Rolls-Royce holds 3rd EngD conference

Rolls-Royce held its third Engineering Doctorate Conference on 21st November at the Learning & Career Development Centre in Derby. This exhibition provided Rolls-Royce sponsored Engineering Doctorate (EngD) researchers to showcase their cutting-edge research, promoting the EngD scheme through innovation.

The Rolls-Royce EngD Network hosted this exhibition, providing a gateway to provide EngD researchers with an opportunity to communicate and collaborate with other EngD researchers across all sectors of Rolls-Royce. The Network was founded in 2012 by EngD researchers Oliver Nowers, Maria Felice and James Pettit, to promote awareness of the EngD scheme and the benefits that it has provided to Rolls-Royce.

Presentations were given by previous and current EngD researchers, ranging from a novel diamond rotary concept for grinding aerospace materials to the In-Situ Patch Repair of Thermal Barrier Coatings, revealing a high-level summary of background knowledge and ongoing research efforts that are being incorporated into their projects.

Invited keynote speakers included Frank Kirkland, Chair of Rolls-Royce Fellows and Chief Designer for Civil Aerospace, who has worked on a range of RR aerospace engines since he joined Rolls-Royce in 1981. Invited speaker Sam Turner, Chief Technical Officer of the AMRC with Boeing, who is responsible for technology strategy, capability growth and support to the AMRC departments and relationship management with major stakeholders. He had delivered high impact projects in manufacturing research and its application towards the industry.

Mark Jefferies, Chief of University Research Liaison presented insight into the effectiveness and strategic development of key academic research partnerships for Rolls-Royce. This includes the company's worldwide network of 31 University of Technology Centres engaging with hundreds of academics and researchers. Also presents the critical impact of collaborative research, developing the fundamental technology, tools and skills required by Rolls-Royce, maintaining scientific excellence.

EngD poster events were held at the Heritage Museum in addition to a variety of DTC stands, exhibiting their research with potential application to Rolls-Royce technologies. Universities including Nottingham, Bristol, Southampton, Surrey, and Birmingham have participated.

This event demonstrates the continued commitment from Rolls-Royce to invest in the next-generation of engineering challenges, and the value of the EngD programme for the transfer of skills and development from academia towards the industry.

(contributed by Lee Pardoe, EngD research engineer at Southampton University)

First, PubhD... What about InngD - pub talks on engineering research?

Thanks to a tweet from Professor Trevor Drage, "soon to be former Professor at University of Nottingham, in clean fossil energy and carbon capture... Relocating to Wellington NZ" (that's what his Twitter profile says), we have learned of the "PubhD".

From the PubhD blog, it involves explaining the subject matter of a doctoral research project in language intelligible to a layperson, and takes place, naturally enough, in a pub. It envisages:

"A monthly event at which 3 or 4 local PhD student speakers, from any discipline from Art History to Quantum Mechanics, explain their work to an audience of laypeople.
The talks would be about 10 minutes long and would be followed by up to 20 minutes of (friendly!) Q&A.
The “friendly” aspect is important. This isn’t about bringing PhD students into a “lion’s den” to be grilled about their studies. The audience, we hope, will be genuinely interested in hearing about a wide variety of academic areas."

PhD students would get a pint (seems fair!) plus some public speaking and public engagement practice, while the audience would have something interesting to listen to. The first event is provisionally schedule to take place in Nottingham (home of the Efficient Fossil Energy Technologies industrial doctorate centre) on 22 January 2014.

We like this idea, but think it needs to extend to Engineering Doctorates (EngDs), so would like to propose that our friends in Nottingham also allow some "InngD" talks by EngD research engineers.

It might also be something that could be taken up by other universities and/or industrial doctorate centre as part of their public outreach and STEM engagement work.

To RE or not to RE?

An email from Dr Andrea Haworth, Centre Manager at the Industrial Doctorate Centre in Machining Science (University of Sheffield) has got people talking about "how IDCs refer to EngD students/Research Engineers (and perhaps more importantly how EngDs refer to themselves)."

We appreciate that there is good reason and a strong steer to call them “Research Engineers”, but many people have a job title “Research Engineer” and aren’t EngD candidates. 

I really do try, but if I refer to  “Research Engineers”, most people don’t know that I’m talking about, or might, at best, assume that I mean someone who has gained the EngD qualification.

I tend to alternate between “EngD student” (which I don’t like but which is sort of understood) or ”EngD Research Engineer”, or as a complete get out, just “EngD”.  On business cards the students are referred to Research Engineer/ EngD Candidate or similar.

I was wondering whether “Postgraduate Research Engineer” might do (cf “Postgraduate Research Student”).  Or have I just invented something else to confuse? How do other IDCs handle this? 

Responses

• Sally Hawthorne at Southampton's IDC on transport and the environment said: "the students themselves wish to be known as ’EngD researchers’ and that’s what’s on their door signs and on their business cards."
• From the Manufacturing Technology centre at Nottingham, David Shipley said: "We tend to call ours Research Engineers or EngD Research Engineers. They seem to appreciate not being referred to as students externally. ... Ours tend to have Research Engineers on their business cards."
• Steven Yeomans (Loughborough's CICE) also said: "I use Research Engineer when dealing with anyone other than internal university systems, where I then use the term EngD student."
• David Stanley (Nuclear Engineering IDC) adopts the same approach: "externally we try to use 'Research Engineers' as much as possible and we also get them to put this on business cards. It adds a bit of kudos at conferences etc."
• Justine Easten from STREAM's Newcastle location, says: "I use EngD Research Engineers, and our researchers have business cards to say this, followed by their industrial sponsors name...."

The AEngD has tended to use 'Research Engineer' too, but what do you think? If you are engaged in an EngD programme, what title do you prefer?