimesh Patel in Robotics
Present Around The World (PATW) Competition Switzerland

...looking forward to see you at our next PATW event, to be held at the ETH Zurich - Building HG (Room D5.2), Ramistrasse 101, Zurich on Tuesday 9th May Presenters to arrive 17:00 to handle formalities, but members of the audience, general public are welcome from 17:15. We aim to start presentations at 17:30 Here's a link to where you can sign-up (just so that we can get an idea of numbers for the catering): https://localevents.theiet.org/1d048a Jeff Chair - IET Switzerland

Jeff Hunter
Review Of The European Robotics Forum 2017

The IET Robotics and Mechatronics TPN was delighted to exhibit at the European Robotics Forum 2017 in Edinburgh last month. The conference took place over the course of three days and brought together end users, technology developers, service providers and academics from a cross section of industry, for three days of presentations and panel discussions. It was fantastic to be surrounded by the biggest and best innovators in European robotics and there was a strong sense of collaborative thinking and knowledge sharing. Many themes were discussed at ERF but we've picked 3 which we found most interesting: Focus on Artficial Intelligence It seems that we have now reached a state where we (and potentially society) have accepted the fact that the capability for robots to ‘think’ and act with superhuman…

Gemma Hadley in Robotics
Young Professionals Sundowner

Friday 4pm Engineers = Happy Hour! It does not take a genius to figure the above equation. The IET WA Young Professionals has organised its first sundowner for 2017 and we are thrilled to see many volunteers and in fact new faces who decided to join the party after work. Thanks to our wonderful volunteers, Ian Manton for organising the venue and the food, Irene Veliana for setting up all the marketing materials for social media and of course thanks to everyone who turned up to make the evening a great one. Personally I am so happy that I get to speak to some of the volunteers whom I haven't spoken to in ages, just because some of them have started their graduate position where they fly in fly out (FIFO) for work. It was definitely heartwarming to reconnect with old friends and forge new friendships…

Former Community Member
Leadership Program 2017 Meet & Greet

The 2017 YP Leadership Programme kicked off just before Easter this month with the Meet and Greet at the Rendezvous Hotel. Almost all 22 participants enjoyed a marvellous evening of food and companionship. Much of the core YP committee joined in, getting to know the new crop of young leaders. The Programme mentors were pleased that three Senior committee, Martin King, Walter Green and Gordon March, coming to wish us all well in the opening of the Programme. As ever Martin King was a standout, keeping the drink flowing, and putting everyone through strange social experiments. The 2017 Leadership Programme is the biggest so far. Throughout the evening people flowed and chatted. Excitement abounded as the participants got to learn more about the Programme and the IET. At the midpoint, an introductory…

Former Community Member
The Hunt Is On For Scotland’s Future Cyber Crime Fighters

Are you one of Scotland's best young codebreakers? Cyber Games Scotland is launching its 2017 competition during a week of dedicated digital skills events run by organisations across Scotland. Cyber Games Scotland is part of a wider drive to inspire more young people to pick a career fighting cyber crime. The Games will kick off in May with a week of virtual code-breaking challenges. The Scottish Government’s Cyber Resilience Strategy - launched in 2015 - aims to make Scotland a world-leader in cyber resilience by 2020 . A key part of this strategy is to educate and train young people to raise awareness of the threat and inspire the future cyber security workforce. Young people with an interest in cyber security once again have the opportunity to attend free National Cyber Security Centre…

Lynsay Callaghan
IET Achievement Medals

Nominations are now open for the 2017 IET Achievement Medals. Who will you nominate? The IET Achievement Medals recognise exceptional professional achievements and voluntary contributions to the IET. The range of awards covers engineers and technologists at all levels – from dedicated apprentices to influential leaders or researchers. Show a colleague how much you value them and their contribution to the profession and nominate them for a medal. The Medals are international in scope and are awarded by nomination only. Do you know somebody who you would like to nominate for one of these awards? The IET Prestige Medals consist of the Faraday Medal , the Mountbatten Medal , the Mensforth Manufacturing Gold Medal and the JJ Thomson Medal for Electronics . There are also up to five Achievement…

Gemma Hadley
IET London Hammersmith group need your help!

IET London Hammersmith group is run by volunteers. Engineers, just like you, who give just few hours of their time each month to further our profession and our institution. These volunteers:- plan, organise and deliver our events programme that we run throughout the year, with guest speakers talking on hot engineering subjects; they prepare and manage our budget; keep our web site up to date and arrange publicity for events; advise on professional registration; work with schools to encourage careers in engineering; liaise with our universities and student groups; help build relationships with engineering businesses throughout the Hammersmith area There is always more to do and just a few hours…

Joanne Longton
Speaker Highlight - The 3rd Annual Future Of Medicine – The Role Of Doctors In 2027

Dr Keith Grimes, GP and Digital Health Innovator “Keith is a General Practitioner and CCG Innovation Lead with a passion for Digital Health. With 20 years’ experience of work within the NHS, he’s led award winning projects including MyLittleOne, a neonatal camera & tablet system, and Brighton & Hove Roving GP service. Current projects include ‘See What I See’, an evaluation of Google Glass for remote consultations, and ‘PREVENT ICU Delirium’, a ground-breaking project aiming to reduce Post-operative Delirium using Virtual Reality. A lifelong Geek & Gamer, he’s the founder of ‘VR Doctors’: an online community dedicated to exploring Virtual & Augmented Reality in Health & Social Care, and the host of the ‘Curistica: Adventures in Digital Health’ podcast” To keep up with our latest news…

Former Community Member
Bloodhound SSC

The talk on Tuesday 18th April at Brighton University was about Bloodhound SSC, the car designed to travel at 1000 mph! The slides used by Chris Rickard, who is part of the build team, contained photos and information that is available on the Bloodhound website ( http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/ ). The book about Bloodhound (and other items) are also available via the web site.

David James

Welcome to the Community Insights blog!

Community Rules & Guidelines