Manufacturing Metrology Team end of year message
A fantastic year for MMT with some new members of staff, our first graduated PhDs and some original members leaving. We moved into a state-of-the-art Advanced Manufacturing Building with temperature and vibration controlled metrology labs. The core fellowship project is nearly four of five years in and we are making significant progress in establishing 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 and/or our Facebook page .
- We published 34 journal papers (3 in 2019 already) – about the same as 2017, 31 conference papers and delivered at least 33 oral presentations, including 6 keynotes/invited talks. We have also published a new senior undergrad textbook entitled “Basics of Precision Engineering”. But, already for 2018 we have submitted 6 journal papers and 10 conference abstracts.
- We attended 23 conferences in Austria, China, Cyprus, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, UK and USA.
- Adam Thompson, Sarah Everton and Nicola Senin were awarded their PhDs.
- We won 1 new European project on advanced X-ray computed tomography, 1 EPSRC project on optical scattering with machine learning, an internal Hermes pre-commercial project on smart photogrammetry and have delivered several industrial research projects, including new instrument development.
- We spun-out a new company to market our IP in the additive manufacturing sector, Taraz Metrology Ltd, and have secured initial investment.
- Peter de Groot from Zygo, one of our honorary professors, spent two months in MMT to discuss projects.
- We have submitted (or prepared for submission in early 2019) 6 EPSRC proposals (including 1 fellowship), 3 European proposals and an impact accelerator (pre-commercialisation) proposal. We have a large range of bids planned for 2019.
- We had 5 new PhD students start.
- Xiaobing Feng left us to take up an academic position in Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
- Alex Jackson-Crisp was promoted to Research Technician.
- We had 8 guest researchers from China, France, Italy and USA.
- We chaired and organised the 3rd Dimensional XCT conference in Nottingham, the euspen Structured & Freeform Surfaces meeting in France and co-chaired the ASPE/euspen Advancing Precision in Additive Manufacturing Conference in USA.
- We attended two ISO 213 meetings in Poland and London and MMT contributed to CMM, texture and additive manufacturing standards.
- We held several colloquiums and lectures, including from Peter de Groot (Zygo), Peter Ungar (University of Arkansas), Xiangchao Zhang (Fudan University), Federico Tombari (University of Munich) and Han Haitjema (KU Leuven).
- Adam Thompson won the tri-campus Gertrude Cropper award (the highest award for students at University of Nottingham).
- Adam Thompson and Lars Korner won the best presentation awards at dXCT conference, UK.
- Petros Stavroulakis and Owen Davies won the best poster award for University of Nottingham’s NSERP poster session.
- We installed a new photogrammetry system for fossil tooth measurement at the University of Arkansas, USA.
- We installed a new coherence scanning interferometer (Zygo) and confocal instrument (HIT) in the MMT labs.
- We delivered courses on metrology in China, UK and USA.
- As part of an EU-China collaboration project, 11 MMT members were seconded into China for 1 month periods.
Once again, as head of the group, I am delighted every day to go to work and mess around with such a talented bunch of researchers, and look forward to an exciting 2019.
MMT wish you all a Merry Metrology Christmas and a Happy Precision New Year!