Manufacturing Metrology Team end of year message

Another great year for MMT. Several students finished their PhDs and some original members left for good jobs. The core fellowship project is nearly finished, and we are making significant progress in commercialising the principles of information-rich metrology. Other existing projects are proving fruitful and we have several industry-funded projects underway or in the pipeline. Just to give you some highlights; more details of all these points can be found on our website. We published 38 journal papers (3 in 2020 already) – about the same as 2018, 30 conference papers and delivered at least 37 oral presentations, including 11 keynotes/invited talks. Already for 2019 we have submitted 20 journal papers and 7 conference abstracts. The political goings-on in the UK have made life a little more difficult than usual, but we are still going strong.

1. We attended 28 conferences in China, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Spain, UK and USA.
2. Anas Aburayt (back to Saudi), Lewis Newton (now a post-doc in MMT) and Waiel Elmadih (now with a lens manufacturer in UK) were awarded their PhDs.
3. Vicente Rivas Santos (now with Cambridge based spin-out), Patrick Bointon, Danny Sims-Waterhouse (now with Taraz Metrology), Lars Korner and Luke Todhunter (now a post-doc in MMT) handed in their theses and are awaiting a viva or making corrections.
4. Nicholas Southon left us to take a position in Insphere Ltd, a UK metrology company.
5. We won two EPSRC IAA awards to develop surface texture software measurement standards with Digital Surf and transfer function calibration/correction with Zygo.
6. We secured a 2 year grant with a large US paint manufacturer.
7. We have a range of large bids planned for 2020 (2 for submission in February). 
8. Taraz Metrology won an IUK project and secured a second round of investment.
9. Peter de Groot from Zygo, one of our honorary professors, spent 6 weeks in MMT to discuss projects.
10. We had 2 new PhD students start (XCT calibration and in-process measurement for metal laser powder bed fusion).
11. We had 8 guest researchers from China, France, Germany, Japan and Spain. 
12. We chaired and organised the Integrated Metrology of Precision Manufacturing conference in Sheffield, Integrated Metrology of Additive Manufacturing conference in Coventry, and co-chaired the euspen/ASPE Advancing Precision in Additive Manufacturing Conference in France.
13. We attended one ISO 213 meeting in Switzerland and MMT contributed to CMM, texture and additive manufacturing standards.
14. We held several colloquiums and lectures, including from Prof. Shugang Liu (Beijing Zhonglong Yicheng Technology Company), Prof. Graham Machin (National Physical Laboratory), Prof. Nigel Jennett (Coventry University), Prof. Peter de Groot (Zygo), Dr Jordan Bestwick (University of Leicester), Prof. Ruikang Wang (University of Washington) and Dr Paul Hooper (Imperial College London).
15. Richard Leach was awarded the Finkelstein Medal from the Institute of Measurement and Control, for promoting metrology internationally.
16. MMT/Taraz Metrology were runners up in a Collaborate to Innovate award from The Engineer, for smart photogrammetry research and commercialisation.
17. George Gayton and Sofia Catalucci were awarded the Phillip Willey Prize. This is a new prize kindly donated to MMT by Graham & Benda Siddall; Graham being a highly successful precision engineer and company director. Both spent time in US as part of the award (Sofia in UNCC and George University of Purdue).
18. Sofia Catalucci and Gicomo Maculotti won Haidenhain Scholarships from euspen.
19. Waiel Elmadih won best paper at American Society of Mechanical Engineers: Mechanics and Robotics Conference, USA. 
20. Amrozia Shaheen won best paper at ASPE/euspen Advancing Precision in Additive Manufacturing Conference, France.
21. We installed a new in-process fringe projection system for metal laser powder bed fusion in the University of Sheffield (EPSRC MAPP Hub).
22. We installed a coordinate measuring machine (Mitutoyo), multi-instrument surface texture instrument (Sensofar) and focus variation microscope (Alicona) in the MMT labs.
23. We delivered courses on metrology in China, France, Hong Kong and UK.
24. As part of an EU-China collaboration project, 12 MMT members were seconded into China for 1 month periods.
25. Richard Leach was elected on to the Board of the American Society of Precision Engineering (ASPE).

Once again, as head of the group, I am delighted every day to go to work and have fun with such a talented bunch of researchers and look forward to an exciting 2020.

MMT wish you all a Low Uncertainty Happy New Year!