Manufacturing Metrology Team end of year message 2020

Another great year for MMT. Several students finished their PhDs and we had long-standing members leave and new members start. The core fellowship project 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. We also managed to secure a significant grant to start up the Midlands Centre for Data-Driven Metrology. Just to give you some highlights; more details of all these points can be found on our website. We published 37 journal papers (4 in 2020 already; about the same as 2019), 11 conference papers (far fewer than 2019 for obvious reasons) and delivered at least 21 oral presentations, including 7 keynotes/invited talks. Already for 2020 we have submitted 18 journal papers and 8 conference abstracts. The pandemic and political goings-on in the UK have made life a little more difficult than usual, but we are still going strong.

1. We attended 15 conferences – almost all were virtual, with the exception of early events in France, Germany and UK.
2. We published three new textbooks: Leach R K, Camignato S 2020 Precision Metal Additive Manufacturing (CRC Press), Leach R K 2020 Advances in Optical Surface Texture Metrology (IOPP) and Leach R K 2020 Advances in Optical Form and Coordinate Metrology (IOPP). Richard Leach, Amrozia Shaheen, Nicola Senin, Rong Su, Mingyu Liu, Wahyudin Syam, Sofia Catalucci, Samanta Piano, Mohammed Isa, Danny Sims-Waterhouse, Nicholas Southon, Joe Eastwood and Adam Thompson contributed to 15 book chapters.
3. Danny Sims-Waterhouse (now with Taraz Metrology), Patrick Bointon (now with Texture Jet), Carmine Napoli (now a school teacher in Italy), Nicholas Southon (now with Insphere), Shah Karim (now with Taraz Metrology), Greg Duckworth (now with Renishaw), Lars Korner (now with startup in Bern) and Luke Todhunter (now MMT) were awarded their PhDs.
4. Chris Fox retired from MMT.
5. Sofia Catalucci handed in her thesis and is awaiting a viva.
6. Luke Todhunter and Sofia Catalucci moved into post-doc positions and Adam Thompson’s contract was renewed. Mojtaba Ahmadiehkhanesar joined as a post-doc with David Branson.
7. David Branson and Nick Watson joined MMT as associate professors.
8. We had 4 new PhDs begin: Alan Chi, Athanasios Pappas, Diego Botelho and Michael Zhang.
9. Katie Blake joined as MMT general manager and Nathan Roberts joined as MMT metrology technician. Matthew Hutchinson moved to a part-time role as MMT commercial manager.
10. We won an EU grant to develop digital quality systems, and EMPIR grant on virtual optical surface measurement, an EPSRC grant to develop high-accuracy robotics and a RED grant to establish the Midlands Centre for Data-Driven Metrology.
11. We have a range of bids planned for 2021 (5 under review and 2 for submission in February). 
12. Taraz Metrology won a second IUK project, an EU grant and secured its first sales.
13. We chaired and organised euspen Structured and Freeform Surfaces meeting and the ASPE/euspen Advancing Precision in Additive Manufacturing meeting (both virtual).
14. We attended two virtual ISO 213 meetings and MMT contributed to surface texture and additive manufacturing standards.
15. Richard Leach was elected a Fellow of CIRP.
16. Angela Rodriguez Sanchez was awarded the Phillip Willey Prize (deferred until 2021).
17. Angela Rodriguez Sanchez won a student poster competition organised by the Manufacturing Technology Centre.
18. Joe Eastwood was part of a team that won the Student Challenge from euspen.
19. Afaf Remani, Poom Juasiripukdee, Sofia Catalucci and Rong Su were awarded prizes for the university Manufacturing Showcase.
20. We delivered 7 courses on metrology, all virtual.

Once again, as head of the group, I am delighted every day to work with such a talented bunch of researchers and look forward to an exciting 2021. We stepped up to the challenges of 2020 and still maintained a healthy research portfolio.

MMT wish you all a Happy New Year and hope that we can actually meet some of you in 2021!