News

December 2021

Scientists create stable materials for more efficient solar cells 15 December 2021 Crystalline silicon is the most widely used material for solar cells. However, over the last decade, perovskite solar cells, made from metal halide perovskite materials, have shown promise to make cheaper, and potentially more efficient solar cells than silicon. But whilst perovskite solar cells can now compete in terms of … [more]

Mohammed Deera awarded the James S Walker Award by IOM3 8 December 2021 Mohammed Deera, a first class BEng Materials and Design graduate from 2020, has won the 2021 James S Walker Award from IOM3 for his final year project on "A Potential Route to Re-processable Natural Rubber". The idea that he explored experimentally was the creation of labile crosslinks that … [more]

Poster Prizes Awarded at Industrial Liaison Forum 3 December 2021 At the recent Industrial Liaision Forum PhD Research Showcase three best poster prizes were awarded. Emily Lin, who is supervisied by Stoyan Smoukov in the Division of Chemical Engineering and Renewable Energy, was awarded a prize for her project on Active Rechargeable Self-Assembled Microswimmers Driven By Surface Phase Transitions. … [more]

November 2021

Queen Mary University of London has been ranked as the country's top university for social mobility according to a new report, also ranking our Engineering courses in the top ten out of all subjects in the country. 24 November 2021  A new report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies in partnership with the Sutton Trust and Department for Education has looked at the proportion of students from low-income backgrounds at each university, and whether those students have moved up to the top of the income ladder by age 30. Using … [more]

Industrial Liaison Forum 19 November 2021 We were pleased to once again hold the bi-annual Industrial Liaison Forum live in-person at Queen Mary University of London on 10th November 2021 in the Octagon. The event was well attended with industrialists from over forty organisations. The day was broken up into five parts, starting … [more]

Daniel Mills wins the Royal Charter Prize of the IOM3 17 November 2021 Daniel Mills - a 2021 MEng Materials graduate - has been awarded the Royal Charter Prize of the Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining (IOM3). This award is given to the best Materials Science graduate on any accredited materials degree course, regardless of discipline. This is a competitive … [more]

Prof Knight on expert panel on organ-chip models for cancer 17 November 2021 Prof Knight is excited to be speaking on an expert panel at the upcoming 10th PREDiCT: Tumour Models London Summit which is uniting preclinical and translational leaders to narrow the preclinical gap and progress efficacious candidates to the clinic. He will be presenting on 'Organ-on-a-chip Models of Bone Metastasis' and … [more]

Materials Celebrates 50 Years of Graduations 15 November 2021 50 years of Materials graduates from the Mile End Campus in London and the first cohort from Queen Mary Engineering School (QMES) at our campus at Northwestern Polytechnic University in Xi’an China were celebrated on Friday 5th November. 120 people gathered in the Octagon with another 45 people on-line to … [more]

Juncheng Fan from Queen Mary Engineering School, Xi'an, comes third in IoM3 Young Person's World Lecture Competition 11 November 2021 Juncheng Fan from QMES (Queen Mary Engineering School, Xi'an) came third in IoM3 Young Person's World Lecture Competition. The competition is run by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IoM3) every year with students competing through regional and then national finals. Juncheng's presentation … [more]

Dr Petra Ágota Szilágyi admitted as Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry 9 November 2021 Dr Petra Szilágyi's contributions to chemical research and education have been recognised by her admission as Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Her name was included in the register section of the Times newspaper for Thursday 21st October 2021. Dr Szilágyi's research group focuses … [more]

New insights into the design of RNA delivery vectors 8 November 2021 What happens to gene delivery vectors when they enter the cell cytoplasm? This question had remained understudied, in particular in the case of polycationic vectors. Yet it may have a significant impact on the timing and localisation of the release of RNA or DNA molecules to be delivered. The team … [more]

Dr Joe Briscoe contributes to COP26 special edition of Queen Mary's Energy and Climate Change Law Institute Review 1 November 2021 The Energy & Climate Change Law Institute at Queen Mary University of London are delighted to publish its law review focused on COP 26. With a foreword by Lord Carnwath CVO and introduction by guest editor Professor Stephen Tromans QC, the review takes a fresh look at what … [more]

October 2021

Materials50 - Join us for a celebration of 50 years of Materials graduates from Queen Mary University of London 22 October 2021 We are delighted to invite you to our Materials50 celebrations. “It is 50 years since the first graduates from the Department of Materials founded by Professor Edgar Andrews at Queen Mary College, University of London graduated in the Royal Albert Hall. We felt that we should celebrate these 50 years … [more]

