MechEngNews / Issue 7 / October 2015 by SheffMechEng

ISSUE 7: October 2015

MechEngNews MechEngNews

Contents.

Hello!

Alumni of the year Alaster Yoxall

Profile Dr Adam Ellis

Formula Student 2015 results

Welcome back to another new academic year. There’ll be lots of new faces around the Department, not just students but staff too so we look forward to getting to know each of you!

Railway Challenge The results

Generating success Work placement generates real job for student

Let there be light! Rebecca Ede

12 Just add water Water and sanitation in Malawi

For me, the summer months are normally a quiet time, a chance to catch up on the little jobs and to plan my mode of attack for the year to come. This summer, though, I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to go to Malawi with a group of our students to document the work being done by Enactus and Engineers Without Borders to improve lives. I’ve felt strongly about both groups since I first heard about the work they do a year ago, so when I heard about their projects, I just knew I had to be a part of it. Read about my trip on page 12.

Research focus NeTIRail Infra

I hope you’ve all had similarly exciting experiences this summer and are ready to get back into work feeling refreshed.

Funding awarded This quarter’s grants

Kat

Cummins Bursary Simran Singh

Where are they now? Andrew Jackson

18 Read all about it! News from around the Department 24

Kat Buck

Editor k.buck@sheffield.ac.uk

@SheffMechEng /SheffMechEng

The Final Word.

SheffMechEng.blogspot.com 2

MechEngNewsThis publication is produced using 100% recycled FSC certified paper

Alumni of the year We are enormously grateful to all of our alumni volunteers who have continued to work with us and support us since they left us. In June the University hosted over 100 alumni volunteers from all Departments along with staff and students who have benefited from their work at a recognition and awards event. Alaster Yoxall was one of a handful of Mech Eng alumni who were nominated for awards and was highly commended for the Alumni Volunteer of the Year award. Alaster, who now lectures at Sheffield Halam University, was nominated for the award by Professor Elena Rodriguez-Falcon who he has helped over the past 12 years with her award winning MEC414 module. Elena says, “Alaster has hugely influenced the way my module is done. Much of the philosophy behind how this learning experience is conducted has been shaped and delivered by Alaster. Every year for the past 12 years, Alaster has supported me in finding the ‘client’. He has worked with me in defining the challenge which students will undertake. He will then come and deliver a lecture on inclusive design, he will come and facilitate the interview with the clients with me, he will help me provide feedback on intial design ideas that students produce, he helps students through the semester with their prototypes, at times even using his own facilities and he will judge the competition at the end of the semester.

to the need of the project, so it is not the same lecture he just gets out of the cupboard year after year. He will update it and do a sterling job. Students are always hugely positive about him. “The fact that he has offered his own facilities to manufacture prototypes is something that he does at his own cost, his own time and which has resulted in companies being set up! “I have worked with many alumni throughout the years. Any contribution makes a huge difference to the students and to the University. True volunteering, however, is when someone doesn’t expect to be asked, when they give their time, expertise and resources in such selfless way without expecting any recognition. That is what Dr Alaster Yoxall has done for 12 years.” So, on behalf of Elena, the Department and the University, we would like to thank Alaster, and other alumni just like him who continue to give us their time and expertise to help improve the experience of our students for years to come.

“I work with people with disabilities in this module. The ethics of this, the way of approaching it has to be very sensitive. Alaster will help me manage the relationship with care and professionalism. He adapts his lecture every year

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Profile: Dr Adam Ellis What made you want to become a mechanical engineer? I initially applied to The University of Sheffield to study Accounting and Finance, however, on A-level results day I received a change of course offer on the phone from Dr. Lance Twyman of the Department of Chemistry. This offer was a relief, I accepted. I arrived at The University of Sheffield to begin a BSc in Chemistry in 2003, however, after various timetable clashes I was advised that switching over to the 4 year MChem course would solve this problem, so I did. During my final year as an undergraduate I was offered a PhD in chemistry by the same Dr. Lance Twyman whom I had spoken to on A-level results day. Under his tutorship I completed

a PhD in polymer chemistry in 2011. After completion of my PhD I was awarded a 1 year Doctoral Prize Fellowship from the EPSRC, also in the Department of Chemistry. In late 2012, Prof Neil Hopkinson offered me a position as a PDRA which I accepted.

