September 2019

Success for SEMS Academics in 2019 Promotion Round

Following the 2019 Promotion Round we are very pleased to announce that eleven members of staff from SEMS have been promoted. This is a fantastic achievement that demonstrates the quality of work undertaken by staff in the School. In particular congratulations to our three new Professors - Julien Gautrot, Steffi Krause ... [more]

New research published in Nature Communications, reveals how the location of the protein Polycystin-2 (PC2) on primary cilia regulates Polycystic Kidney Disease.

Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease (ADPKD) is a common yet devastating disease. It is a heritable disorder characterised by development of kidney cysts which slowly overtake the kidney’s structure, destroying its function, and often resulting complete kidney failure by the of age 60. ADPKD affects as many as 1 in 400 people ... [more]

Success for Queen Mary in Times Higher Education World University Rankings

The Times Higher Education (THE) has just published its World University Rankings 2020. We are delighted to tell you that Queen Mary has risen to number 110 in the world and to number 12 in the UK. This is an improvement on last year’s rankings, which placed the University at number 130 in ... [more]

Bioengineers and Cancer Biologists develop a complex in vitro model of the human tumour - new Ideaslab video

Bioengineers are trying to grow human organs, so could growing human tumours help us to understand the microenvironment in which they spread – and how the immune system might be persuaded to attack them? Frances Balkwill explains in this new Ideaslab video for the World Economic Forum how our research at ... [more]

Eduardo Yanes Nunez Wins Best Student Poster Award at IRC2019

Eduardo Yanes Nunez won the IRCO Prize for the best student poster presentation at the annual International Rubber Conference 2019 hosted this year in London for his paper on "Friction Characterisation of Elastomers." Eduardo's supervisor, Prof James Busfield commented that Eduardo's work is concerned with the very practical problem of measuring ... [more]

Leihao Chen Wins Best Student Presentation Award at IRC2019

Leihao Chen won the IRCO Prize for the best student presentation at the International Rubber Conference 2019 for his paper on "Changes in Optical Transmission of a Soft Membrane Using a Dielectric Elastomer Actuator." The judges commented that Leihao's work was not only professionally prepared but it was the most significant ... [more]

Prof James Busfield Chairs the International Rubber Conference 2019 in London

The largest International Rubber Conference (IRC) in the UK this century took place from the 2nd to the 5th September 2019 at the Oval cricket ground in London. Prof James Busfield was the co-chair for the event which attracted 150 oral presentations, 65 posters, 50 exhibitors and 600 delegates. This conference moves around the world ... [more]

August 2019

Licence Agreement signed with Schottlander dental company

Queen Mary University of London has signed IP transfer agreement on "Sustained Release Chlorhexidine Particles Technology" with Schottlander company for dental applications. Inventors are Prof. Gleb Sukhorukov and Dong Luo (former PhD student, now postdoc in Case Western Uni) together with Dr. Mike Cattell and Dr. Saroash Shahid from Institute ... [more]

Liz Tanner gives Lecture in Sichuan University

While in China to present the 11th World Biomaterials Congress 2020 to the Chinese Society for Biomaterials, Liz Tanner also visited Professor Zhang Xingdong (former Research Visitor to the Department of Materials) at Sichuan University and gave a lecture entitled "Composite Materials for Bone Augmentation". [more]

July 2019

Queen Mary continues to support the rebuilding of higher education in Syria

Queen Mary University of London has hosted a Syrian academic in exile, consolidating its support for academics at risk and the rebuilding of higher education in Syria. Queen Mary is among a number of British universities engaged in the Syria Programme launched by the Council for At Risk Academics (Cara) ... [more]

Interview by Kaspar Althoefer on soft robot prosthetics

Kaspar Althoefer was interviewed by talkRADIO on Robots-based Prosthetics. Listen to the interview on https://talkradio.co.uk/radio/listen-again/1564066800#, at 18:22:00. He talks about the advancements in the field, including the new Soft Robotics approach taken at the Centre for Advanced Robotics @ Queen Mary (ARQ). [more]

