Dr Alireza Rahnama has developed a new processing route which allows low density steel-based alloys to be produced with maximum strength, whilst remaining durable and flexible– something which has been largely impossible until now.

Two lightweight steels were tested - Fe-15Mn-10Al-0.8C-5Ni and Fe-15Mn-10Al-0.8C – for their potential to achieve maximum strength and ductility.

During production, two brittle phases can occur in these steels: kappa-carbide (k-carbide) and B2 intermetallic – which make the steels hard but limits their ductility, so they are difficult to roll.

Dr Rebecca Cain, Associate Professor and Head of the Experiential Engineering Research Group at WMG, University of Warwick, has been selected to join the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Early Career Forum in Manufacturing Research.

The EPSRC Early Career Forum (ECF) for Manufacturing Research has a strong focus on advancing the UK's international reputation in manufacturing research, through developing inter-disciplinary research agendas, and impacting upon research policy development. Ten new members are selected each year, in a competitive application process. Members of the Early Career Forum have the opportunity to interact with other early career researchers from across the breadth of engineering and the physical sciences, forming new professional networks that may generate future innovative research programmes.

Phones and tablet computers are to be part of a new highly personalised heating and energy economy system thanks to an idea by Midlands company JSJS Designs Ltd, WMG and the Estates Office at the University of Warwick which has just won £495,000 in support from the UK’s innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board.

JSJS Designs Ltd and WMG will use the funding to work with The University of Warwick’s Estates Office to retrofit an innovative wireless Heating Micro-management System (HMS) to the University’s Social Sciences building. The novel system hands control over to both the building management team and the building’s occupants who will individually be able to use their smart phones and tablet computers to control heating at a room-by-room level.

The project will allow JSJS Ltd to test this technology on a large complex building and help them scale up the application of a technology that in the past has only be available to much smaller and simpler domestic properties.

Dr Rebecca Cain, Assistant Professor in Experiential Engineering with WMG at the University of Warwick is to lead a £1.3 million programme to literally engineer better environments for patients and medical staff.

She has been awarded a prestigious Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Fellowship through EPSRC’s Challenging Engineering award scheme which is designed to challenge the research leaders of the future to be creative and ambitious in the early stages of their career.