BREXIT: Opportunity or Threat to UK Innovation?

IET Central London Evening Lecture Savoy Place, 12-Apr-2017 Speaker: Sir Vince Cable Important note: These are the author's personal recollections and interpretations, which are likely to suffer from errors and selectivity. There is no endorsement from the IET or Sir Vince Cable. Over 400 people packed the main Kelvin Lecture Theatre for this stimulating talk by the well known former LibDem MP, Sir Vince Cable. Ten months on from the momentous referendum result, whatever our individual preference, BREXIT is something we have to get on with making happen, even if the process and outcome are clouded by uncertainty. We now have a timetable to exit by March 2019; allowing six months for parliamentary and European ratification, this probably leaves eighteen months to sort it all out. Vince took…

Safety Critical Systems Course (SCS) 2017

Back by popular demand, the IET’s 25th Safety Critical Systems Course will take place on 19 – 22 June 2017 at Wyboston Lakes in Bedfordshire. Delegates attending this course will learn how to interpret and apply IEC 61508 through tutorials, practical workshops and discussions, all are delivered by a host of safety critical system experts from industry and academia. Themes for the course include an introduction to IEC 61508, risk concepts & IEC 61508 standards, hardware architectures & safety assurance and software safety.   Programme There will be more than 20 sessions at SCS course, featuring leading industry experts from all around the UK. Course day modules will cover: Introduction to IEC 61508 Sils and hardware Management, operations and maintenance Competence and software safety   Speakers…

Sign up for our upcoming DropBox seminar on April 29th!

Hi all, Have you ever wondered how Dropbox stores and serves your data? How do they provide a service that is both reliable and secure? In this talk, we give a brief history of Dropbox’s architecture and the DevOps model that supports it. We’ll present how we scaled a MySQL cluster to handle millions of requests a second. We’ll discuss how Dropbox, once one of the largest consumers of AWS S3, migrated user data to their own data centers. This will be targeted to people who have no background with cloud concepts, but are interested in examples of the cloud at scale. Our speaker, Tom Manville graduated from the University of Michigan with a MSE in Computer Engineering in 2013.  He initially joined Maginatics, which built a cloud-backed, locally cached, consistent filesystem.  Maginatics was acquired…

International Conference on Railway Engineering (ICRE) 2017, Hong Kong

The Event ICRE17 returns to Hong Kong on 24-25th May 2017. Inheriting the success and rewarding experience from its precedents, the Organising Committee is both proud and delightful to announce that the forthcoming conference will be held on 24 to 25 May 2017 at Hotel ICON in Hong Kong followed by a technical visit on 26 May 2017. The International Conference on Railway Engineering (ICRE) is held every three years in Hong Kong with the objective to provide a forum for sharing knowledge and experience; promoting collaboration among practitioners; as well as revealing recent development and applications of new technologies in railway engineering. The organiser, Railway and Transport Section of the IET Hong Kong is composed of engineering professionals from disciplines of electrical, electronics…

New Professional Development Course - Starting Out In Management

Here at the IET we are always looking to improve our current portfolio with course offerings which will benefit our members. Due to popular demand, the previous ‘Essentials of Management’ course has been revised and improved to create the new ‘Starting out in Management’ course. This course has been designed to increase your awareness of management styles, team dynamics and individual needs; enabling you to become more confident in your approach. This course uses interactive exercises and practical activities to equip participants with the right tools to deploy in the workplace and would be a benefit for anybody who is new to, or is looking to improve their current management skills. This one day course will cover areas such as: •  The definition of a manager - what you may be expected to achieve…

Results from the Peo and IET papers competition in Kingston

New Free Evening Event Asks: Why Haven’t We Cured Cancer Yet?

It was World Health Day last Friday. Which got us thinking about what remains one of the most common killers. With many high-profile media campaigns over the past few years, there’s less stigma in talking about the “C-word”, but the facts remain stark: cancer survival is still talked about in terms of 3-5 years. Complete remission is for the lucky few. New treatments have been developed, but the majority are still taken in forms that flood the whole system, often producing the horrific and visible side-effects that we see in so many cancer patients. But how about another idea: what if we could deliver the medicine directly to the treatment site and deploy it there? That’s what you can hear more about on 4 May, in the first of the new EngTalks series. Professor Eleanor Stride’s work with microbubbles…

2017 Automation And Control Youth Innovation Competition In Malaysia

IET Malaysia and the IET Control & Automation TPN are organising an event for youth scientists and engineers from local universities in Malaysia. It is a platform for sharing the results of creative thinking and innovation product creating from the idea, research,  and development of science and engineering students in the area of automation and control.  The event is a competition, the aim of which is to develop any applications of automation and control knowledge that leads to problem solving and the use of the latest technology in daily life that benefits the community.  The competition will also help to  raise awareness and increase interest to the engineering students about the importance of science and engineering in life especially in automation and control area.  This is a one day event…