The Sir James Lighthill Best Student Paper Award won by Vasily Gryazev

Congratulations to Vasily Gryazev whose paper on the modelling of noise propagation in heated jets won the Sir James Lighthill Best Student Paper Award at the 26th International Congress on Sound and Vibration (ICSV26). The award is for the best paper published in the Proceedings of IIAV Annual International Congress ... [more]

QMUL Soft Robotics research features in the Evening Standard

The robot octopus, a recent creation by PhD student Jan Fras, was featured in in the Evening Standard. You can read the article here: https://www.standard.co.uk/tech/scientists-develop-robooctopus-that-mimics-real-sea-creature-a4192871.html Follow this link for a video showing the robot octopus in action: https://youtu.be/TgSD1RUoVsw [more]

Talk about saving babies' lives inspires young people to become bioengineers

Queen Mary researcher Dr Tina Chowdhury gave an inspiring talk to young people about saving babies’ lives at the eighth St Paul’s Way Trust Science Summer School chaired by Professor Brian Cox (OBE) and Lord Andrew Mason (OBE). Dr Chowdhury’s research is investigating ways to repair holes in ... [more]

London set to host world-leading robotics conference

One of the world’s most prestigious robotics conferences is set to come to London after a successful bid led by Queen Mary University of London. Professor Kaspar Althoefer, from Queen Mary’s School of Engineering and Materials Science, won the bid to bring the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’... [more]

Queen Mary and Paragraf awarded £500,000 to explore using Graphene to replace rare metal Indium

Queen Mary University of London and the graphene-device company Paragraf have been awarded £500,000 by Innovate UK to explore using graphene to replace the rare metal Indium. The Queen Mary research will be led by Sir Colin Humphreys from the School of Engineering and Materials Science, with co-investigators Dr Oliver Fenwick ... [more]

Kaspar Althoefer was invited to give a talk at IET conference on Soft Robotics for Keyhole Surgery

Professor Kaspar Althoefer gave an invited talk at The 5th Annual Future of Medicine Conference organised by the IET (https://events.theiet.org/the-5th-annual-future-of-medicine-conference/). His talk is now available at IET.TV: https://tv.theiet.org/?eventvideoid=13241. [more]

June 2019

Aerospace Engineering students attend extreme flight course

Third year undergraduate aerospace students attended an extreme flight course in Cranfield in June. The course allows students to experience when things go wrong in a flight, how to correct them as well as different modes of flight . Students were flown in a fully-instrumented Jetstream 31 aircraft, experiencing flight modes as ... [more]

Kaspar Althoefer interviewed by the BBC on soft robotics and AI

Professor Althoefer was interviewed by the BBC on 23 June 2019. The interview can be seen on BBC iPlayer, as part of BBC1's Sunday Morning Live Show - watch from 43:20: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00069jl/sunday-morning-live-series-10-episode-2 Professor Althoefer and PhD students from the Centre for Advanced ... [more]

Queen Mary Dental Professor becomes first British winner of prestigeous Varshneya Award

Professor Hill, the first British scientist to win this award, was presented with his prize at the 25th International Glass Congress in Boston. The Award was made by the American Ceramic Society.  An expert on fluorine containing glasses and glass-ceramics, Professor Hill initially worked on high fluorine content glasses used ... [more]

QMUL's nuclear robotics research features in The Economist

The National Centre for Nuclear Robotics (NCNR) has been featured in an article in The Economist, with a particular mention of Prof Kaspar Althoefer and his team at the Centre for Advanced Robotics @ Queen Mary. Kaspar and his team are working on creating novel radiation-resilient tactile and force sensors for ... [more]

Mexican government presents Queen Mary academic with prestigious award

Professor Teresa Alonso-Rasgado, Queen Mary’s Dean for Global Engagement in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, has been awarded the highest distinction possible for her academic excellence in Mexico. The Lazaro Cardenas Medal for academic excellence was presented to Professor Alonso-Rasgado by the Secretary of Education, Esteban Moctezuma Barragá... [more]

