Awards | Engineering Our Future

Machine Vision Impacts Farming

engineering | 29 January 202029 January 2020

Technology from the Centre for Machine Vision (CMV) has been making moves to improve animal welfare and maximize crop harvesting.

Herdvision

First off, the 3D imagery system, Herdvision, that helps farmers assess cows’ wellbeing, was featured on the BBC six o’clock news in 2019 as it began a trial by Arla UK 360 farmers.

The technology developed in collaboration with Kingshay and AgsenZe, uses visual monitoring, data recording and automated intelligence to identify changes in each cow’s physical wellbeing, mobility and weight, before they are visible to the human eye.

Facial recognition used to assess pig’s emotions

Animal behaviourists from Scotland’s Rural College in Edinburgh, are using the technology provided by machine vision experts at UWE, to picture a range of pig facial expressions. The hope is that emotions can be identified and facial recognition used to improve pig welfare.

The BBC reported on the study in spring last year and the work is due to appear as part of a Netflix program in 2020.

Harvest Eye

The potato harvester based data capture system –Harvest Eye – provides insight on size, count and crop variation on unwashed potatoes as they are harvested. The integrated data analytics shows precisely what is being lifted and from where in the field, insights that will help maximise marketable yield and reduce crop imbalance.

The technology’s utility was recognised at the Potato Industry Event 2019/20, when it picked up second prize (out of 15 nominations) .

Harvest Eye was developed by CMV for B-hive, who then patented the technology in collaboration with CMV, and now B-Hive / Branston have established a new company, HarvestEye Ltd, to supply the HarvestEye technology to Grimme,a major manufacturer of root crop harvesters.

But the team at CMV aren’t stopping there.

“We’re working on a new funding bid right now to add functionality.”
Melvyn Smith, CMV

Mark Hansen, who led development of the technology, represented CMV, as part of the team that picked up the award.

“Being different is a strength in engineering”

engineering | 9 January 202018 February 2020

In recognition of the department’s equity, diversity and inclusion, Engineering, Design and Mathematics (EDM) was recently re-awarded the Athena Swan Bronze Award. Graduate tutor and member of EDM’s Athena Swan committee, Maryam Lamere explains how the department supports diversity and caters for families.

In her own words, as a black, Muslim, woman, Maryam is “a minority, within the minorities”. However, she doesn’t view the multi-faceted aspects of her identity as a barrier in EDM.

“I don’t allow my identity to become a barrier to reaching my goals. EDM’s friendly and supportive environment makes me feel confident to fully own my identity. Here, my differences are my strength.
EDM celebrates diversity and believes that engineering as a profession benefits when people bring in various perspectives and are able to tackle problems from different angles. Gender, cultural and neuro-diversity can all be useful in the workplace.”
Maryam Lamere

Maryam teaches undergraduate students, while also working to transfer UWE technology (pee powered electronics) to communities in Africa for her PhD. Since starting the role, Maryam’s family has grown, and she was able to fluctuate her hours to balance childcare needs.

“EDM is really good at making things manageable for people who have families. I have a young family, with three little boys now aged three, five and seven, and if this role hadn’t have been so flexible it would have been pretty challenging to pull it all together.”
Maryam Lamere

Maryam speaking to students during project week Nov 2019

Changing the image of engineering

There’s no denying that engineering needs a change of image to encourage young people to fill the engineering skills and diversity shortfall in the UK. In a bid to overturn the narrow stereotype of engineering, the Royal Academy of Engineering launched their image library in November 2019, to demonstrate the diversity of the profession – see if you can spot Maryam and other engineers in the department!

UWE has also signed the pledge below, promising to make representative images of engineers and engineering more visible to the public.

Prof becomes Honorary Fellow for the Royal Aeronautical Society

engineering | 17 December 20194 December 2019

The Royal Aeronautical Society’s 2019 Honours, Medals and Awards were announced at a ceremony held at the Society’s headquarters on Monday 25th November 2019.
Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor at UWE, Raj Nangia, can be seen on the right-hand side in the red scarf.

Raj, recently joined the ranks of Orville Wright, Dr. von Karman, Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, Sir Frank Whittle and Major Tim Peake, in being awarded the Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

The award is for engineering excellence of the highest calibre and recognises Raj’s international contributions in aerodynamic designs in both the civil and military sectors, from Concorde to the Harrier and Typhoon.

Having worked in the field for fifty years with companies such as Airbus, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce, as well as government agencies, Raj is recognised as a global authority, and his work has influenced the design of many aircraft from small UAVs to large subsonic heavy-lift transport aircraft, to supersonic passenger aircraft.

Please see the official announcement and details of winners.

Congratulations Raj!