What are your research interests? One of my main research interests is material development for High Speed Sintering. My primary research activity is under a project entitled Factum, www.factumadditivemanufacturing.com which aims to bring the benefits of additive manufacturing to high volume production.

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What research are you currently working on ? Something I have been developing for the last year or so is called the PUShTM Process, a post-processing chemical surface treatment for Laser Sintered parts. As a chemist working in an engineering environment this allowed me to bring an alternate perspective to a long standing problem and solve it. Laser Sintering is a well-established technology but has always suffered from poor surface finish, the parts are rough to the touch which can reduce their application and reduce their aesthetic appeal when compared with the glossy smooth finish of an injection moulded part. The PUSh ProcessTM transforms the surface finish of a Laser Sintered part to a finish much closer to that of injection moulding. The process is fast, scalable, automatable and works on all surfaces including hidden surfaces and lattice structures. The University of Sheffield is licensing this knowhow and has already generated income of ÂŁ40,000.

PUShTM PROCESS A new level of finishing for Developed by the University of Sheffield Significantly reduces surface roughness

If there was one Mech Eng problem you could solve, what would it be?

Retains fine features

I think it would have to be clean water for the entire world or somehow increasing the efficiency of renewable energy to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

Improves aesthetic appeal

What words of advice would you give to your student-self about the future?

Low equipment and consumable costs

Nothing! I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to go back in time like Marty McFly, I might cause a major paradox!

Automatable

Proven across a range of polymers from soft elastomers to nylons Works on hidden surfaces and lattice structures, not a line of sight process www.pushprocess.technology

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Just over 100 universities from around the world took part in this year’s Formula Student event at Silverstone and, as always, competition was tough but our team did us proud. After battling through some simple, but time consuming technical issues (e.g. cracked welds in the fuel tank!) our team’s car performed well, proving that it was the most technically advanced design they have ever built. Design: 44th (12th out of UK universities) Business planning: 51st (24th out of UK universities) Cost, Manufacturing & Sustainability: 10th (6th out of UK universities) Endurance: 32nd (11th out of UK universities)

did similarly to last year with Bath (4th), Oxford Brookes (6th) and Birmingham (7th) making the top 10. Of our other main ‘undergraduate competitors’ we just beat Leeds and were comfortably ahead of Manchester, Cambridge, Warwick, Imperial and UCL. Scrutineering was tough this year which meant only a third of the cars, including us, competed on the Saturday.

We finished 46th overall and 15th out of the UK universities. Last year we were 40th and 14th respectively. The overall competition was won by TU Delft (retaining their title) with UAS Zwickau in 2nd and University of Stuttgart in 3rd. The UK teams

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The team’s preparation for the past competition was great but a series of unlucky events did not allow us to perform at our full potential. Even so, the investment for the future has been great both in terms of sponsors relations and in terms of overall team moral and knowledge moving forwards. George Blackler Engine and Electronics Team Leader MechEngNews

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Railway Challenge The IMechE’s Railway Challenge competition took place in late June, with the University of Sheffield’s team making their competition debut. Railway Challenge at Sheffield (RCAS) is a student-led activity primarily composed of Mechanical Engineering undergraduates in their first or second year; where the aim is to build a miniature (10 ¼ inch gauge) locomotive to compete in a series of tasks in the competition, e.g. a traction challenge, a ride comfort challenge and a business presentation. RCAS finished 6th out of eight entrants to the competition, a highlight being the business presentation where our efforts were rewarded with a respectable 4th place.

the team in very good stead for next year’s competition. Targets for 2016 are a more comprehensive design report, which details the locomotive and is submitted to the judges a month in advance of the competition, and the implementation of regenerative brake so that the team can compete in the energy recovery challenge. The current structure and systems on the locomotive will be subject to improvements as the team looks to build on a positive inaugural competition.