Event Update From The RF And Microwave Network

It’s been a busy few weeks for the RF and Microwave network with not one, but two events, held on opposite ends of the country. First up, we went to Glasgow University for a joint colloquium on Millimetre-wave and Terahertz Engineering & Technology. We had 9 speakers and 5 poster presenters including two invited speakers: Dr. Khaled Elgaid from University of Glasgow and Dr Sherif Sayed Ahmed from Rohde & Schwarz. Thanks to our exhibitors, Farran Technology and CST for joining us and thanks to our hosts at Glasgow University   Our next event was the fifth Technical Enterprise, held at London Metropolitan University in north London, we were fortunate to hear from 3 speakers on the topic of RF in Aerospace Applications. Our first speaker was Dr Rejan Bedi from Spacechips. He gave an interesting…

Start Your Story: Chris Bellamy

We launched the Start Your Story campaign to promote the IET as a place for young engineering and tech entrepreneurs to gain skills, contacts and develop their ideas to become our future innovators. So far our campaign film has been viewed over 20,000 times and showcases our Global Challenge and Present Around The World (PATW) competition. As part of this campaign we have been getting back in contact with IET members who have used these competitions as a launch-pad to commercial success.   Recently we spoke to Chris Bellamy who won the 2013 Present Around The World competition while on the Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) graduate scheme with a talk on the design, manufacture and testing of carabiners. Since winning he’s become a Chartered Engineer and moved to Canada, where he joined technology start…

Present Around The World 2017 - Southern California Heat

April 1st is a traditional day for pranks, however none of our three presentations fitted that bill, with one competitor returning for a second attempt and two first time competitors. The Present Around the World Competition is not a competition for the best idea, but a competition for engineers and technical individuals to practice presenting their ideas, which 80% of the marks for presentation skills, 20% for the technical content. Our returning competitor, and 2014 winner, Rohullah Latif, chose a different topic this year for his talk, Regenerative Medicine. Rohullah is completing his Master degree at John Hopkins University where the subject of his final thesis is bio-printing. Rohullah explained that regenerative Medicine kicked off in 1954 with the first kidney transplant, however with…

"5G Mobile Networks: The Next Breakthrough Technology"

IEEE ComSoc Bahrain and IET Bahrain would like to invite you to attend joint technical seminar on "5G Mobile Networks: The Next Breakthrough Technology" April 09, 2017 @ 7:00 pm @ Bahrain Society of Engineers, Juffair   Speaker (1)  :Mr. Wafeeq Ajoor, Bahrain ComSoc Vice Chair Title: 5G Mobile Technology, the Enabler of 2020 Networked Society (ITU vision)   Bio: Wafeeq Ajoor [IEEE-M’1999/SM’2009] (wajoor@ieee.org) has received his  M.A.Sc . in Electrical and Computer Engineering (Wireless/Mobile Communications) from the University of Waterloo, Canada. He is the Vice Chair of IEEE ComSocBahrain Chapter. He has been a reviewer for the IEEE Communications magazine. His current research interest is 5G Mobile/Wireless Communications (IoT/M2M/Smart-Healthcare).   Abstract: The buzz in the industry…

Useful Links

The Engineering Council The Institution of Chemical Engineers The International Construction Measurement Standards Coalition (ICMSC)   UK National Occupational Standards (NOS) Engineering Construction Industry Training Board The Assessment Service Centre for Project Controls Professionals International Cost Engineering Council Association for Project Management Project Controls Expo

Wave Energy Scotland (WES) announcing its fourth funding call: Control Systems.

Advanced control systems have the potential to play a vital role in the realisation of cost-effective Wave Energy generation technology. WES wishes to realise this potential through the innovation call for Control Systems, starting with funding for Feasibility Studies and progressing to design, development and demonstration activities. Relevant technology transfer opportunities exist in many industrial sectors. Organisations from sectors such as Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace, Automotive, Mining, Offshore and Sub-Sea vessel stability & manoeuvring could all make valuable contributions. WES hopes to support collaboration between academia, industry, wave energy specialists and new entrants to tackle this exciting control system challenge.   This is the first of a 3 stage programme…

Bienvenue à Paris! EUCAP 2017

A couple weeks ago the Antennas and Propagation community descended on the French capital city for the annual week long EUCAP conference. Held at the Palais de Congres, the conference kicked off with the Welcome Ceremony, led by chairs Alain Sibille and Cyril Luxey. After they detailed the history of EurAPP and EUCAP, they introduced a number of sponsoring organisations, including Rob Lewis, the chair of the TPN who spoke on behalf of The IET.   The conference kicked off in full after that, with a number of convened sessions, exhibition stands meetings and social events happening throughout the five days. The IET Communities and Publishing teams had a stand at the conference; we loved meeting so many delegates throughout the week – I know the boxes of Skittles were a particular hit with our…

BCS Event on 18th April: Building High Performance Teams - Managing and Participating

BCS Berkshire Branch is presenting a talk by Rod Willis of the Agile Group entitled: “The invisible dynamics of collaboration in high performing teams”. Collaboration and working in groups is a key skill in today’s IT workplace. Group dynamics, politics and feelings could all stop people speaking up about what is and what isn’t working. Come to this informal session to learn about high performing Agile Teams and Groups and what makes some groups work well, and others not so well. Learn the necessary vocabulary and understanding that takes place in high performing teams. You never know, you may learn a new skill to help you in these environments! Click here more info and registration.