Making children’s inventions a reality

engineering | 10 December 20193 December 2019

UWE Bristol partners with the Leaders Award, an annual children’s engineering competition, to help run the competitions’ masterclass, grading days and celebration events in the South West. Last year Engineering students made a prototype of one of the winning inventions – a car braking systems where the red braking lights vary in intensity according to the pressure applied to the brake. This year, a new team of engineers are making children’s ideas into reality…

Second year mechanical engineering student – Georgina Packham – is heading up the ‘EWB UWE’ team to try and make a ‘Rain Catcher’.

The Rain Catcher was designed by Year 1 student from Headley Park Primary School, Tristan Sta Ines – pictured here.

The design’s purpose is to catch the rain which then turns into clean water. This benefits those who are thirsty helping to keep them healthy.

“We chose the Rain Catcher as we are not aware of any existing products that function in all the same ways that this design does, and we were also instantly drawn to the bright colours of the design. Tristan’s design will not only have little to no negative impact on the environment, but could also benefit those who don’t have easy access to clean water.”
Georgina explained why EWB UWE chose Tristan’s design.

The rest of the team is comprised of first year Engineering, Design and Mathematics students, Chase McLaughlin, Simbarashe Sibanda and Sonny Ngo.

Good luck team EWB UWE!

There’s not just one way to succeed in engineering

engineering | 6 November 201918 February 2020

Lisa Brodie is head of the Engineering, Design and Mathematics (EDM)department at UWE Bristol, and so is responsible for all of the flourishing student programs and research centres. In honour of Tomorrow Engineer’s week – a week dedicated to inspire more young people to consider careers in engineering, Lisa tells Engineering our Future why she likes working in EDM and how she is developing the engineering curriculum to make it more inclusive.

Why would you recommend engineering to young people?

There is this perception that you have to have a certain kind of skill and be a certain type of person to be an engineer, but I don’t believe that’s the case. So don’t be put off, just have a go at it, because it’s such a rewarding profession to be in. For me engineering is about being able to make a difference in the world through solving problems, both local and global.

What do you most enjoy about your job?

In the role I’m in, I get the chance to really make a difference. We are changing the way we teach engineering, and because I’m the head of department I have the unique opportunity to drive these changes.

What changes are you making?

We are developing our curriculum so that it’s more inclusive, ensuring that anybody, from any background, can find a way into this career.

I think historically the education system precludes certain types of people from being successful, because it’s heavily examined and a lot of young people don’t find that an easy process to go through. We are trying to create a curriculum with a range of different methods to assess students, so that regardless of background and qualification, there’s the opportunity to succeed.

EDM has recently been re-awarded the Athena Swan Bronze Medal for gender equality. This recognises the diversity of the department, as well as the efforts ensuring gender inclusivity and enabling female progression.

It’s our mission as a department to really make a difference getting women into engineering

Given her success as a female engineer, we asked Lisa how EDM practices have helped her balance work with caring for her three children and elderly mother?

I first came to UWE as a research associate on a fractional contract, and I’ve only been able to work my way through the different roles because of the supportive, flexible culture that exists here for family life and people who have caring responsibilities.

The working practice within the university and EDM is very flexible

There’s no denying that engineering needs a change of image that is vital to encourage young people to fill the engineering skills and diversity shortfall in the UK. In a bid to overcome the overturn the narrow stereotype of engineering, the Royal Academy of Engineering have today launched their image library demonstrating the diversity of the profession – see if you can spot Lisa and other engineers in the department!

UWE has also signed the below pledge to make representative images of engineers and engineering more visible to the public.

UWE Engineering awarded Athena Swan Bronze

engineering | 24 October 201918 February 2020

UWE Bristol’s Engineering, Design and Mathematics (EDM) department has recently been awarded Athena SWAN Bronze for gender equality.

The Athena SWAN bronze award, handed out by Advance Higher Education, acknowledges organisations commitment and efforts to remove barriers for female progression and creating a gender inclusive environment.
By awarding EDM the Athena Swan Bronze award, the assessors recognised the efforts of the department to bring equity, diversity and inclusion aims to the forefront of our engineering and mathematics teams.

Compared to the sector, EDM already has a diverse staff and student make-up, and is determined to put inclusion at the heart of our new state-of-the-art engineering building due to open in summer 2020, along with the newly refurbished Mathematics learning spaces.

“Supporting students from diverse backgrounds is critical to our teaching teams. We are very proud of our exciting engagement efforts, such as the Leaders Award for schools, BAME Girls into Engineering inspiring people from ethnic minorities, Women Like Me for industry mentoring support, and our amazing student teams such as the Women in Science and Engineering Society.”
“Achieving Bronze Athena SWAN status is hugely important to us as recognition for all these efforts as we work towards the future of engineering and mathematics.”
Senior Research Fellow Laura Fogg-Rogers

The award is valid until April 2023.

