News and Events

Karl Fairhurst awarded the inaugural Tallow Chandlers scholarship

Tess Cakebread-Brown wins the Prestigious Salters' Graduate Prize for Chemical Engineering

President of the Royal Scientific Society of Jordan and Professor Sir John Holman (left), Tess Cakebread-Brown and HRH Princess Sumaya bint El Hassan (right)

Manchester Graduate Tess Cakebread-Brown has been awarded the 2012 Salters' Graduate Prize for Chemical Engineering. This continues Manchester's success in recent years with Darren Ward 2010, Alexandra Matten 2009 also receiving the accolade.

The award ceremony took place at Salters' Hall in London and the Prize was awarded to Tess by HRH Princess Sumaya bint El Hassan (right), President of the Royal Scientific Society of Jordan and Professor Sir John Holman (left), Master of the Salters' Company.

See: Salters' Graduate Prize 2012 Prizewinners

'Magic carpet' could help prevent falls

A 'magic carpet' which can immediately detect when someone has fallen and can help to predict mobility problems has been demonstrated by University of Manchester scientists.

The Magic Carpet or SensorMat

Plastic optical fibres, laid on the underlay of a carpet, can bend when anyone treads on it and map, in real-time, their walking patterns.

Tiny electronics at the edges act as sensors and relay signals to a computer. These signals can then be analysed to show the image of the footprint and identify gradual changes in walking behaviour or a sudden incident such as a fall or trip. They can also show a steady deterioration or change in walking habits, possibly predicting a dramatic episode such as a fall.

As many as 30%-40% of community dwelling older people fall each year. This is the most serious and frequent accident in the home and accounts for 50% of hospital admissions in the over 65 age group.

Presenting their research to the Photon 12 conference today, the scientists believe the technology could be used to fit smart carpets in care homes or hospital wards, as well as being fitted in people’s homes if necessary. Physiotherapists could also use the carpet to map changes and improvements in a person’s gait.

The imaging technology is so versatile it could even be developed to detect the presence of chemical spillages or fire as an early-warning system.

The interdisciplinary team, from three academic Schools and the Photon Science Institute at The University of Manchester, used a novel tomographic technique similar to hospital scanners.

It maps 2D images by using light propagating under the surface of the smart carpet.

The researchers believe the magic carpet could be vital not only for helping people in the immediate aftermath of a fall, but also in identifying subtle changes in people’s walking habits which might not be spotted by a family member or carer.

One of the team, Dr Patricia Scully from The University of Manchester’s School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, said: “The carpet can gather a wide range of information about a person’s condition; from biomechanical to chemical sensing of body fluids, enabling holistic sensing to provide an environment that detects and responds to changes in patient condition.

“The carpet can be retrofitted at low cost, to allow living space to adapt as the occupiers’ needs evolve – particularly relevant with an aging population and for those with long term disabilities – and incorporated non-intrusively into any living space or furniture surface such as a mattress or wall that a patient interacts with.”

Professor Krikor Ozanyan from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering added: “We pioneered this new kind of tomography here at The University of Manchester in 2005. Now we are delighted to show how achievements in maths, science and engineering can bring together this exciting new application in healthcare.”

Dr Christine Brown Wilson from the School of Nursing Midwifery and Social Work said: “This project demonstrates how engineers, scientists and healthcare professionals, can work together to develop new and innovative health care technologies that make a real difference in practice.

Professor Chris Todd said: "Falls are a really important problem for our ageing society. More than a third of older people fall each year, and in nursing and residential homes it is much more common than that.

“Older people will benefit from exercises to improve balance and muscle strength in the legs.  So being able to identify changes in people's walking patterns and gait in the natural environment, such as in a corridor in a nursing home, could really help us identity problems earlier on.

“This is really exciting work at the forefront of research using technologies to prevent falls and represents an unique collaboration between scientists from different backgrounds working together to identity a smart solution to an important problem for our country and indeed all over the world."
 