Dr Ian Collins joins SEMS as Visiting Professor 13 October 2021 SEMS welcomes Dr Ian Collins who joins as Visiting Professor Ian has recently retired from BP. Whilst at BP, Ian established and led their Upstream Chemical Sciences Unit from 2015. Ian was instrumental in diversifying Upstream chemistry into technical areas supporting the energy transition such as geothermal drilling, carbon capture, utilisation … [more]

Queen Mary launch storytelling workshops to inspire engineering students 12 October 2021 ‘Engineer The Story’, run in partnership with the Ideas Foundation, helps engineers tell stories about their career aspirations at Queen Mary and bring engineering research to life. It is supported by the Train the Trainer programme at the StoryFutures Academy, the UK’s National Centre for Immersive … [more]

September 2021

Ana Sobrido participates in the Standing up for Science Workshop organised by Sense about Science 24 September 2021 Ana took part in the Standing up for Science Workshop organised by Sense about Science, held on the 24th September 2021.  The panel sessions focused on the ways the media, policymakers, scientists and the public interact and consider questions of evidence. The workshop was very  helpful in … [more]

New study involving Chemical Engineering students could help produce high-quality drinking water at lower cost 10 September 2021 Extensive purification is required to produce reliable and tasty drinking water. Purification consists of a series of processes, and water softening is an important step in water treatment. Currently, most water softening processes use a specific type of softening reactor, known as liquid–solid fluidised (LSF) bed reactors. It … [more]

Sergey Karabasov elected to the grade of Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) 7 September 2021 AIAA Associate Fellows are individuals of distinction who have made notable and valuable contributions to the arts, sciences, or technology of aeronautics or astronautics. Sergey's citation states: "For career-long work in high-speed flow aeroacoustics for jet engines and rotor noise, pioneering use of Large Eddy Simulations … [more]

August 2021

Prof Sir Colin Humphreys awarded prestigious Queen's Medal by the Royal Society 24 August 2021 Prof Sir Colin Humphreys, Professor of Materials Science, has been awarded the Queen's Medal of the Royal Society. Each year three medals are awarded for the most important contributions to the advancement of "Natural Knowledge” in the physical and biological sciences and for distinguished contributions … [more]

Researchers uncover new evidence that fetal membranes can repair themselves after injury 18 August 2021 The integrity of the fetal membranes that surround the baby in the womb during pregnancy is vital for normal development. But fetal membranes can become damaged as a result of infection, bleeding, or after fetal surgery and even diagnostic tests during pregnancy, such as amniocentesis, which require doctors to make … [more]

Queen Mary part of international research collaboration to prevent spread of Covid-19 and TB in India 12 August 2021 The project, involving researchers from Queen Mary, the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Chennai and pioneering Delhi-based startup, Magneto Cleantech, will create revolutionary, air filtration technologies that use Ultraviolet C (UVC), a type of radiation known to be very effective at ‘killing’, or … [more]

July 2021

Scientists create rechargeable swimming microrobots using oil and water 15 July 2021 A new study, published today in Nature Physics, has shown that it is possible to create tiny, self-powered swimming robots from three simple ingredients. By combining oil drops with water containing a detergent-like substance, the scientists found they could produce artificial swimmers that are able to swim independently and … [more]

Cranfield flight course successfully carried out this year adapting to Covid restrictions 15 July 2021 On June 22nd a group of aerospace students travelled to the national flight lab centre at Cranfield to successfully experience flights demonstrating flight dynamics principles they have studied this year, while seeing and analysing real-time flight data. Due to the Covid situation the group was limited to 18 students and MEng … [more]

Prof Knight on expert panel discussing the use of animals in science 5 July 2021 Prof Martin Knight was part of an expert panel at the 'lead the debate' event organised by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). The event was the second in the series, which aims to convene small groups of thought leaders on prominent topics affecting … [more]

The Centre for Advanced Robotics @ Queen Mary (ARQ) wins QMUL Engagement and Impact Award 2 July 2021 A team of engineers and clinicians from EECS, SEMS and Royal London Dental Hospital won a QMUL Engagement and Impact Award. The team was awarded the Local Impact Award for their efforts to provide hospital staff with urgently needed personal protective equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19 crisis. Under the leadership … [more]

First Open Day on campus in 18 months - a big success! 1 July 2021 On Friday 25th and Saturday 26th June, The School of Engineering and Materials Science participated in the first on campus open day in 18 months. We held eight subject sessions across two days utilising covered outdoor stages and all talks were live streamed via ON24. We welcomed over 200 prospective students on … [more]