The team received unanimous praise from the judges and other teams, whose members were either final year group project students, postgraduate students or graduates working within the rail industry. Particular areas that impressed were the innovation shown in the vacuum-operated brake system and the low-frame bogie design. Unfortunately an element of the bogie design was to be our downfall, after a successful test run, persistent derailment issues on tight curves within the station sidings, at the time of writing believed to be caused by the large wheelbase meant that the team was unable to compete on safety grounds. This was of course met with great disappointment after much effort and many hours committed by the team. The competition was a huge learning curve and the experience gained invaluable, standing

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Generating success

According to etrust.org.uk, a Year in Industry can fast track your future career, greatly improving your prospects. 97% of students who have undertaken a Year in Industry feel they are more employable, as it adds massive value to a CV as well as greatly increasing confidence and maturity levels. One of our students has hit a double whammy with his placement year at Cummins, having just received a guaranteed job offer and a bursary of £1500 from his placement company. Simran Singh tells us more. “At Cummins, my primary role was to provide technical support for the engines in generators in Europe, Middle East and Russia. However, as my line manager had more of a global role, I also provided support for many issues outside my designated region. Alongside this primary role, I took on many projects such as simulation of the Engine Control Systems, setting up service capability for new products, designing a robust automated data analysis system for customer engagement and involvement etc. “All the placement students working at Cummins (thirty-one in total) were automatically enrolled in the Bursary selection process. To get the bursary, a panel of judges first assessed the quarterly

feedback and stakeholder recommendations that were provided by my line manager and colleagues. After this I submitted a personal statement, delivered a presentation and attended an interview with the judges. Based on the results of these stages, four out of thirty-one students were awarded the bursary, and I was one of them. “By October, the company will send me a list of available jobs. I will then have the opportunity to select which one of these jobs I would prefer and I will be offered that role. However, this offer is conditional on the company’s financial state at the time, and the successful completion of my degree. “I am honoured that I received the bursary. All the placement students worked very hard throughout the year and to be recognised for the effort I put in throughout the year was very rewarding. “My advice for students applying for placement or bursaries would be to keep asking questions. One thing I learnt during my placement is that in work environment, nothing is written down in books. Everything that you learn, is learnt from colleagues who have numerous years of experience under their belts. The best and only way to gain this information, and to keep developing your skills and knowledge, is to keep asking them questions.”

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Let there be light! Rebecca Ede has been working with BOC Gases in New Zealand on a summer placement as part of the RAE Global Grand Challenges Summit. As a source of energy, nothing matches the sun. It out-powers anything that human technology could ever produce. Only a small fraction of the sun’s power reaches the Earth, but even that provides 10,000 times as much as all the commercial energy that humans use on the planet. So why aren’t we using more of it? After winning the RAE Advanced Leadership Awards last year, final year Mech Eng student, Rebecca Ede was invited to apply to participate in the Global Grand Challenges Summit which took place in Beijing in September. Rebecca was one of 35 lucky students to be accepted and they all met up in London to form teams and select projects to work on. Rebecca says, “I chose the solar energy project because satisfying the growing energy demand with renewable sources will be one of the greatest challenges over the next decade, and I thought it would be interesting to learn more about solar energy and the technologies that are available. Our task will involve looking at these technologies and identifying how to implement them in a way which provides economical solar energy.” The challenge: Make solar energy economical. Worldwide, solar electricity generation is a growing, multibillion pound industry. But solar’s share of the total energy market remains relatively small, well below 1 percent of total energy consumption, compared with roughly 85 percent from oil, natural gas, and coal.