Funding awarded for mechanobiology research into osteoarthritis

Queen Mary Researchers have been awarded funding for three separate biomechanics and mechanobiology pump priming projects. Professors Hazel Screen and David Lee of the School of Engineering and Materials Science were awarded funding from the OAtech+ Network to develop projects relating to mechanobiology aimed at targeting the chronic, degenerative disease ... [more]

Making a splash is all in the angle

Making a splash depends on the angle of a liquid as it hits and moves along a surface, according to a new study from Queen Mary University of London. If a droplet hits a dry solid surface fast enough it will splash and being able to predict a splash is ... [more]

May 2019

Prof Kaspar Althoefer gives keynote at RoboSoft 2019

Prof Kaspar Althoefer gives keynote presentation at the 2019 IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft 2019) on "Fusing Perception with Structure in Soft Robotics" in Seoul, South Korea on 16 April 2019.

Funding Awarded To Develop a Simulation Tool For Airside Operations Incorporating Intelligent/Autonomous Taxiing

Two Queen Mary researchers have been awarded further funding to develop a simulation tool to quantify the savings of fuel burn and time of taxiing aircraft by integrating more advanced and automated decision support systems. Dr Jun Chen and Dr Michal Weiszer, from the School of Engineering and Materials Science, ... [more]

Technology to capture energy from sea waves awarded funding

A team from Queen Mary has been awarded funding to develop technology to capture energy from waves at sea. Wave Energy Scotland (WES) will grant £461,345 to the team from the School of Engineering and Materials Science to develop an adaptive hierarchical model predictive control framework for wave energy converters (WECs). ... [more]

Funding awarded to develop kidney-on-a-chip for animal free drug testing

A Queen Mary researcher has been awarded funding to develop artificial kidneys, known as kidney-on-a-chip, to avoid testing drugs on animals. Dr Julien Gautrot, from the School of Engineering and Materials Science, was awarded the £50,000 grant from The National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (... [more]

Synthetic bone graft research gets stamp of approval

The pioneering work of a Queen Mary researcher has been celebrated with a stamp as part of a new series launched by Royal Mail. The six stamp set, launched today, marks innovations in British engineering from the last 50 years including the development of a synthetic bone graft by Dr Karin ... [more]

SEMS Research Project Wins National Award

The Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) has awarded the Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between LMK Thermosafe Ltd and QMUL their UK Engineering Excellence Award. The KTP associate, Dr Harshit Porwal, who now works for Thermosafe as a Business Unit Manager was presented with the prize at the Best of the Best ... [more]

Huge Grant Win for QMUL in Transport Engineering

The Department of Education and other funding partners have together pledged a significant grant to QMUL and our partner Newham College to establish the London Institute of Transport Technology in East London’s historic Royal Docks. A total of 12 Institutes of Technology (IOTs) will be established with total funding of ... [more]

April 2019

Prof Alan Thomas (1927 – 2019)

It is with great sadness that I report the passing of Prof Alan Thomas (1927 – 2019). Prof Thomas was one of the world’s leading rubber physicists. His career started as a Physics graduate from Brasenose College at Oxford University from where he moved into a position working for the British Rubber ... [more]

New approach to repair fetal membranes may prevent birth complications

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London and University College London have developed a new approach to repair defects in fetal membranes which could prevent life-long medical conditions and disabilities associated with preterm birth. The integrity of the fetal membranes that surrounds the baby in the womb during pregnancy is ... [more]

First report of cell surface charge mapping with a photoelectrochemical imaging system appears in Analytical Chemistry

Fan's and Bo's paper on the photoelectrochemical imaging of cell surface charges has been been accepted by Analytical Chemistry. Photoanodic currents at indium tin oxide (ITO) coated glass immersed in an electrolyte solution were shown to be sensitive to surface charge, pH and impedance. Our laser scanning setup allows photoelectrochemical ... [more]

KTP Project in SEMS Shortlisted for Award

The Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) has announced that the recently completed Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between LMK Thermosafe Ltd and QMUL has been shortlisted for their Exceptional Engineering Excellence Award. The research associate during the KTP was Dr Harshit Porwal, who now works for the company as a Business Unit ... [more]

