May 2018

SEMS Academic (and Inventor) Adam Sutcliffe featured on Channel 4's "Buy It Now"

SEMS Academic (and Inventor) Adam Sutcliffe was featured on Wednesday's episode of Buy It Now on Channel 4. The programme gives an opportunity to entrepreneurs, inventors and licence holders who have a product to sell, to pitch their product to a captive audience of potential customers and a panel of professional ... [more]

Scientists discover how a pinch of salt can improve battery performance

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London, University of Cambridge and Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research have discovered how a pinch of salt can be used to drastically improve the performance of batteries. They found that adding salt to the inside of a supermolecular sponge and then baking ... [more]

Queen Mary chemist wins prestigious Royal Society of Chemistry Prize

Professor Magdalena Titirici, who works at Queen Mary University of London, is the Royal Society of Chemistry Corday-Morgan Prize winner for 2018. Professor Titirici’s research group mimics the natural process of carbon formation in the lab – a process that takes millions of years in Nature. The resulting carbon is then ... [more]

Queen Mary student team to build robotic wheelchair for Cybathlon 2020

A team of science and engineering students from Queen Mary University of London will design a robotic wheelchair with a plan to compete in Cybathlon 2020 - a global competition for people with disabilities. The team, which consists of students from the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), the ... [more]

April 2018

Dr Andy Bushby wins Innovation of the Year Award

Dr Andy Bushby, from the School of Engineering and Materials Science, was presented with the 2018 Innovation of the Year Award for his project 'Weight-saving metal components achieved by length-scale engineering' at the QMUL Engagement and Enterprise Awards. He has developed a simple manufacturing process for complex 3D shaped metal engineering ... [more]

Technology network awarded funding to capture musculoskeletal degeneration

Queen Mary University of London - as part of a group of universities, hospitals and research centres - has been awarded funding to create a network seeking to develop new, high energy imaging methods to capture the dynamic biochemical and biophysical processes in biological samples. The human body is highly ... [more]

Dr Guang Li wave energy converter control project wins funding from Wave Energy Scotland

Dr Guang Li’s wave energy converter control project proposal has been selected by Wave Energy Scotland as one of 3 projects that will receive funding to be developed further. The 3 successful projects were elected among 13 projects. The project aims to develop reliable and efficient control strategies to improve the wave ... [more]

Queen Mary Awarded Funding to Establish Organ-on-a-Chip UK Network

Queen Mary University of London has been awarded funding to lead a UK network in the development of ‘Organ-on-a-chip’ devices. The network will be part of a major new Research Councils UK (RCUK) funding venture, Technology Touching Life [1], which aims to foster interdisciplinary research into innovative technology in the health ... [more]

Dan Rowson passes his PhD on the effect of mechanical loading on tendon cells

Congratulations to Dan Rowson who passed his PhD viva. Dan's PhD thesis investigated the effect of mechanical stimulation on tendon cells in order to better understand the process of tendon injury. In particular, Dan investigated the effect of mechanical forces on tiny hair-like cellular structures structures, known as primary cilia. ... [more]

New Dunhill Medical Trust grant awarded to Prof Hazel Screen to investigate the development of tendon injury with ageing.

Professor Hazel Screen has been awarded a Dunhill Medical Trust grant of £190,000, to investigate the causes of age-related tendon injury. Tendon injuries are extremely painful and highly debilitating, and become increasingly common as we age, where they can dramatically affect quality-of-life. Developing treatments is of the utmost importance, but scientists ... [more]

Storytelling project for engineers and young east Londoners wins funding

A Queen Mary University of London project which aims to give engineers the skills to create digital stories about how their work can improve the world has received funding from the Ingenious Awards. ‘Engineer the Story’ will bring together engineers to work alongside disadvantaged young people from east London who ... [more]

New animation from the British Heart Foundation shows how SEMS research into tiny tech is helping to treat heart failure

Heart failure affects an estimated 920,000 people in the UK. It means that your heart can't pump blood as well as it should do. One of the most common causes of heart failure is a heart attack. After a heart attack the damaged heart muscle can become stiff. This means your ... [more]

March 2018

Queen Mary researcher helps develop rollercoaster which charges your phone

A researcher from Queen Mary University of London has used his expertise in energy harvesting applications to help develop a rollercoaster which charges your phone. Dr Joe Briscoe, from the School of Engineering and Materials Science, was approached by Thorpe Park Resort to work on their latest ride ‘The Walking ... [more]

Advanced Newton Fellowship grant awarded to Professor Magda Titirici

Professor Magda Titirici has been successful in her application for an Advanced Newton Fellowship grant to support collaborations with Prof. Xinchen Wang’s group at the College of Chemistry, Fuzhou University on “Carbon Dots for Photocatalysis”. The grant is worth £130,000 and is the third successful Advanced Newton Fellowship for Magda’... [more]

Best poster award at UK Energy Storage Conference for Servann Herou

PhD student Servann Herou, was one of the three winners of the poster prize at the UK Energy Storage Conference held in Newcastle. Servann is part of Magda Titirici’s group and won for his work on Lignin Derived Carbon Fibers for Flexible Supercapacitors. [more]