Those fossil fuels cannot remain the dominant sources of energy forever. Whatever the precise timetable for their depletion, oil and gas supplies will not keep up with growing energy demands. Coal is available in abundance, but its use exacerbates air and water pollution problems, and coal contributes even more substantially than other fossil fuels to the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For a long-term, sustainable energy source, solar power offers a great alternative. Its availability far exceeds any conceivable future energy demands. It is environmentally clean, and its energy is transmitted from the sun to the Earth free of charge. But exploiting the sun’s power is not without challenges. Overcoming the barriers to widespread solar power generation will require engineering innovations in several arenas — for capturing the sun’s energy, converting it to useful forms, and storing it for use when the sun itself is obscured. Many of the technologies to address these issues are already well on their way. Dishes can concentrate the sun’s rays to heat fluids that drive engines and produce power, a possible approach to solar electricity generation. Another popular avenue is direct production of electric current from captured sunlight, which has long been possible with solar photovoltaic cells. But today’s commercial solar cells, most often made from silicon, typically convert sunlight into electricity with an efficiency of only 10 to

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20 percent, although some test cells do a little better. Given their manufacturing costs, modules of today’s cells incorporated in the power grid would produce electricity at a cost roughly 3 to 6 times higher than current prices, or 18-30 cents per kilowatt hour [Solar Energy Technologies Program]. To make solar economically competitive, engineers must find ways to improve the efficiency of the cells and to lower their manufacturing costs.

So, how do you make solar power more economical?

Prospects for improving solar efficiency are promising. Current standard cells have a theoretical maximum efficiency of 31 percent because of the electronic properties of the silicon material. But new materials, arranged in novel ways, can evade that limit, with some multilayer cells reaching 34 percent efficiency. Experimental cells have exceeded 40 percent efficiency.

A key issue is material purity. Current solar cell designs require high-purity, and therefore expensive, materials, because impurities block the flow of electric charge. That problem would be diminished if charges had to travel only a short distance, through a thin layer of material. But thin layers would not absorb as much sunlight to begin with.

Recent experiments have reported intriguing advances in the use of nanocrystals made from the elements lead and selenium. [Schaller et al.] In standard cells, the impact of a particle of light (a photon) releases an electron to carry electric charge, but it also produces some useless excess heat. Lead-selenium nanocrystals enhance the chance of releasing a second electron rather than the heat, boosting the electric current output. Other experiments suggest this phenomenon can occur in silicon as well. [Beard et al.] Theoretically the nanocrystal approach could reach efficiencies of 60 percent or higher, though it may be smaller in practice.

One way around that dilemma would be to use materials thick in one dimension, for absorbing sunlight, and thin in another direction, through which charges could travel. One such strategy envisions cells made with tiny cylinders, or nanorods. Light could be absorbed down the length of the rods, while charges could travel across the rods’ narrow width. Another approach involves a combination of dye molecules to absorb sunlight with titanium dioxide molecules to collect electric charges. But large improvements in efficiency will be needed to make such systems competitive.

Other new materials for solar cells may help reduce fabrication costs. “This area is where breakthroughs in the science and technology of solar cell materials can give the greatest impact on the cost and widespread implementation of solar electricity,” according to Caltech chemist Nathan Lewis.

www.engineeringchallenges.org

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Life is simple. Just add water. In August four Mech Eng students from Engineers Without Borders (EWB) and Enactus jetted off to Malawi in Southern Africa to work on water and sanitation projects across the country. Kat Buck, Mech’s marketing officer followed them out there to record their trip.