June 2021

Two new papers on multi-cellular in vitro models of ovarian cancer published in iScience 23 June 2021 We have recently published two new papers in the journal iScience, which describe the development of novel multi-cellular in vitro models of ovarian cancer and the use of these models to better understand this disease. The work stems from a major European Research Council grant, CANBUILD, which was led … [more]

Graduation ceremony for QMES class of 2017 21 June 2021 On June 21st the inaugural cohort of students enrolled at Queen Mary Engineering School in 2017 were awarded their degrees in a ceremony presided over by Queen Mary Principal Professor Colin Bailey CBE FREng and Deputy Secretary of the NPU Party Committee Professor Wan Xiaopeng. After four years of hard … [more]

New organ-on-a-chip study demonstrates how physical exercise regulates bone metastasis in breast and prostate cancer 17 June 2021 Bioengineers at Queen Mary publish a new study in the journal Cancers which demonstrates the significant impact of physiological mechanical loading on bone metastasis in breast and prostate cancer.  The paper describes a new organ-chip model of bone metastasis which incorporates cancer cells and bone cells in … [more]

QM student wins IMechE prize for the best Bioengineering undergraduate project 16 June 2021 Congratulations to Eisha Hashmi who was selected for the IMechE Vicon Award for the best Bioengineering undergraduate project.  Eisha presented her 3rd year individual research project at the Healthcare Technologies Student and Early Career Awards event held by Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) and was awared the … [more]

Science & Engineering Summer Research Internships for BAME Undergraduate Students in SEMS 14 June 2021 As part of the Science & Engineering Faculty’s mission to transfer horizons for all students, the School Management Team are delighted to report that SEMS have won four S&E Summer Research Internships for BAME Undergraduate Students. Following a rigorous selection process examining the quality of the … [more]

Liz Tanner joins Discover Materials Advisory Board 14 June 2021 The Discover Materials initative (https://www.discovermaterials.uk) is a collaboration of ten UK Materials Departments or Schools with the Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials in Manchester. Discover Materials will formally launch in Summer 2021 and its aim is encourage more people to think about materials as a subject … [more]

Congratulations to Haixue Yan FIMMM 10 June 2021 Today Haixue Yan from the Materials Division became a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (FIMM). This honour is based on both his work in QMUL but also his time in industry in China before he became a PhD student. He joins six other members of … [more]

The 5th JRI PhD summer workshop 7 June 2021 The 5th JRI PhD summer workshop began today with two parallel sessions from High Entropy Ceramics to Engineering Optimisation, over 50 researches and PhD students from QM and NPU join todays sessions online, during today’s workshop, PhD Students from both universities presented interesting topic including Oxidation of high entropy … [more]

NPU-QMUL Joint Research Institute, 5th PhD Summer School and Workshop 2021 2 June 2021 NPU-QMUL Joint Research Institute, 5th PhD Summer School and Workshop 2021 The School of Engineering and Materials Science (SEMS) are hosting online the annual PhD Summer school and workshop on Advanced Materials & Structures from Monday 7th to Friday 11th June. There are currently five planned Workshops in areas of established … [more]

May 2021

Queen Mary launches a new EPSRC research project to tackle safety concerns with zero emission vehicles 27 May 2021 The newly-funded EPSRC New Investigator project, led by Dr Wei Tan from Queen Mary’s Mechanics of Composite Materials Group (MCM), will create an intelligent data-driven virtual testing tool to assess an emerging type of lightweight materials, known as synthetic cellular composites (CCs). Materials found in nature are … [more]

Liz Tanner becomes Editor in Chief of Journal of Engineering in Medicine. 24 May 2021 From 1st July 2021, Prof Liz Tanner will take over as Editor in Chief of Journal of Engineering in Medicine, Part H of the Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.  Liz takes over from Professor Tony Unsworth FREng of Durham University has edited the journal for over 28 years … [more]

Prof Federico Carpi Rejoins SEMS as a Visiting Professor 18 May 2021 Federico Carpi is returning as a new Visiting Professors in SEMS. Federico was previously an academic in SEMS until 2016, when he took up a position at the Università degli Studi di Firenze (UniFi). Since then, he has continued his collaboration with colleagues in SEMS acting as a co-supervisor of 5 … [more]

