Professor Bridget Eickhoff's Inaugural Lecture

Wednesday 5 December 2018, 17:30 - 18:30
Venue: NG15, Gisbert Kapp Building (G8 on campus map - PDF)

Minding the gap: how to improve boarding and alighting from trains

Bridget Eickhoff, Professor of Railway Interface Engineering, will present her inaugural lecture on Wednesday 5 December 2018. She will reflect on the challenges of the interface between trains and platforms on a mixed traffic railway. She will explain the constraints arising from the characteristics of a historic network, originally built to a range of different standards. She will compare this situation with that of more modern, purpose-built networks. Bridget will review the work that culminated in the publication of the GB Rail Industry Platform Train Interface Strategy, where she led the engineering input. She will then describe subsequent developments and will discuss current ideas and potential ways of improving this critical interface for GB railway passengers.

Bridget Eickhoff is Principal Infrastructure Engineer at RSSB (Rail Safety and Standards Board) and a leading authority on the wheel-rail and vehicle-track interfaces. She provides input to both GB and international standards connected to the interfaces between railway vehicles and infrastructure, she supports various research projects in related fields and contributes to a number of cross-industry railway groups.

Bridget has an MA in mathematics from the University of Cambridge and began her mechanical engineering career with British Rail Research, having joined as a graduate in 1977. She had a wide range of senior roles in BRR and its successor organisations, prior to moving to RSSB in 2008. Prof Eickhoff became a visiting lecturer on the MSc programme in Railway Systems Engineering at the University of Sheffield in 1995. Today, she is an important contributor to the railway postgraduate programmes run by the BCRRE at the University of Birmingham.

Bridget was made an Honorary Professor at Birmingham in 2018. She has been a member of the Board of the Railway Division of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers for many years and was Chairman of the Division in 2012-2013. She supports the training activities of the IMechE and is a major force in the annual Railway Challenge competition. She was jointly awarded the James Clayton prize in 2017 and the George Stephenson Gold Medal in 2016. Within BCRRE she supports a range of activities linked to the MSc programmes, including the practical weekend in Wirksworth, and the PG Cert in Urban Railway Engineering (Singapore).

Complimentary alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks will be served at the drinks reception following the event. Alcoholic drinks will be only be served to those who are aged 18 or over.

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