QM hosts Organ-on-a-chip Technologies Network meeting

Queen Mary hosted the UK Organ-on-a-chip Technologies Network for a special Learning and Collaborative Event. The network has over 450 members from 50+ academic institutions with over 50 partners from industry and other stake holders. The network event included a programme of research talks, discussion groups, industry demonstrations and special training sessions on ... [more]

SEMS researchers demonstrate targeted drug delivery at TeenTech London

SEMS researchers demonstrated a working model of drug delivery using magnetic nanoparticles at a TeenTech event in The Emirates Stadium. The event was attended by several hundred of school children who had the opportunity to engage in hands-on activities. SEMS researchers used a mock circulatory system to demonstrate how drugs ... [more]

Norlaily's paper about collagenase sensor accepted

Our paper entitled 'Collagenase Biosensor Based on the Degradation of Peptide Cross-Linked Poly(ethylene glycol) Hydrogel Films' written by Norlaily Ahmad, Burcu Colak, De-Wen Zhang, Michael Watkinson, Remzi Becer, Julien Gautrot and Steffi Krause has been published in Sensors 2019, 19(7), 1677; doi:10.3390/s19071677. Peptide cross-linked hydrogels were deposited on gold coated, piezoelectric ... [more]

March 2019

Exercise helps prevent cartilage damage caused by arthritis

Exercise helps to prevent the degradation of cartilage caused by osteoarthritis, according to a new study from Queen Mary University of London. The researchers show for the first time how mechanical forces experienced by cells in joints during exercise prevent cartilage degradation by suppressing the action of inflammatory molecules which ... [more]

New research identifies optimal ventilation protocol for premature babies

A new paper from Prof Martin Knight's group examines the use of two different methods of providing mechanical ventilation to premature babies. The study led by Prof Anne Greenough and colleagues at King's College London, explores the effect of lung inflation volume on inflammation within the alveolar epithelial cells. The ... [more]

Scientists squeeze catalysts inside host materials like a ship into a bottle

Scientists at Queen Mary University of London have found a way to place catalysts inside the tiniest pores of different host materials, a bit like when model ships are unfolded inside a bottle. When materials are confined like this on such a small scale, and without breaking the host, they ... [more]

3rd Year Project Poster Winners Announced

The Spring Industrial Liaison Forum played host to the 3rd year project student poster showcase. This year two winners were selected from the 300+ posters that were submitted. These were from Fatou CHANG for her poster on "Solar drier for agricultural food preservation in developing countries" who is supervised by Henri ... [more]

Industrial Liaison Forum

The School of Engineering and Materials Science hosted a very successful Industrial Liaison Forum (ILF) on Wednesday 13th March 2019 and attracted about 100 visitors throughout the day. The focus was on our Taught Programme Student Projects with more than 100 of our students having the opportunity to discuss their projects with each ... [more]

Bike Design Team Wins Top Prize

A team of 4th year students: Arya LI, Bijoy DAS, Lydia DENTON & Yue MENG, who have been working on project to design a totally new road bike have won the top prize at the 2019 Industrial Liaison Forum. The students, supervised by Dr. Emiliano Bilotti and Dr. Han Zhang, presented their ... [more]

Moresche Bartley wins the best MSc student Poster Award

Moresche Bartley won the best MSc student prize at the 2019 Industrial Liaison Forum in SEMS for her poster called, "An in vitro study of myocyte and fibroblast co-culture response to degraded Mg alloy". Her project is being supervised by Prof. Liz Tanner [more]

SEMS PhD student takes his research to Parliament

PhD student Thibault Degousée presented his results at the STEM For Britain event in the Palace of Westminster. Thibault's work examines the possibility of generating electricity from waste heat using thermoelectric polymers. This event aims to present “ground-breaking” and frontier UK research and R&D to Members of both ... [more]

Successful PhD examination

Pavanakumar Mohanamuraly successfully defended his thesis on "Fast Adjoint-assisted Multilevel Multifidelity Method for Uncertainty Quantification of the Aleatoric Kind" His work uses Monte-Carlo methods to compute the effect of uncertainties due to manufacturing. Current methods work well for up to handful of uncertain parameters, but their computation cost increases dramatically ... [more]

Abhishek's PhD Success

Abhishek Chintagunta successfully passed his PhD viva on the thesis entitled "CABARET Schemes for improved  wave propagation and viscous flow modelling".

