Last call for entries for Engineering Research Writer of the Year 2013

The deadline for entries to the AEngD writing competition is midnight on Monday 30 September 2013. We want EngD research engineers and recent alumni to write short articles promoting public interest in their research. The writers of the two best articles will each win £250.

As part of its commitment to promoting the EngD qualification, the AEngD is seeking articles that address any area of engineering and would be suitable for publication in a magazine (for example, the RAEng magazine) and/or a broadsheet newspaper. Shortlisted writers, who should be current EngD research engineers or recent alumni, will be invited to present their papers at a London event in November 2013, and the writers of the two articles judged best will each win £250.

EngD in Systems now an Engineering Council-accredited degree

In case you missed the announcement in August, we thought we'd highlight the news that the EngD in Systems, delivered by the IDC in Systems at the University of Bristol and the University of Bath, has been officially accredited as providing a pathway to Chartered Engineer (CEng) status by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) and the Institution of Civil engineers (ICE).

The industrial doctorate centre (IDC) for Systems is one of the first EngD centres to be recognised by the UK regulator, the Engineering Council, as providing a route to CEng registration for future leaders in industry and academia. Professor Patrick Godfrey, director of the centre and chairman of the Association of Engineering Doctorates' steering group, says:

"Accreditation is a mark of assurance that the degree meets the standards set by the Engineering Council in the UK Standard for Professional Engineering Competence (UK-SPEC). An accredited degree will provide you with some or all of the underpinning knowledge, understanding and skills for eventual registration as Chartered Engineer (CEng). Some employers recruit preferentially from accredited degrees, and an accredited degree is likely to be recognised by other countries that are signatories to international accords".

The decision was relayed to the IDC in Systems following a visit by the Engineering Accreditation Board (EAB) in November 2012.

AEngD website update

Regular visitors to the AEngD website may know that we have been experiencing sporadic problems with its performance, with some pages being slow to load, or sometimes not loading at all (we noted this in May too).

We are now undertaking a major overhaul. The site is to be moved to a new hosting provider, the supporting content management system will be updated, and - once the migration and update are tested and found to be working satisfactorily - we will be fixing various minor issues relating to how some information is currently processed and displayed.

In the meantime, there may be occasional outages as we undertake this work, for which we apologise in advance, and we will keep users updated via Twitter, Facebook and this blog.