Andrew Merson (3rd year) and Sam Stedman (Final year) are both members of EWB and will be involved in the design and implementation of a bicycle powered water pump, capable of pumping several tonnes of water a day from Lake Malawi into farmers’ fields up to 50 metres away from the source at 120kPa of pressure. Water is usually carried by hand in 20 litre buckets on the heads of women (that’s about 20kg per bucket so it’s going to take a lot of trips to the lake to carry all they need!) so this simple device could make a huge impact to the lives of local people and, if successful, could drastically improve the crop yield. Andrew and Sam will be in Malawi for the next 9 weeks and during their time they will be holding workshops with local farmers to ensure that their product meets their needs. Already, they have given a talk and demonstration at Mzuzu University in front of students, academics and farmers, which has resulted in them being invited to lead on a piece of research with the University to analyse and understand the irrigation practices of farmers in Nkhata Bay to assess how appropriate technologies can be used to increase irrigation in the dry season and hence potentially increase growing capacity and local food sustainability.

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Samy Krym (2nd year) and Deven Darshane (1st year) were travelling in the Enactus team. Their project, Tapping Potential, works with a team of school leavers and takes a 3-pronged approach to tackle the problem of deaths from diarrhoea related diseases. Step one is to repair existing boreholes. The boreholes are a lifeline to clean water, and when they break, as they often do, people go back to using stagnant river or stream water, which carries numerous diseases. Ensuring that the boreholes keep working means that people always have access to clean water for drinking, cooking and washing with. Step 2 is soap. The team taught the school leavers to make their own luxury soap and gave them the business skills to build their own enterprise selling to hotels and communities in the area. The profits from the soap not only provide the school leavers with a good living wage, but also feed into step 3, medicine. Giving communities access to medicine is vital in helping people to survive diarrhoea related diseases. Often clinics just donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the money to provide the drugs that people so desperately need so profits from the soap business will support clinics to buy those medicines. Kat would like to thank all staff who kindly donated and gave items for clinics and schools in the area. Malawi is currently the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poorest country, but meeting the people there, you would never believe it. What little they have, they want to share. They are happy with what they have, and no amount of money can buy that.

Tanzania Zambia Mozambique Malawi

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Research focus: NeTIRail-INFRA Meeting society’s needs for economic, reliable and sustainable transport has received a boost with the launch of a 5.4M€ railway infrastructure research project at The University of Sheffield. The project, which is to last 3 years, has been funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme.

programme is bringing together companies and universities from eight EU countries to answer the question of how technology tailored to the needs of lesser used lines can increase their viability and boost their role in meeting society’s transport needs. Key aspects of the project include:

Railways play a major role in meeting society’s need for economic, reliable and sustainable transport, but for them to continue doing this depends on finding new and better ways of maintaining and developing railway infrastructure. High speed lines make the news but millions of people depend on lesser used and older routes that can be overlooked until services deteriorate or there’s a threat of closure. Better assessment of the economic value of lines (for example the value of the jobs they provide access to) together with technologies tailored to achieve a viable future for lesser used lines are the focus of a new EU funded project led by University of Sheffield. The 5.4M€ NeTIRail-INFRA (Needs Tailored Interoperable Railway Infrastructure)

•

Track infrastructure design and maintenance optimised for particular routes and track types

•

Tailored overhead line power supply infrastructure providing solutions for low cost electrification

•

Low cost monitoring interfaced with railway technology to optimise operation, maintenance and renewal of the infrastructure

•

Assessment of economic and societal impact of rail transportation to examine costs, benefits and viability of lines and their investment decisions • Developing software for rail system operators outside the project to apply the methods developed to their own lines The project targets rail infrastructure reliability/availability increased by around 20%, capacity utilisation of 70-90%, and recurrent costs down 25-45% relative to current levels. In addition to its impact on transport, it is intended that the skills developed in the project will allow European businesses and researchers to export their knowledge to wider markets, supporting EU competitiveness and growth.

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Funding awarded this quarter: Bill Nimmo has received a total of £101,065 from IIT for various projects. He has received and £ Dr additional £239,410 from EPSRC for his Ultra-Supercritical steam power generation project, and a further £7,232 from British Council Pakistan for the INSPIRE Strategic Partnership.

