Epigram
21.01.2013
4
Engineers finish 24-hour marathon Ved Uttamchandani News Reporter Some of the most innovative ideas are born when a group of engineers get together to face a challenge. To support and enhance the problemsolving abilities all engineers are expected to have, Bristol University, through its Computer Science Society, hosted the ARM on-Campus Engineering Challenge on Saturday December 8th 2012. The challenge was open to all students from the Faculty of Engineering. Participants were given an mbed micro-controller and asked to engineer something that demonstrated good use of the resource (robots, quadcopters, proximity sensors etc.) from scratch in 24 hours. 66 candidates in 15 teams took part, representing several departments. Following an opening brief from the lead event organiser Varun Sarwal the event kicked off at midday. Teams made their way into the upper and lower atriums of the Merchant Venturers Building where they were allocated workspaces. Over the next 24 hours, these desks turned into laboratories, cluttered with the engineers’ ingenuity, emotions and tools,
Priory Road plan responds to student numbers rise Zaki Dogliani Deputy News Editor Plans were recently put on display in Senate House outlining the planned development of Priory Road. Planning permission for the building work, aimed at providing more teaching space for the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law, will be sought in the spring. Patrick Finch, Bursar and Director of Estates, explained ‘As part of its three year growth plan the University is proposing to improve and extend teaching and administration space in the Priory Road/Tyndalls Park Road area for use by the faculties of Arts and Social Sciences and
as they frantically tried to demonstrate their engineering prowess and superiority. Much of the determination from the night before returned the next morning as the major engineering effort reached the conclusion. The panel of judges – which included Dr. Daniel Page, Dr. Mike Barton, Dr. Guido Herrmann and Mr. Crispin Semmens – arrived and, at noon on Sunday, teams were asked to stop engineering and start demonstrating their designs to the judges. Designs included a remote controlled car that surveys and
maps the area, a quadcopter capable of lifting weight, a robot inspired by WALL-E and a robotic car. After a long discussion, judges awarded the prize to “Charlie’s Angels”, a group of five aerospace engineers who built an electronic etcha-sketch that could be used to play video games. Other teams receiving a special mention from the judges included ARM-agloveon for a pair of gloves which interface with computer systems, Minotaur for a maze solving machine and gEEKs for an obstacle dodging robot.
Law. ‘A project team is currently drawing up proposals to refurbish the current Language Centre at 30-32 Tyndall’s Park Road and is also designing a new 450–500 seat lecture theatre, to serve the whole University, which would be built in the garden to the rear of 30 – 32 Tyndall’s Park Road and connect through to the Priory Road complex. ‘A planning application for this work will be submitted in February. Subject to planning approval the refurbishment of the Language Centre is due to be finished for September 2013 and for the new lecture theatre to be ready by September 2014, though these timescales may change.’
The 500-seat lecture is understood to be linked to the rise in student numbers. The exhibition stated ‘Looking forward, the University has identified a need for a large capacity lecture theatre to accommodate growing student numbers.’ The consultancy is being run by Avril Baker Consultancy (ABC), also in charge of the Hiatt Baker Hall extension, another result of the growth in student numbers. According to the latest update, work on the new site entrance of the Stoke Bishop hall will start in late January. Staff and students were able to make comments and suggestions to ABC while the exhibition was up from 7 to 20 December.
Avril Baker
The planned 500-seat lecture theatre on Priory Road/Tyndalls Park
Uni partnership sets world record Josephine McConville Deputy News Editor
Professor Eric Thomas, Vice-Chancellor, with Professor Hiroshi Matsumoto, President of Kyoto University
A record-breaking collaboration between the University of Bristol and a leading Japanese university has been launched to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing the planet such as predicting natural disasters, developing robotics and improving medical treatment. From the 9th – 11th January 90 academics delegates from Kyoto University travelled across the world to Bristol to discuss and share latest research and technology that could address these major international issues. The twoday Symposium was believed to be the largest one ever to have taken place in the UK, demonstrated the increasing importance of international collaborations to face huge global challenges. Professor Guy Orpen, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Enterprise at the University of Bristol, said; ‘The partnership with Kyoto University is extremely exciting because it brings together each country’s foremost thinkers to tackle issues which have a very real impact on societies around the world.’
Kyoto University ranks 20th in the Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings and – like Bristol university – is one of the top global research universities highly-regarded for its academic excellence. The symposium marked the opportunity for world-leading specialists to share knowledge of how best to protect the world
90
The number of academics who flew to Bristol from earthquakes, flooding and other natural disasters. Other join research projects included the development of ‘translational medicine’; Kyoto scientists have developed a new healing system based on artificial skin and titanium implants which could have revolutionary results for medicine. Professor Lars Sundstrom, Director of the Severnside Alliance for Translational Research at Bristol University, said ‘We hope to develop these for use in Europe as new treatments through our clinical academic research groups. This also brings us in direct contact
with Japanese companies that work with Kyoto University, thus extending our reach and building privileged links with the Japanese medical device industry which we could never do on our own.’ It is hoped the collaboration between Bristol and Kyoto will lead to external investment and opportunities for academic and student exchanges. Amongst those who attended the symposium were His Excellency Keiichi Hayashi, the Japanese Ambassador to the UK, and Bristol Mayor George Ferguson. Ferguson told Epigram ‘The partnership between Kyoto and Bristol University is excellent and healthy. I was invited to a dinner by the Vice Chancellor on the SS Great Britain with 90 of the Kyoto professors and staff. I was impressed by the raring enthusiasm to make this link with Bristol. I’m hoping that when I visit China in the Spring that I might find time to visit Japan. Both of those countries are extremely valuable to us. In terms of inward investment, research and exports. I have absolutely no doubt that strengthening these ties is really valuable. I intend to work very closely with the University of Bristol on aspects of that sort.’