Andrew Little Lecture Series
The Andrew Little Lectures are open to all members of the University, as well as the general public. Each lecture takes place at 4pm, with refreshments served from 3.45pm.
Thursday 10 May 2012 - Room F106, School of Engineering
Dr. Sasan Armand - Aerospace Engineer - NASA Langley, USA
Separation/Abort Loads at Atmospheric Conditions Using Monte-Carlo Technique for Launch Vehicles
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This presentation describes the methodology for developing the internal loads for a human launch vehicle during an abort at atmospheric condition. The presentation focuses on the development of the probability distributions and variations used for the external forcing functions, and the resulting loads on the vehicle and crew. Complexity of some of the forcing functions such as the moving grid for the transient CFD analyses (used as one of the external forcing function) will also be discussed. This developmental effort has been for the Ascent Abort Vehicle for the new NASA space program. |
Spring Series 2012 - Biomedical Engineering
Thursday 09 February 2012 - Room A401, School of Engineering
Prof. Christopher James - Professor of Healthcare Technology, and co-director Institute of Digital Healthcare, WMG, University of Warwick
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Neural Signal Processing: Measuring and extracting information from brain signals This talk will introduce the varied signals measured from the human brain under varying conditions and highlight the information that these signals can yield. From the diagnosis of epilepsy, to the prediction of epileptic seizures, scalp recordings of the electrical activity of the brain can be used to tell much about when and where activity of interest is happening within the brain. Brain signal recordings can yield more information in other areas, such as in monitoring the behaviour of children with ADHD as well as in monitoring brain plasticity after cochlear implantation in deaf children. This presentation will talk about the issues surrounding the analysis of these complex signals and will touch on where brain signal analysis may be going – especially in brain-computer interfacing. View slides and listen to an audio recording of Prof. James' lecture presentation |
Tuesday 28 February 2012 - Room A401, School of Engineering
Prof. Robert Morse - School of Life and Health Sciences, Aston University
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The development of patient-specific models for optimal cochlear implants Cochlear implants can enable people with severe-to-profound hearing loss to hear again. Our goal is to design optimal strategies for electrically stimulating the nerve of hearing via the electrodes in the inner ear. In a general model we have previously shown that adding noise to the electrode signals can increase information transmission. Here, we show how measurements of the neural response to electrical stimulation, which can be made by modern cochlear implants, can be used to develop patient-specific models. |
Thursday 15 March 2012 - Room A401, School of Engineering
Prof. Anthony Bull - Professor of Musculoskeletal Mechanics, Imperial College, London
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Sticks and stones may break my bones Bones and joints are fundamental to all human endeavours. Physical mobility relies on the capacity of our musculoskeletal system to balance the requirement to bear heavy loads with maintaining fine control of movement and small perturbations of this system can result in significant disability. In this lecture Anthony Bull will demonstrate how bio-engineering is now having a major impact in understanding, mitigating, and repairing musculoskeletal failures ranging from sporting sprains to severe injuries from blast. |
Thursday 22 March 2012 - Room F106, School of Engineering
Dr. Alan Davies - Medical Director,GE Healthcare
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Using technology to manage the burden of chronic disease Chronic care management takes up to about 83% of health care costs. Improved healthcare outcomes have an emphasis on management of the patient, rather than the disease. Historically, there has been little coordination between the agencies providing different aspects of care to an individual.Technology will play an essential role in the education of the patient, management of the chronic conditions, and improving health care productivity. Technology can be an enabler of improved management of chronic disease. |
Autumn Series 2011 - Energy in Engineering
Thursday 27th October 2011 - Room A401, School of Engineering
Professor Ruzhu Wang : Director of Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
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Green Building Energy Systems
Low energy consumption, environmentally friendly function & comfortable indoor environment are key factors for a green building. Based upon detailed researches and demonstration projects, a new green building with various high efficient energy systems have been constructed at the SJTU. These energy systems are going to be tested and evaluated for long time operation.
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Thursday 17th November 2011 - Room A401, School of Engineering
Professor Dorota Chwieduk : Warsaw University of Technology
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Development of solar thermal technologies
This lecture will give a short introduction on solar energy fundamentals including photo thermal and photovoltaic conversion of solar radiation. Topics covered will include solar passive and active systems, hybrid PV/thermal systems and the state of the solar thermal technology market. The stress is put on one of the most challenging aspects of the EU Directive on energy performance of buildings, i.e. necessity of construction the self-energy sufficient or nearly zero-energy buildings in a few years. Presentation unavailable |
Thursday 24th November 2011 - Room A401, School of Engineering
Professor Kevin Anderson : Deputy Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, Manchester
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Going Beyond Dangerous Climate Change: Exploring the void between reality and rhetoric on emissions mitigation
Despite vociferous rhetoric around low carbon futures, current emissions growth is aligned with mean global temperature rises of 4°C or higher. Such a framing of climate change represents a radical departure from that voiced by many policy makers and scientists. Whilst orthodox expertise maintains ‘2°C is achievable without sacrificing the benefits of economic growth and rising prosperity’, this paper argues ‘it is difficult to envisage anything other than a planned economic recession being compatible with 2°C, 3°C and increasingly 4°C futures’. Consequently, whether in terms of mitigation or adaptation, the global community is facing a profound paradigm shift, triggered ostensibly by climate change, but with repercussions across all facets of contemporary society.