Roger Lewis has received £90,531 from Railway Safety Standards Board for his £ Professor research into the effect of water on the transmission of forces between wheels and rails and his

project on predictable and optimised breaking. He received a further £77,388 from Department for Transport for his project on the control of wheel interface conditions using dry-ice blasting. Dr David Fletcher has recieved £480,174 from European Commission for the NeTIRail-INFRA

£ project featured opposite. £ Prof. Lin Ma received £72,179 from EPSRC for the UK Carbon Capture & Storage Research Centre. Patrick Smith received £58,658 from Tremco Illbruck International Coatings Ltd for his £ Dr project In-situ synthesis of urethane pre-polymer. £ Dr Jem Rongong received £181,353 from Innovate UK for his Tripal KTP. Mohamed Pourkashanian received a total of £1,431, 170 from EPSRC for the UK Carbon £ Professor Capture and Storage Research Centre and his project on selective exhaust gas recirculation for CSS. He received a further £69,058 from The British Council for the PACT project.

Candice Majewski has received £30,000 from Eastman Chemicals for the second phase of her £ Dr polymer sintering investigations.

£ Dr Matt Marshall received £42,600 from Rolls-Royce Plc for abradability rig testing metallic foams. Professor Rob Dwyer-Joyce received £320,000 from European Commission under Horizon 2020 £ for his research into a fuel-flexible, near zero emissions, adaptive performance marine engine and a further £26,000 from EPSRC for his ultrasonic wire drawing.

Slatter received £3,100 from Douglas Bomford Trust for biodegradable lubricants for use in £ Tom internal combustion engines.

£ Dr Kevin Hughes received £29,200 from E4tech UK Ltd for TEA biomass pre-processing. £ Dr Karen Finney received £40,180 from EPSRC for Biomass: pre-treatment, combustion and CCS. Keith Worden received a whopping £4,149,593 from EPSRC for the Structural Dynamics £ Professor Laboratory for Verification and Validation (LVV). Total funding received this quarter:

£7,449,611 MechEngNews

Where are they now? Andrew Jackson left us in 2005 with an MEng (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering. He is now an Associate Partner with one of the most prestigious architectural practices in the world. Andrew’s first job after graduating was in the Chester office of an engineering consultancy called Gifford as a mechanical design engineer. His role there involved taking on design work associated with a variety of public sector projects including hospitals, schools and defence projects, both in the UK and overseas. This gave him the opportunity to work with some very talented and experienced engineers, which gave him a great grounding in the basics of engineering design that he still draws upon today.

He is now an Associate Partner within the Environmental Engineering team at Foster + Partners, one of the world’s most prestigious architectural practices responsible for the design of many well-known projects both in the UK and abroad including, 30 St. Mary Ave (the ‘Gherkin’), Wembley Stadium, the Millau Viaduct in France, and the Reichstag redevelopment in Berlin. His current role incorporates both systems design and environmental analysis within the built environment. The systems design side covers renewable technologies, heating, cooling, mechanical and natural ventilation, power and resilience, lighting, fire protection, IT & data, electrical, water, gas, drainage – basically anything which makes a building function. The environmental analysis side includes energy strategy, shading and massing, envelope optimisation, day-lighting, CFD studies, pedestrian and occupant comfort. The discipline is very broad in its scope, which means that it’s important to have some understanding of the interaction of all of these elements and there is always something new to learn.

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Find something you love doing and never stop working at it!

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Working at Foster + Partners means Andrew gets the opportunity to work with the architects right from the outset of a project – as part of an integrated team – and inform the fundamental aspects of a building – from the ground up – to optimise its performance. He has also been fortunate enough to work on projects all over the world including Europe, USA, China, Russia and the UAE and travel as part of his work. The opportunity to work on projects in such a variety of locations is great because it has such a bearing on the way a building must respond – both to different climates and cultures.