School receives prestigious Athena SWAN Silver award

The 2012 Athena SWAN awards have been released with Chemical Engineering at Manchester receiving the silver award. Only 5 Chemical Engineering Departments have received this award in its history and the School is rightly proud of this achievement.

The Athena SWAN Charter is a scheme which recognises excellence in Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths and Medicine (STEMM) employment in higher education. The Charter was launched in June 2005. Any university or research institution which is committed to the advancement and promotion of the careers of women in STEMM in higher education and research can apply for membership.

The beliefs underpinning the Charter are:

• The advancement of science, engineering and technology (SET) is fundamental to quality of life across the globe.
• It is vitally important that women are adequately represented in what has traditionally been, and is still, a male-dominated area.
• Science cannot reach its full potential unless it can benefit from the talents of the whole population, and until women and men can benefit equally from the opportunities it affords.

For a full list of holders: Current Athena SWAN award holders.

Celebration for new chemical engineering building

The School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science (CEAS) held a celebration at its new home, the James Chadwick Building, on Thursday 21 June.

Professor Brian Cox chats to Chemical Engineering students at the celebration for new Chemical Engineering building

The first phase of what will be a five-storey, 11,500 square metres building, on the corner of Booth Street East and Upper Brook Street, is now complete.

The final £30 million building will see further expansion of the School thanks to its outstanding research facilities, teaching laboratories and enquiry-based learning (EBL) facilities.

Named after Sir James Chadwick, the Manchester alumnus and English Nobel laureate in physics awarded for his discovery of the neutron, it will also house a sophisticated industrial pilot plant.

The Chemical Engineering programme at Manchester has been growing steadily, underpinned by its outstanding reputation and excellent job prospects of graduates.

President and Vice-Chancellor Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell and Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences media star Professor Brian Cox joined the Head of School Professor Mike Sutcliffe and the CEAS team at the celebration.

Professor Sutcliffe said: "I would like to say thanks to our fantastic team, within the School and in Estates, who have been working very hard to make this happen.

"This ambitious and modern building gives Chemical Engineering staff and students the environment they deserve. As one of a small group of elite Chemical Engineering departments within the UK, it is vital we have the facilities to match.

"Our broad research base in which engineers and scientists work seamlessly together enables us to study the design, operation and integration of different complex systems - particularly industrial, biological, and instrumentation - and apply chemical engineering in a 21st century context.

"The new building will significantly enhance the student experience - allowing us to further develop cutting edge teaching methods underpinned by state-of-the-art laboratory equipment coupled with a modern, enabling learning environment."

Dr Constantinos Theodoropoulos wins the Exxon Mobil Teaching award

Dr Constantinos Theodoropoulos (pictured with Anna Callaghan from Exxon) has won the prestigious Exxon Mobil Teaching award.

This is the sixth time in 10 years that a Manchester Chemical Engineering Lecturer has won this award.

Previous winners are Dr Leo Lue, Dr Stuart Holmes, Dr Aline Miller, Dr Arthur Garforth and Dr Seve Pandiella.

A team of students from University of Manchester, UK, were presented with the 2011 IChemE Macnab-Lacey Student Design Award

The award is open to final-year students from IChemE-accredited universities across the world, rewarding the project that best contributes to a sustainable world.

The seven-strong team that clinched the inaugural prize was made up of final-year students Liam Booth, Maryam Ojetola, Sarah Bickerton, Richard Gowers, Sophie Wilkinson, Vanessa Suniggi and Andrew Harrison, all of whom have now graduated from Manchester. They were mentored through their project by chemical engineering professor Colin Webb.

For the full story go to: The Chemical Engineer News page.

Stand out from the Crowd! Employability Event and Fair

Showpiece careers event for EPS Undergraduates

• Want to make yourself more employable?
• Get more involved in a society or sport?
• Looking to boost your CV?
• Want to win an iPod?

Wednesday 15th February 2012, Renold C9 and C floor, 12:30 - 3pm (talk at 1pm)

Find out more by attending this event! Get guidance and support on where to find part time jobs, internships and placements as well as making a difference through volunteering opportunities. Key student societies and sports clubs will be available for you to join as well as other key programmes here at the University (WiSET, Study Abroad, Peer Mentoring). Lunch will be provided too.