Prof Markys Cain Joins SEMS as a Visiting Professor 14 May 2021 Markys Cain is the first of a number of new Visiting Professor appointments to be announced in SEMS. He has been an active member of the Industrial Advisory liaison board and has been a research collaborator in ferroelectric and piezoelectric materials, with specific expertise in in-situ diffraction measurements, for many … [more]

April 2021

Industrial Liaison Forum #5 MEng Group Prize Winners Announced 29 April 2021 The fifth Industrial Liaison Forum (ILF#5) took place online on 28 April 2021. ILF#5 was the 4th year MEng Group Project Showcase. All 10 groups were invited to present their projects this year. The event attended by many external visitors including several of our Industrial Advisory Board Members, potential new … [more]

Researchers develop new smell test for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and COVID-19 28 April 2021 A new smell test developed by Queen Mary University of London researchers has been found to be easy to use in patients with Parkinson’s disease, and could also be helpful in diagnosing COVID-19 in the broader population. Smell tests have the potential to support the diagnosis of certain … [more]

Chinese National Final of the IoM3 Young Persons' Lecture Competition 22 April 2021 The IOM3 Young Persons’ Lecture Competition (YPLC) is organized by the Institute of Materials Minerals and Mining (IOM3) each year. The YPLC invites students and professionals up to the age of 28 to deliver a short lecture (12 to 15 minutes) on a topic related to materials, minerals, mining, packaging, clay technology, … [more]

What we know – and don’t know – about the mechanical and thermal properties of graphene 21 April 2021 In this Featured Article published in Applied Physics Reviews,Prof. David Dunstan from the School of Physics and Astronomy, Prof. Sir Colin Humphreys, Dr. Dimitrios Papageorgiou and Dr. Yiwei Sun from the School of Engineering and Materials Science, review what we know and don't know about the mechanical and … [more]

Industrial Liaison Forum #4 Prize Winners Announced 21 April 2021 The fourth Industrial Liaison Forum (ILF#4) took place online on 21 April 2021. ILF#4 was the 3rd year undergraduate Project Showcase. We had invited 35 students to present their project posters. The event attended by more than 170 visitors at the peak including several of our Industrial Advisory Board Members, potential new students and … [more]

Queen Mary researchers to help unlock the potential of marine wave energy 16 April 2021 Queen Mary University of London have launched a new research project aimed at overcoming current challenges with devices that capture wave energy and convert it into electricity. The wider deployment of wave energy converters (WECs) that convert wave energy into renewable forms of electricity is hampered by challenges such as … [more]

SEMS Coffee mornings begin! 15 April 2021 It was super to see so many SEMS staff at our first outdoor coffee meet, where we were blessed with sunshine too! Many thanks to both our President and Principal, Colin Bailey, and our Vice Principal for Science & Engineering, Wen Wang, for coming out to join us. We will … [more]

Queen Mary to celebrate launch of new dual Masters programme with joint event 6 April 2021 The event builds on the ground-breaking agreement between the two institutions to create a dual master by research degree programme and follows continuing discussions between staff at Queen Mary and CIMAV to strengthen the relationship between the two institutions. CIMAV is a leading research institution headquartered in Chihuahua, Mexico. The … [more]

March 2021

Developing a materials world - why (not) us? 11 March 2021 Dr Han Zhang, Lecturer in Materials Science and Admission Tutors of Division of Materials Engineering at SEMS, together with his collaborators at Discover Materials, published an article on Materials World (Mar 2021) to explore the university application journey and prospective student population to understand issues surrounding recruitment into Materials Science and … [more]

YouTube video on Prof Knight's paper on the urine stream set to go viral 11 March 2021 Steve Mould, the famous science communicator and YouTuber, has just produced a new video on the physics behind the shape of the urine stream. Steve explains that there is very little published literature on this phenomenum but he describes one key paper ... ... In 2012 Prof Knight and colleagues published a paper … [more]

Surface treatments for next generation quiet aerofoils 5 March 2021 The team of engineers from Queen Mary has won significant funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) devoted to high-resolution modelling and simulation of aerofoil noise. In the new £405,916 research project, Prof. Karabasov and his team will work in collaboration with the Institute of Sound and … [more]

New high-performance and durable textile-based wearable energy harvesters reported 5 March 2021 New research published by Qinrong He from Dr Joe Briscoe's group, in collaboration with Dr Han Zhang, demonstrates piezoelectric energy harvesters produced on e-textiles that can harvest energy from body movement to power portable electronic devices and sensors. The research, published in the journal Nano Energy, makes use of … [more]