“Construction projects have such a long gestation period, often taking years to design and build, that the completion of a project can be an emotional experience as it’s the culmination of such a huge personal and collective effort. The most rewarding projects are often the most difficult or complex! Some of the buildings in my career which I am most proud of are the new Apple stores in Istanbul and Hangzhou, the Littlehampton Academy in West Sussex, and the Mitchell Arts Centre in Stoke-on-Trent, all of which for very different reasons have been significant points in my career.”

“The good thing about my job is that there is no such thing as a typical day and the work is extremely varied.” says Andrew. “The problems I have been faced with at Foster + Partners have varied in scale, from master planning at a city scale down to the design of individual building components like bespoke air diffusers, which necessitate very different analytical and empirical approaches. So it’s a fantastic challenge for an engineer.

Andrew hopes to leave a legacy of inspiring, sustainable buildings which enrich the lives of the people who use them. His outlook on his career, and advice to future engineers, is someting we could all learn from; What you get out of your career is directly proportional to what you put into it, so find something you love doing and never stop working at it!

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Read all about it! News from around the Department

Congratulations to our 2015 graduates!

Green Impact needs you! The Green Impact team would like to say thank you to new recruits JD and Turk for helping them out this summer with their summer check list. With not long to go before the new work book opens they would like to ask any staff or students interested in getting involved this year to contact Cara Russell (cara.russell@sheffield.ac.uk). We are always looking for new team members and more creative ways of getting the green message across - the more the merrier.

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Elena scores a hatrick As if winning the award for Most Enterprising Tutor of the Year in the Students’ Union Academic Awards earlier this year, Professor Elena Rodriguez-Falcon has gone on to bag herself two other prestigious achievements. In September Elena jetted off to an awards ceremony in Mexico where she collected an honorary doctorate from Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (UANL). Elena has also been appointed VP of the International Advisory Board at UANL

Dr. Daniel González Spencer, Executive Secretary of the Board and Vice President for International Relations of the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León says, “Professor Rodríguez-Falcon is absolutely unique within the Board, (not because she is the youngest and only woman member), but because she is an honored alumna of UANL that has gone forth to seek higher knowledge in foreign lands, and has been magnificently prosperous in the effort. This joyous alignment brings a highly prized perspective to the Board, due to her understanding of the inner workings of our University and how they may conjoin with world class university proceedings.” Elena has recently begun writing a blog of news and views from a female LGBT engineer. Why not grab a cuppa and go check it out? http://bit.ly/1JyMckj

Caption Competition Professor Elena Rodriguez-Falcon is good at most things, you only have to read above to know that. But when it comes to riding a bike, she really excels. She’s a bit of a stunt queen too; on her latest outing she rode at super speed down a hill using only a bush as breaks. Her only injury, two broken fingers and some minor humiliation. They say you never forget how to ride a bike, but do some of us ever really learn? Can you caption this photo? The prize is one bike riding lesson from Elena herself. Helmet included.

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The Final Word. We have lots of fresh faces joining us this month, staff as well as students so I hope you’ll join me in wishing them all a very warm welcome and rescuing any lost faces in the corridors. As always, as one group of students joins us, we have to say goodbye to another. To those who graduated this summer, we are sad to see you leave, but hugely proud of all you’ve achieved in your time with us and we have doubts that you will continue to grow and do the very best you can in the future. It’s been a busy summer, with lots of international travel, including four of our students travelling out to Malawi to work on water and sanitation projects across the country. There have been conferences and expos, exchanges and awards ceremonies and our staff and students have been at the forefront of the action. As you will see from the grants awarded this quarter, it’s been a great time for research as the quality and breadth of our work goes from strength to strength. There are exciting things going on in the Department at the moment and I’m looking forward to seeing what the year ahead brings!

Neil Sims

Head of Department, Mechanical Engineering

This publication is produced using 100% recycled FSC certified paper

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