By attending, you will also get the chance to win an iPod!

It’s never to late to boost your employability. To register, sign up here: CareersLink and search for ‘stand out’ or go directly to the CareersLink Event Profile for this event.

Innovation and Excellence Award from IChemE

Dr Constantinos Theodoropoulos and Professor Colin Webb are the recipients of the 2011 IChemE Innovation and Excellence Award for bioprocessing for their work on “Sustainable biorefineries through the co-production of fuels and chemicals: The biochemical production of succinic acid from biorefinery glycerol”. The awards ceremony took place on November 3rd in Birmingham.

The rise of biorefineries has led to a surplus of glycerol, the main byproduct of biodiesel production and prices have dropped significantly. Current markets cannot absorb the predicted increase in glycerol as demand grows for biodiesel, so new uses must be found. One option is turning it into commodity chemicals. Theodoropoulos and Webb, along with their research groups at Manchester found that a bacterium, Actinobacillus succinogenes, can convert glycerol into succinic acid, used in a variety of products from medicines, to food flavours, to plasticisers. According to the US Department of Energy, succinic acid is one of the top value-added chemicals produced from biomass.

The bioprocessing award recognises the best project to demonstrate a contribution to, or collaboration helping to, develop biotechnologies and bioprocessing applications.

Scholarship Award

Chemical Engineering 1st year students Jue Xin Ong and Yici Yan received their prestigious, Faculty International Excellence Scholarships from Professor Tony Brown, the Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning. Only 10 of the scholarships are awarded every year so for two Chemical Engineers to win one is an excellent achievement.

Cameron, Manchester launch monoethyleneglycol (MEG) pilot plant

CAMERON, a US-based specialist contracting company, and the University of Manchester, UK, have launched a brand new monoethyleneglycol (MEG) reclamation pilot plant.

Located at the university's Morton laboratory, the plant will be used for teaching as well as research into Cameron's proprietary PureMEG process. The company paid for the initial construction, at a cost of several hundred thousand pounds, before donating it to the University, which will cover its maintenance and upkeep.

MEG is commonly used by gas producers to suppress hydrate formation in deepwater operations. Once it has fulfilled its purpose, however, the MEG has to be recovered from a mix of water, gas condensates and other production fluids. This is where the PureMEG process steps in, reclaiming up to 99.5% of the chemical from the waste salts left behind after the gas has been extracted.

Cameron is working with the university to further refine the process, versions of which are already being used at a number of sites around the world. Scientists from the university said they plan to improve and adapt it to the wildly varying conditions and circumstances found in oil fields globally.

Read the full article in The Chemical Engineer.

Manchester once again produces the UK’s best Chemical Engineering student

For the second year running, a CEAS graduate has been named as the best Chemical Engineering student in the country.

Rachel Perry, 23, who graduated in 2011 was nominated for the prestigious AWE award by Ferda Mavituna.

Her success was announced at the Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) Awards in a ceremony held at the Millennium Hotel, Grovesnor Square, London on September 23rd.  This follows in the wake of Dyfan Williams’ success in 2010.

Read more...

Solvay Collaboration Announced

The School has entered into a major collaboration with international chemicals manufacturer Solvay SA.

Dr Aline Miller will be leading the research into enabling technologies such as regenerative medicine, sensors and electronics.

Read more...

EPS Teacher of the Year

We are delighted to announce that Esther Ventura Medina has been awarded EPS Teacher of the Year 2011.  These awards are made to individuals whose teaching over the past year has been outstanding.  Esther has demonstrated an ability to communicate ideas effectively, to motivate and stimulate students to learn, and has shown a commitment to innovation and excellence in education.  Well done to Esther!

[April 2011] Team Hydration Are Ultimate Field Trip Finalists

A group of second year undergraduate students (Gayatri Vijayaragavan, Sharanpreet Moore and Holly Walton) was one of the Finalist Teams at the BP student competition 'Ultimate Field Trip'.  This is the second year BP has organised this national competition and is also the second year in a row we have had a finalist team from Manchester.  This is a reflection of some of the very good quality students we have.