How To Win A Job @ Murdoch University

The Western Australia Young Professionals stream is proud to organise yet another successful How To Win A Job . We are excited to go back to Murdoch University and this round not only we have students from Murdoch University attending the event, we also have students from across the other three public universities in Perth!   We have a panel of experienced speakers of diverse background. We are pleased to have Erica from Murdoch University Careers Centre, Scott Dennett, geotechnical engineer from BHP Billiton, David Beards, National Manager from Vocus Communications and Darren Bowles, Managing Director of GTE Group. Each speaker has brought forward their experiences and knowledge to the crowd, whether as a fresh graduate who has undergone the recruitment process or a senior engineer on the…

Electric Motorcycle Racing - Testing Underway For The New Season

I've just spotted this excellent video from the University of Bath Zero Emissions team getting ready for the 2017 Electric Motorcycle Racing season.   The team won the IET ARTS TPN Best in Class prize for their bike in 2016. I can't wait for the start of the MotoE Racing series and as luck would have it I've heard that its likely the first race will be at my home circuit i.e. Oulton Park, great news! In the past the promoters of the series have offered community members the opportunity to have a behind the scenes tour of the MotoE garages at the races, so if you're interested in that this year, just let me know either below or via a private message. I'm just waiting for confirmation of the race dates from the promoter and will post these up here asap.

Welcome To Our New Engenuity Blog!

So you may ask, why is this blog called Engenuity? We haven’t just made up a new word to look clever. It does mean something. Something that is crucial to why the IET does what it does. Engenuity is our word for finding the solutions that overcome today’s engineering and technology challenges . The challenges that engineers face in the workplace or academics have in finding the latest research are ones that the IET can solve – whether that’s through the events we run, the journals we publish or the indexing service we provide. This blog will showcase some of our solutions. If you are a practicing engineer who wants to update your knowledge we have a range of products that can help you get that knowledge whilst demonstrating your continuing professional development. If you are a researcher who…

IET INNOVATION AWARDS

Each year the IET makes a range of awards to recognise the contribution of Engineers.  It also organises the IET Innovation Awards which are there to recognise creativity and new innovations in the Engineering World.  If you or your company want to make an application to be recognised for your work, then go to http://www.theiet.org/membership/member-news/44a/innovation-mn-2017.cfm   The closing date for applications is 7 July 2017.

ARM Processors talk

Courtesy of effort from Georges Anke, here is the video of the ARM processor talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbXdwY4-_L4

Present Around The World - Winner of the Surrey Heat

And the winner is .......... Harry Smith who presented his topic 'How to paint houses in your sleep' based on his entrepreneurial work inventing a small robotic device that can assist with painting high walls in situations where doing so would be risky or complex to do so manually. The audience were captivated by this exciting idea that autonomous systems could make such a difference to household maintenance while also other exciting robotic ideas were shown that were inspired by this work such as a toilet that can automatically clean itself. We offer our warm congratulations to Harry on winning the Surrey Heat and wish him well in the next round. More information bout Harry's work can be seen at www.hausbots.com . Present Around the World is a global competition for young professionals and…

CPGCE 2017 PATW Winner Annouced

The winner of the 2017 CPGCE Present Around the World competition local heat has been announced as Mr Gideon Mentie for his presentation on 'Appropriate Technology for Developing Communities'.  The competition was held at the University of Calgary on Saturday 25th March where judges enjoyed presentations from three competitors.  Each competitor has to deliver a ten minute presention as well as a follow-up Q&A from the judges.  Mr Mentie will now go on to represent CPGCE at the regional finals in the summer, the winner of which will travel to London for the global final where they will meet the winners from each of the IET's five regions.  Robert Mayall, a CPGCE local winner became the 2014/15 PATW global winner.  Good luck Gideon!

CANCELLED - Date Chosen For The Georg Fischer (GF) Piping Systems Visit

CANCELLED  The date for the visit to GF Piping Systems in Schaffhausen has been fixed. The visit will take place on   Monday 15th. May 2017.   Please read Jeff Hunter's blog entry  over at the Switzerland LN community page. There you will find an agenda and the registration URL. Registration closes on May 8th. and there are a limited number of places available, so don't wait too long before putting your name down. Howard Gray Germany Network