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Thursday 1st December 2011 - Room A401, School of Engineering
Professor John Loughhead : Executive Director, UK Energy Research Centre
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Where is UK energy going – and will it get there?
The UK has embarked on an aggressive path towards reducing carbon emissions from energy usage. The strategy adopted involves not only heroic ambitions to exploit renewables but also dramatic reductions in consumption, and many changes are not the choices markets and consumers would normally make. How can the vision be realized and what roles can improved technologies hope to play? What help or hindrance might the rest of the world offer?
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Thursday 8th December 2011 - IDL Auditorium (International Digital laboratory)
Professor Jihong Wang : Professor of Electrical Power & Control Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Warwick
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Can Coal Fired Power Generation be Cleaner?
Currently, around 40% of electricity is generated by coal fired power stations in the UK. Coal generates 45.9% of the electricity in the U.S and over 80% of electricity in China. Although there is currently an exceptionally wide variety of renewable energy generation technology being considering, it is predicted that coal won’t go away anytime soon. Can coal fired power generation be cleaner? Various important attempts to answer this question are underway around the world. The lecture will present the recent development in the area of clean coal technology.
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Previous Seminars
Autumn Series 2010 - "Engineering in the New Rebalanced Post-Crunch World"
Thursday 4th November 2010Roger Benson
Benson Consulting
Tomorrow's Process Manufacturing: Process manufacturing is key in the food, beverage, oil, gas, chemical, pharmaceutical, consumer packaged goods and biotechnology industries. Commercial and environmental pressure will change these industries radically in the future - what kind of future will the be? Presentation slides (PDF Document)
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Thursday 11th November 2010Julian Evans
University College London
"We don't know who discovered water, but we know it wasn't fish": An attempt to reconcile education and creative thought. Our education has prepared us for making discoveries but has it also inhibited the discovery process?
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Thursday 2nd December 2010Ben Mayo
Consultant and RAEng Visiting Professor
Innovation and the role of the universities Encouraging creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship in UK business. How can universities best contribute? Are the new 'Technology and Innovation Centres' proposed by Hauser and Dyson and espoused by the coalition government the answer?
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Thursday 9th December 2010David Brown
IChemE, Engineering UK & AWM
Engineering when people matter Elegant and simple ways in which Engineering is improving both business and quality of life in some diverse places – together with one or two instances where application of sound engineering principles would have been a good idea...
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Thursday 27th January 2011Raymond Oliver
Northumbria University, School of Design
Innovating for the future The 21st century will be the century of materials: by 2100, it will be understood how to manipulate and control both the nanoscalar and molecular manufacture of materials. Innovation at the interface between materials, electronics and biology therefore is probably the most important area of applied research for the foreseeable future and will be a central technology theme for new industrial systems. It will enable and enhance a huge range of consumer and healthcare related product applications which in turn will lead to greater integration and increasingly invisible ‘smarter’ material devices and systems ‘around the body’, ‘on the body’ and ‘in the body’. The talk will focus on the convergence of biology, polymer material science and electronics which will be driven increasingly by the needs of the individual and by communities.
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Thursday 26th April 2011Darrell Mann
MNC Consultant
Innovation 2.0: Crossing the great chasm from research to commercial success ‘Innovate or die’ has become industry mantra over the space of the last three years. While Innovation is increasingly viewed as the key to sustainable business success, most business leaders also equate the word with the very high risk of failure. Look at the EU and FP6 and the level of that risk quickly becomes apparent: well over 90% of the FP6 funds resulted in zero tangible business benefit to Europe Inc. The problem here is not so much the fact that the research being done isn’t of the highest quality. Rather the problem is either that the wrong research question is being answered, or – more likely – that there is no viable transition path from successfully completed research to commercially viable exploitation. Innovation 2.0 is all about the strategies and capabilities of the world’s finest innovators and what they do to significantly increase their return on innovation investment. Through a series of real-life case studies, the presentation will highlight some of these best practices and how institutions might begin the journey from Innovation 1.0 ‘trial-and-error’ to a structured, reproducible process for defining the right research, doing the research, and then turning the results into sustainable commercial advantage. |
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SCHEDULED LECTURES:
None at present - check back for future additions
Andrew Little is an alumnus of the School of Engineering at Warwick, who has made a huge success from pioneering the automated supply of books for mail order companies such as Amazon.
He has kindly funded the School to establish a lecture series of general engineering interest.