UWE Formula SAE success

engineering | 13 August 201913 August 2019

Formula SAE is Europe’s most established educational engineering competition. The competition aims to develop enterprising and innovative young engineers and encourage more young people to take up a career in engineering. The format of the event is such that it provides an ideal opportunity for the students to test, demonstrate and improve their capabilities to deliver a complex and integrated product in the demanding environment of a motorsport competition.

UWE is in its sixth year of entering the competition, and for 2019 took on the dual challenge of the home competition at Silverstone as well as Formula student Netherland at the TT track in Assen.

Through four days of inclement weather, the team produced a strong display in Assen. Completing all seven elements of the competition for the first time. Resulting in a sixth place overall finish out of 28 combustion teams on the Thursday.

The main event for the team is always the home event at Silverstone, where they entered with confidence their engineering was good and well tested in the Netherlands. The team surpassed their previous efforts achieving their best ever statics and dynamics points haul. The final outcome, an overall seventh place out of 81 teams and fourth best of the UK teams.

“Working towards a world where we can all do what we are passionate about”

engineering | 19 November 2018

As we were delighted to announce last week, our Women Like Me participant Jessica Poole Mather of Rolls Royce won the WISE One to Watch Award on 15^th November. In this guest post, Jess tells us more about how she got to where she is and her experiences so far as a woman in engineering.

As a small child, I don’t think I would ever have thought I would be given an award for my stubbornness, for doing jigsaw puzzles, and existing so completely in my own fantasy world that I would talk to beetles and birds over other children. Looking back, I wonder now if I had been a boy, maybe I would have been called “adventurous”, or “independent”, or even “scientific”.

I’m now 23, and I’m an engineer at Rolls-Royce, stubborn as ever, now around changing perceptions of women in science, and working towards my dream world where we’re not destroying our planet with its own resources, and where people’s careers are pursued not because of how they’re labelled but because of what they want to do.

I was lucky enough to attend the WISE Awards this year, winning the One To Watch award alongside Alexandra Lawson, an engineer at Shell. We were both overexcited and stunned, and it only added to the confusion that I don’t think either of us spends much time wearing high heels – walking up the stairs to the stage was perhaps more challenging than it should have been.

Growing up, throughout university, and since I’ve started work I’ve had the most incredible support network and role models, particularly my mum. I admit I was a little nervous going to start work at a large corporation as an engineer, when my degree had been in chemistry and I knew I would be one of the only women on the team. I won’t say I haven’t had any negative experiences, but those have been easily outweighed by some extremely positive ones, including a series of phenomenal line managers who always seemed to back me to do anything, and two brilliant mentors who I could go to for support.

In turn, I’m trying my best to do my bit to help other women into STEM. I’ve taken on multiple mentoring schemes, spoken at outreach events and careers fairs to children of a range of ages and to university students. Unfortunately, I occasionally catch my own unconscious bias where I’ve ended up talking about STEM to girls at these events more than boys!

The WISE campaign is an incredible scheme, made up of a group of people I’m extremely proud to be a part of, all working towards the same goal: diversity and inclusion in the workplace, whether that’s gender, race or physical or neurological disabilities, and working towards a world where we can all do what we are passionate about.

Women Like Me engineer Jessica Poole Mather wins WISE One to Watch Award

engineering | 17 November 2018

We were delighted to hear that our Women Like Me engineer Jessica Poole Mather was announced as winner of the ‘One to Watch’ Award at the WISE Awards on 15th November.

Jessica, who is undertaking outreach activities with us as part of Women Like Me, is an Engineering Graduate Trainee at Rolls-Royce PLC. She was chosen for the award alongside Alexandra Lawson, Operations Supervisor at Shell.

The award, sponsored by Intel, looked “to identify young women aged 25 and under on the date of the Awards, 15 November 2018, who are working to change the image of girls and women working in STEM. This Award is designed to identify and share stories of girls and young women who are passionate about STEM and good at what they do – not just when studying or at work but throughout day-to-day lives too.”

WISE reported that the judges could not come to a conclusion on “one to watch” as there were clearly “two to watch” that stood out as ultimate winners, and agreed that combining this dynamic duo with their unique individual strengths and passion would be a winning team for WISE and taking STEM initiatives to the next level as true ambassadors.

Congratulations to Jess from the Women Like Me team!

Children as Engineers highly commended at STEM Inspiration Awards

engineering | 1 November 2018

A UWE team have been at the House of Lords in London today, after they were shortlisted for an Inspirational STEM Engagement Project Award in the 2018 STEM Inspiration Awards.

Laura Fogg-Rogers ran Children as Engineers, a collaboration between the UWE Bristol Department of Education and Childhood and Department of Engineering, Design and Mathematics, with Juliet Edmonds and Dr Fay Lewis.

The team attended the awards ceremony and were highly commended for the project, which paired student engineers and pre-service teachers to undertake engineering design challenges in primary schools; a well deserved recognition of their hard work and dedication.