Institute of Mechanical Engineers confirms accreditation of SEMS programmes

The Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) has confirmed the accreditation details for our programmes following their re-accreditation visit to SEMS in November. Students completing an IMechE accredited degree are deemed to have met part or all of the academic requirements for registration as a Chartered or Incorporated Engineer and are ... [more]

Exciting New Paper on the Tumour Microenvironment

A new paper published in the journal Cancer Discovery, by Prof Martin Knight and colleagues describes, for the first time, an evolving human metastatic microenvironment. The work led by Prof Fran Balkwill measures gene expression, matrisome proteomics, cytokine and chemokine levels, cellularity, extracellular matrix organization, and relates this to changes ... [more]

Best 3rd Year Project Student Awards Awarded at the Spring Industrial Liaison Forum

At the Spring Industrial Liaison Forum (ILF) every 3rd year project student was invited to submit a poster on their research. The best 50 posters were displayed to the visitors and the students competed for the best 3rd Year Project Prize. The judges deliberated at length and decided to split the ... [more]

Best MSc Student Project Poster

At the Spring Industrial Liaison Forum (ILF) all the MSc students were invited to submit a poster on their research topics. The best posters were invited to compete for the DePuy Synthes' MSc student Prize. The standard was once again very high this year but after careful deliberations the award ... [more]

Marie Curie Fellowship Award for Dr Luming Zhao

Congratulations to Dr Luming Zhao, who has been awarded a two-year H2020 Marie Curie Fellowship (€200k), supervised by Dr Lei Su, Prof Martin Knight and Dr Manoj Ramachandran. He will develop novel compact optical fibre lasers for clinical imaging and laser surgery. [more]

Best MEng Group in SEMS Award

At the Spring Industrial Liaison Forum (ILF) event all the 4th year MEng group project students in SEMS had the opportunity to present their projects and compete for the DePuy Synthes Group Project Prize. The standard was once again very high this year but after careful deliberations the award for ... [more]

SEMS Industrial Liaison Forum is a Great Success

The Spring SEMS Industrial Liaison Forum was a very popular event again this year. In the morning the annual taught student showcase took place in the Octagon which was followed in the afternoon by a wide range of alumni lead panel and networking sessions. There was also an Industrial Advisory ... [more]

Materials expert joins Queen Mary University of London

Professor Sir Colin Humphreys, CBE, FREng, FRS, the renowned British physicist and materials expert, is set to join Queen Mary University of London as Professor of Materials Science. Working in the School of Engineering and Materials Science from 1 March 2018, he will be responsible for raising the profile of Materials Science ... [more]

February 2018

SEMS PhD student wins London heat of IOM Young Person’s Lecture Competition 2018

Sabina Nicolae, a SEMS PhD student supervised by Magda Titirici and Ana Jorge Sobrido, has won the London heat of the IOM Young Person’s Lecture Competition (YPLC) 2018. The YPLC invites students and professionals up to the age of 28 to deliver a short lecture on a materials, minerals, mining, packaging, ... [more]

Professor Gleb Sukhorukov reaches an h-index of 95

Congratulations to Professor Gleb Sukhorukov whose h-index has recently reached 95, as per Google Scholar. The h-index is a numerical indicator of how productive and influential a researcher is. Gleb is author and co-author of more than 300 papers whose impact is reflected in more than 30 000 citations of his works. He pioneered ... [more]

Cells ‘walk’ on liquids a bit like geckos

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have discovered that cells can ‘walk’ on liquids a bit like the way geckos stick to other surfaces. Cells are typically grown on solid materials, such as tissue culture plastic, degradable polymers and bioceramics. It is thought that the strong mechanical properties of ... [more]

New printing technique uses cells and molecules to recreate biological structures

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London have developed a printing technique using cells and molecules normally found in natural tissues to create constructs that resemble biological structures. These structures are embedded in an ink which is similar to their native environment and opens the possibility to make them behave ... [more]

Record Numbers of Alumni Signup for our next Industrial Liaison Forum

QMUL alumni from any Engineering, Materials or Design discipline are welcome back to the next Industrial Liaison Forum (ILF) on Wednesday, 7th March 2018. At this early stage we have more registrations than ever before with alumni coming back from a very diverse range of career paths. The ILF provides an ... [more]

Students teach robots football tricks in annual hack

Teams of students from Queen Mary University of London and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT) took part in a challenge to hack robots and teach them a range of football skills. The third Queen Mary-BUPT Design and Build Hack Week, which aims to unite students from both universities, ... [more]

New grant on mechanobiology of bone tumours

Dr Stefaan Verbruggen has recently joined the bioengineering group at Queen Mary on a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship. Stefaan is working in Prof Martin Knight's research group investigating the role of mechanical forces in bone cancer and the involvement of primary cilia. Stefaan's project is entitled 'META-DORM: Mechanobiology of ... [more]

January 2018

Cells in the heart sense stiffness by measuring contraction forces and resting tension simultaneously

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London have identified a new mechanism in which adhesive structures within the cells of the heart sense stiffness through muscle contractions and resting tension at the same time. The study, published in Developmental Cell, further shows that the resting tension in the heart cells ... [more]

PhD success for Xuan Li!

Many congratulations to SEMS student Xuan Li! Xuan has successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled, “Design and development of hybrid energy harvesters”. Xuan was supervised by Dr Joe Briscoe and Prof Steve Dunn. [more]