Research news

The first Rex Moir Outstanding PhD Thesis Prizes have been awarded

sd559 — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 10:38:26 +0000

The two top prizes were given to Charles Micou and Minjia Chen, with Teja Potocnik, Matthew Waterson and Ben Wetherfield, also receiving Rex Moir awards for 2024 and 2025.

The awards are in remembrance of engineer Rex Moir, who matriculated in 1911. He became an officer in the Royal Engineers during the First World War and died in 1915, at the age of 22.

Cambridge academics to share latest research at Pint of Science festival

clh205 — Tue, 09 May 2017 15:27:47 +0000

Discussions will be held on everything from the future of energy and transportation to artificial intelligence and climate change. The festival, which takes place on May 15-17, will be held in cities across the UK and around the world.

Cambridge professor and graduate nominated for 2017 WIRED Smart List

clh205 — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 09:41:11 +0000

Professor of Information Engineering Zoubin Ghahramani and alumnus Tim Mamtora, Master Engineer of Integrated Circuit Design at Broadcom in Cambridge, have made WIRED’s ‘ones to watch’ list after being nominated by industry leaders.

Professor Ghahramani leads a group of around 30 researchers at the Department of Engineering and has published more than 250 scientific papers on statistical machine learning and other areas of information engineering.

Mechatronics lecturer wins award to investigate commercialisation potential of farm robotics research

clh205 — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 15:00:15 +0000

Dr Iida was one of seven scientists to receive the Royal Society Translation Award which was granted to applicants wishing to investigate the potential of commercialising an aspect of their research.

Despite technological advances in the automation of agriculture, Dr Iida says there are still roles which are not automated, such as the sorting of crops by manual labourers after harvesting.

Leaf vein structure could hold key to extending battery life

clh205 — Fri, 07 Apr 2017 15:30:12 +0000

The researchers have designed a porous material that utilises a vascular structure, such as that found in the veins of a leaf, and could make energy transfers more efficient.

The material could improve the performance of rechargeable batteries, optimising the charge and discharge process and relieving stresses within the battery electrodes, which, at the moment, limit their life span. The same material could be used for high performance gas sensing or for catalysis to break down organic pollutants in water.

Superconductivity expert awarded prestigious Early Career Fellowship

clh205 — Tue, 04 Apr 2017 14:49:25 +0000

The Fellowship will start in July and Dr Ainslie will build a research team to develop portable, high magnetic field charging of bulk superconductors for practical engineering applications.

Bulk superconductors can be used – when cooled to cryogenic temperatures – as super-strength, stable permanent magnets generating fields of several Tesla, compared to the 1.5-2 Tesla limit for conventional permanent magnets.

£10m funding for advanced materials research awarded to the University of Cambridge

clh205 — Thu, 09 Mar 2017 15:10:23 +0000

The new funding is part of a £128million Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) investment in the Sir Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials, which comprises seven partner Universities including Manchester, Oxford and Imperial College London.

Spotlight on: the role of technicians

js600 — Thu, 30 Jun 2016 13:41:25 +0000

From gravity to pulsars, Cambridge ideas have changed the world, and from Isaac Newton to Jocelyn Bell, its scientists' achievements are celebrated. But in the stories we tell about how this knowledge was made, a crucial collaborator in the scientific process is missing. The technician.

Today, Cambridge has 800 technicians who play a vital role in teaching and research. Their work, however, remains largely invisible, says Dr Josh Nall, Curator of Modern Sciences at the Whipple Museum.

Topping out for new engineering hub

cjj38 — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 14:37:23 +0000

Tom Dyson, James Dyson’s brother, fulfilled the duty by pouring a bottle of Elgoods Cambridge Bitter onto the roof to mark the event.

He was supported by Bob Ensch, Area Managing Director for Morgan Sindall, the main contractor for the new £13.3 million development, and Angus Stephen, Operations Director for the University’s Estate Management.

The building was made possible by a £6 million donation from the James Dyson Foundation. The Foundation has also funded the development of a design centre for undergraduate engineering students.

Cambridge part of winning bid to integrate driverless cars into everyday life

js600 — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 14:55:51 +0000

The University of Cambridge is a partner in the ‘UK Autodrive’ consortium, which was announced as the winner of the UK Government’s £10 million ‘Introducing Driverless Cars’ competition in the 2014 Autumn Statement.

The aim of the project, which involves local authorities, technology and automotive businesses and other academic institutions, is to establish the UK as a global hub for the development of autonomous vehicle technologies, and to integrate driverless vehicles into existing urban environments by trialling them in two UK cities.

Working to Engineer a Better World

js600 — Wed, 10 Dec 2014 11:39:38 +0000

This programme, one in a series called 'Working to Engineer a Better World', highlights the importance and relevance of research funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The EPSRC is the UK's largest funder of research and training in engineering. As Britain faces a shortage of engineers, the programme looks at the need to exploit bright ideas as well as the importance of attracting more people into the profession.

The making of a smart tunnel

js600 — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 11:13:27 +0000

Twenty-five metres beneath central London is the world’s first ‘smart tunnel’, where ground-breaking new sensing technologies are providing massive amounts of information about the UK’s ageing infrastructure, and how best to maintain and protect it for generations to come.

The Royal Mail tunnel, which was used to carry post across London from 1927 until 2003, is now the site of a unique underground laboratory where University of Cambridge engineers are monitoring movement in real time and seeing how the tunnel changes as a gigantic new tunnel is constructed just beneath it.

The Making of a Smart Tunnel: measuring tunnelling history for the first time

js600 — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 11:57:56 +0000

CSIC, an innovation and knowledge centre funded by EPSRC and the Technology Strategy Board to develop and commercialise emerging technologies, are beginning to see the fruits of their labour with a number of innovative research and development projects underway. For the past nine months, CSIC’s team of PhD students and researchers have been installing innovative monitoring devices in a 30 metre stretch of a 100-year-old, disused tunnel, deep in London’s underground – transforming it into a 'smart tunnel', capable of monitoring stress levels in real time and seeing how they change during exc

Arthur Shercliff Travel Scholarships 2001

maw92 — Fri, 10 Jan 2014 14:24:08 +0000

Applications from student members of the Cambridge and Warwick Departments of Engineering, containing (on a single side of paper) a proposal for a technical visit together with a sealed reference from an academic staff member, should be made to the Head of the respective Department by Friday 2nd February 2001.

It is expected that awards will be announced on Friday 9 March 2001.

New Fellows of The Royal Academy of Engineering

maw92 — Fri, 10 Jan 2014 09:47:29 +0000

Ian's citation refers to his "work in the field of tribology, particularly in relation to the micromechanisms associated with wear processes", Mark is described as "one of the principal founders of nanotechnology" and Steve is honoured for "striking success in advancing our understanding of the statistics of spoken language". At the same annual meeting, one of our visiting professors, Meirion Lewis, was also elected to fellowship, citing his distinguished work on "high-performance signal processing devices at radio, microwave and millimetric frequencies".