Team Hydration: Holly, Sharanpreet and Gayatri

[April 2011] CEAS students awarded BP Scholarships
Six undergraduate students were awarded BP scholarships at a presentation ceremony on the 6th April. The prestigious awards were presented by Martin Sellers from BP (Martin is a CEAS graduate). Five of the winners were present, left to right Andrew Peters, Benjamin Tam, Oliver Summers, Andrew Cook, Sadiq Wanka. Philip Hampson was absent.	Andrew, Benjamin, Oliver, Andrew and Sadiq receiving their awards from Martin Sellers (right)

[March 2011]

CEAS win two prestigious Rushlight awards

Rushlight Waste to Energy Award Keld Energy in association with Alastair Martin from CEAS, have developed an advanced biomass CHP technology that addresses the problems of tar fouling, low process thermo-electric efficiencies and poor fuel flexibility in a scalable form from as small as 100 kW up to many MW. It can be fed with a range of biomass fuels and process wastes. Rushlight Clean Environment Award Presented to Arvia Technology (a University spin out run by Nigel Brown and Ted Roberts) and Magnox North. The nuclear energy industry produces quantities of highly radioactive oils and oily wastes that are so heavily contaminated that they are defined as orphan wastes with no suitable disposal route. The oils are emulsified with an organic surfactant and poured into a plastic tank over a non-porous, highly conducting, adsorbent, carbon-based material. The oils are separated by adsorbtion and then destroyed, together with the organic surfactant, by anodic oxidation and the radioactivity remains in the aqueous phase.

Alastair Martin (left) and Nigel Brown from Arvia Technology with their Rushlight Awards

[February 2011]

Engaging Young Dragons!

Congratulations to Dr Ernesto Hernandez who won two awards of public engagement funding to enable activities as part of the Manchester Science Festival 2010.  These included a scientific “Dragon’s Den” whereby a panel of young people (the Dragons) consider the fun ideas of a number of scientists. 

Further details of Ernesto’s events, and similar ones, can be found here:
http://www.researchsupport.eps.manchester.ac.uk/theword/?p=1104

[February 2011]

School and Faculty Research Students of the Year

We are delighted to announce that Joanna Stevens is our School Research Student of the Year and Paul Bassan has been named Faculty Research Student of the Year. 

The School nominated both Paul Bassan and Joanna Stevens for the University’s Research Student of the Year Award.  All School nominations are considered by the Faculty for their endorsement in the first instance.  Of all nine Schools’ nominations, Paul and Joanna were placed first and second respectively by the Faculty Panel. 

Paul

Paul Bassan is an exceptionally talented PhD student whose work on fundamental understanding of infrared scattering and the development of a correction algorithm has transformed the field of infrared biomedical spectroscopy.  As a result of his work, infrared spectra of biological cells can now be analysed without distortion and can thus be interpreted in terms of the biochemistry.  This represents a major breakthrough in the field that had eluded the biggest names in the infrared community.  The algorithm that he developed is now used by over 50 groups worldwide demonstrating the international impact of his work.  This is a remarkable achievement for a PhD student. He has published four first-author papers and a book chapter as well as several papers as a co-author. His work has been recognised by the international community with invited presentations at international meetings and invitations to run workshops on the use of the correction algorithm. [more from Dr Gardner's group]

Joanna

Within less than three years, Joanna Stevens has completed a PhD degree that encompasses award-winning fundamental research as well as knowledge transfer with industrial impact. Joanna applied, for the first time, an experimental X-ray methodology from condensed matter physics to pharmaceutical research. She demonstrated its tremendous power for the characterisation of drugs and their formulations.  Five peer-reviewed papers describing this work had already been published by the time of her PhD viva.  The groundbreaking importance was instantly recognised through the award of the Young Scientist of the Year prize by the British Association for Crystal Growth.  For the industrial sponsor her measurements identified the molecular origin of reproducibility problems in the processing of a drug.  In managing her project Joanna combined independence and efficient delivery with outstanding attention to detail in research.  She maintained exemplary student-supervisor and knowledge-transfer relationships - a role model for PGR students. [more from Dr Schroeder's group]