Photoelectrochemical imaging with high spatiotemporal resolution: publication in Biosensors and Bioelectronics 1 March 2021 Electrochemical or photoelectrochemical imaging of living cells has great potential for label-free, functional monitoring of cell responses, but is either relatively slow or suffers from poor resolution. Detailed electrochemical imaging has been limited to single-cell investigations, making it time-consuming to produce biologically relevant data. Our publication “Photoelectrochemical imaging system … [more]

February 2021

QMUL-NPU collaboration develops a novel generation of nanostructured responsive biosensors 26 February 2021 A collaborative team led by Prof Julien Gautrot from QMUL and Prof. Xiaoyan Ma from NPU (Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China) has developed a novel strategy for the design of nanostructured biosensors. Bringing biocatalytic sites close to the surface of electrodes is essential in order to optimise electron transfer … [more]

Queen Mary Researchers demonstrated continuous transmission of high-density spatial information through an evolving single multimode fibre using deep learning 26 February 2021 Continuous transmission of high-spatial-density information accurately through a standard multimode optical fibre was previously deemed impossible, due to the high variability presented in multimode fibre information channels over time. Researchers at Queen Mary University of London demonstrated a deep-learning enabled high-spatial-density information transmission scheme for standard multimode optical fibres, where … [more]

New funding for storytelling project to inspire future engineers 25 February 2021 ‘Engineer the Story’, run in partnership with the Ideas Foundation, helps engineers create digital stories to bring their research to life. Supported by new funding from the Train the Trainer Initiative of StoryFutures Academy, the UK’s National Centre for Immersive Storytelling run by National Film and … [more]

Knight's group publish new paper on the importance of mechanical stimulation in organ-chip technology 24 February 2021 Prof Knight and colleagues at Queen Mary University of London and University College Dublin have published a new paper discussing the importance of incorporating mechanical stimulation into organ-on-a-chip technology. Prof Knight will be discussing this work at the forthcoming Pan-London 3Rs Symposium. Organ-chip models consist of living cells grown in … [more]

Inaugural QMUL Festival of Education Showcases Five SEMS Talks 22 February 2021 Booking is now open for the Inaugural QMUL Festival of Education (https://www.qmul.ac.uk/queenmaryacademy/festival-of-education-2021/) will take place 8-12th March. Details on the Festival Agenda and how to book places for talks can be found on the SEMS Events pages (https://www.sems.qmul.ac.uk/… [more]

Researchers demonstrate a new method for scalable deposition of hybrid perovskites for solar cells 5 February 2021 A new paper by Ryley Ratnasingham, supervised by Dr Joe Briscoe (SEMS, QMUL) and Prof Martyn McLachlan (Imperial College London) as part of the Plastic Electronics CDT has been published in Materials Advances, which reports the first ever working perovskite solar cell (PSC) using a hybrid perovskite material deposited by … [more]

EPSRC New Horizons grant on 3D photoelectrochemical imaging 1 February 2021 Prof Steffi Krause, Dr Joe Biscoe, Dr Thomas Iskratsch and Dr Bo Zhou have been awarded an EPSRC New Horizon’s grant (EP/V047523/1) of £200k to develop new measurement technology for 3D photoelectrochemical imaging. Electrochemical imaging techniques are powerful tools for the investigation of topography, charge and … [more]

January 2021

Fan Li Passes his PhD Viva on "Non-equilibrium and hybrid multiscale modelling of molecular systems" 19 January 2021 Many congratulations to Fan Li for successfully passing his PhD Viva with minor corrections on the dissertation “Non-equilibrium and hybrid multiscale modelling of molecular systems”. The Viva was held remotely by Teams. Many problems in science and engineering comprise multiple scales in space and time. A particular example … [more]

New CRUK/EPSRC research grant: Organ-on-a-chip model to investigate breast cancer bone metastases 12 January 2021 A new research grant using organ-on-a-chip technology to understand breast cancer bone metastasis has started in Prof Martin Knight's bioengineering and mechanobiology research group. The multidisciplinary award is jointly funded by Cancer Research UK (CR UK) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The project will develop … [more]

New paper on anti-inflammatory effects of TRPV4 stimulation 11 January 2021 Prof Knight's research group have published a new study showing, for the first time, the anti-inflammatory effects of stimulating the mechanosensitive ion-channel, TRPV4, and its importance in cartilage health. Degenerative joint conditions, such as osteoarthritis, are associated with pro-inflammatory signalling which causes degradation of the articular cartilage leading to … [more]