Paper published in Optimization Methods and Software

The paper by P. Mohanamuraly (QMUL), L. Hascoet (INRIA, France) and J.-D. Mueller (QMUL) on Seeding and adjoining zero-halo partitioned parallel scientific codes has been accepted for publication. The paper resolves the important issue of how to initialise the computation of a gradient with modern Automatic Differentiation software tools ... [more]

Giant ‘nerve cell’ science education centre lands in London’s East End

‘Neuron Pod’ - a striking 23-metre long and 10-metre high free-standing structure – has opened its doors as an informal science learning centre at Queen Mary University of London’s Whitechapel campus. The launch was marked by a visit from children from Christ Church Primary School, Brick Lane, who took part ... [more]

February 2019

Norlaily Ahmad passes her PhD viva

Congratulations to Norlaily Ahmad who passed her PhD viva today. Norlaily's thesis title is "Biosensor for matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) based on peptide-linked polymers". She was supervised by Steffi Krause and Remzi Becer and also had significant input from Julien Gautrot and Michael Watkinson. She presented her work at two international ... [more]

Participation with the OECD-Nuclear Energy Agency's Expert Group on Multi-physics Experimental Data, Benchmarks and Validation

Dr Andrew Buchan is a member of the OECD-NEA Expert Group on Multi-physics Experimental Data, Benchmarks and Validation (EGMPEBV). He attends the meetings in Paris where the aim is to guide member countries on certifying experimental data of nuclear facilities for use as benchmarks for validating next generation multi-physics codes. [more]

Marie-Curie Individual Fellowship Awarded

Marie-Curie Individual Fellowship (Euro 225K) is awarded on the project "Hierarchical optimal energy management of electric vehicles". It has been widely recognized that vehicle electrification provides a potential way for the EU to move towards a more decarbonized transport system and sustainable circular economy. The overarching objective of this project ... [more]

EUR225K Grant Funding Success

The EU has agreed provide EUR225,000 to fund the KAFKA project: "Efficient Computational Methods for Active Flow Control Using Adjoint Sensitivities" Active flow control aims to change the character of the flow by suction, blowing or pulsating jets. Such jets may e.g. be able to replace bulky car spoilers ... [more]

January 2019

Jens-Dominik Mueller presents at the Sorbonne

Dr. Jens-Dominik Mueller gave an invited presentation on "Shape optimisation using AD of complete CFD workflows, including CAD geometry" at the "Algorithmic Differentiation Workshop" organised by the Institut du Physique du Globe of the Sorbonne University, Paris. [more]

Feng Yang passes her PhD

Dr Feng Yang has successfully completed her corrections having defended her PhD thesis entitled "The Synergistic effect of Bone Graft Substitute Architecture and Mechanical Environment on hMSCs Responses in vitro". Her research on the development of 3D bioreactors to facilitate in vitro investigation of bone graft substitute bioactivity demonstrated the ... [more]

Properties of ‘wonder material’ graphene change in humid conditions

Graphene exhibits very different properties in humid conditions, according to researchers from Queen Mary University of London. The ‘wonder material’, which is made from carbon and was discovered in 2004, is hailed for many of its extraordinary characteristics including being stronger than steel, more conductive than copper, light, flexible and transparent. ... [more]

Airbus funds PhD project on shape optimisation of winglets

Airbus UK is a partner for a 3.5y CASE studentship with J.-D. Mueller's fluid optimisation group. The PhD project for Gordon Lindsay will apply our CAD-based gradient-enabled shape parametrisation tools to perform multi-disciplinary shape optimisation of winglets. [more]