Research Funding

• Sven Schroeder – KTA in collaboration with Unilever (£195,529)
• Peter Fielden, John Fletcher, Peter Gardner, Nick Goddard, Nick Lockyer, John Vickerman, Hans Westerhoff and Xue-Feng Yuan – EPSRC Feasibility Projects (£160,972)
  MIB CDFA - Application of novel imaging technologies towards quantitative analytical phenotyping of single cells [link]

[February 2011]

Jin-Kuk Kim moves back to South Korea

Dr Jin-Kuk Kim is returning to his native South Korea with his family to take up an academic position in Seoul.  Jin-Kuk came to Manchester from Korea in 1998, joining the then Department of Process Integration of UMIST as a PhD student. He graduated with a PhD in September 2001, and was appointed to a lecturship in the Department.

Jin-Kuk has made a tremendous contribution to academic life at Manchester. He built up an impressive track record in his research and his contribution was recognised by his promotion to senior lecturer in 2010. We wish him well for the future – he will be sadly missed.

[January 2011] Darren is Top Graduate Darren Ward has won a Salter’s Graduate Prize. Up to ten prizes of £1,000 each are awarded to final-year undergraduates studying at UK universities, trying to keep an even balance between chemists and chemical engineers. This is a very considerable achievement on Darren’s part. Salter's Institute Awards page

Darren being presented his Award by the current Master of the Salters’ Company, Dr Christopher Anderson

[October 2010]

Peter Fielden becomes Head of Research

After 2 years as Head of Research, Sven Schroeder is stepping aside to concentrate on a number of other projects.  Since becoming Head of Research two years ago, Sven has put a great deal of time and energy into enhancing research activity in the School, and more broadly across the University. 

Particular successes include significantly strengthening links with Dalton and the nanoscience community, and moving forwards our relationship with Unilever.  Sven has been very successful with securing substantial research funding and would like to focus on developing his research activities.

A warm welcome to Peter Fielden as he now takes on the role of Head of Research.  Peter comes from the Analytical Sciences community and has a strong background in miniaturisation and microfluidics.

Dyfan Williams, one of our recent graduates, has won the 2010 Chemical Engineering Student of the Year award.

His success was announced at the Science, Engineering and Technology Awards in a ceremony held at the Park Lane Hilton, London on September 3rd.

The SET Awards are Europe's most important awards for science and engineering undergraduates.

Dyfan won the award for his final year design project – detailed design of CO₂ removal from Syngas by Methyl-diethanolamine (MDEA) – supervised by Dr David Cresswell. 

Read more...

[June 2009]

Salter’s Graduate Prize 2009

We congratulate Alex Matten, who has just graduated with a first class MEng degree in Chemical Engineering, on winning a Salter’s Graduate Prize. Up to ten prizes of £1,000 each are awarded to final-year undergraduates studying at UK universities, trying to keep an even balance between chemists and chemical engineers. This is thus a very considerable achievement of Alex’s part.

More information on the Salter’s Institute may be found on http://www.salters.co.uk/

[June 2009]

Theophilus Redwood Award 2009 awarded to Professor John Vickerman

Congratulations to Professor John Vickerman winner of the Theophilus Redwood Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry, for his outstanding contribution to the development and application of secondary ion mass spectrometry techniques for surface analysis and 3D chemical imaging of organic and biological systems.

Read more here...

[December 2008]

Technology Commercialisation Award

A new and fast method for detecting potentially harmful airborne chemicals developed by Krishna Persaud scooped the UMIP Technology Commercialisation Award for Engineering and Physical Sciences.

Read more here...

[October 2008]

Award for Arvia

Arvia Technology Ltd -- Ted Roberts' spin-out company -- received the prestigious Water Award from the Institution of Chemical Engineers their 2008 Innovation and Excellence Awards Dinner in Birmingham.