Many congratulations to Dr Karl Dearn on being awarded £12.5k by the College for his project ‘Contextualised Mechanical Engineering for Enhanced Teaching (CMEET)’ to enhance design teaching in the School.

Many congratulations to Dr Oluremi Olatunbosun and Dr Andrew Tobias whose dedicated 25-year service to the University was recognised at a ceremony at the Vice-Chancellor’s residence.

Many congratulations to Mr Carl Hingley, Mr Peter Thornton, Ms Becky Charles, Mr Jack Garrod, Mr Lee Gauntlett, Mr Pooria Ghavam, Mr Andy Loat, Mr Simon Payne-Rowan, Mr Adam Sheward and Mr Brian Thomas on winning an Award for Excellence in Teaching/Supporting Student Learning.

Many congratulations to Dr Haider Butt on winning £24,470 from the University’s EPSRC Follow-On Fund to develop novel optical diffusers.

Many congratulations to Dr Leung Soo and Dr Richard Hood on the award of their ‘SAMULET II Fast Make 10’ grant by TSB. The project is led by Rolls-Royce and internal collaborators are colleagues in Met & Mat and Chemical Engineering. (Amount to Mechanical Engineering: £182.5k; Period: October 2013-November 2015).

Many congratulations to Mr Hamid Mahmoudi, Dr Thanos Tsolakis and Dr Martin Herreros on winning the Best Poster Prize at the Future Powertrain Conference 2014 in February for their poster titled “Advanced Diesel After treatment Heating Strategy”.

Our School ranks 16th this year, up from 20th in 2013-2014 (www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league tables/rankings?s=Mechanical+Engineering). We are moving in the right direction. Well done to everyone!

We scored 7% higher than the University average in the sections “University leadership and communication” and “How I feel about the University” but 6% and 8% lower in the sections “My job” and “My Department/School”, respectively.

Many congratulations to Dr Haider Butt on winning the College Best Paper Prize for February 2014 for his paper entitled Devitrite-Based Optical Diffusers. You might recall from the 10 March update that the paper had been highlighted in Nature.

Many congratulations to Ms Isaline Lefort, Dr Martin Herreros and Dr Thanos Tsolakis on winning the Outstanding Paper Award at the ESIT International Conference in Krabi, Thailand, in April 2014, for their article “Oxygen Exhaust Concentration Effect on Low Temperature CO Oxidation”.

Many congratulations to Dr Rustam Stolkin on his new Nuclear Decommissioning Authority contract "Optical detection of stainless steel container corrosion" (amount: £63k; probable start date: September 2014; duration: 3yrs+; project leader: Met and Mat; other collaborators: Computer Science).

Many congratulations to Dr Haider Butt on having his research on Devitrite-Based Optical Diffusers highlighted in the top journal Nature. See “Waste glass finds diffuse use”, Nature 507, 11 (06 March 2014), doi:10.1038/507011c, www.nature.com/nature/journal/v507/n7490/full/507011c.html