Fire Group at the IIE Scotland 2nd Postgraduate Conference

A strong Fire Group delegation presented their work yesterday at the IIE Scotland 2^nd Postgraduate Conference. The annual event is organized by the Institutes for Infrastructure & Environment from Heriot-Watt University and The University of Edinburgh.

Many congratulations to Cristian Maluk, Mohamed Kiari, Zafiris Triantafyllidis, and Eric Mueller for being awarded in the categories of best paper/presentation and poster.

BEST PAPER/PRESENTATION

1^st place

C. Maluk, L.A. Bisby, G.P. Terrasi

Fire Resistance Test on Precast CFRP Pretensioned Slabs

Joint 2^nd place

M. Kiari, T. Stratford, L. Bisby

New Design of FRP Internal Reinforcement for Elevated Temperatures

AND

Z. Triantafyllidis, L. Bisby

Flexural Behaviour of Steel I-Beams Protected with Fibre-Reinforced Intumescent Coatings at Ambient Temperature

BEST POSTER

1^st place

E. Mueller, W. Mell, A. Simeoni

Large Eddy Simulation of Forest Canopy Flow with Applications to Wildland Fire

Cristian Maluk

http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/fire/staff-cristian.html

Mohamed Kiari

http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/fire/2012-phd-mohammed.html

Zafiris Triantafyllidis

http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/fire/2011-phd-zafiris.html

Eric Mueller

http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/fire/2013-phd-eric.html

 

Staff Spotlight: Prof. Drysdale

Prof. Drysdale at Everest base camp. Another of his many achievements!

Prof. Drysdale is featured in this month's Edinburgh Alumni Staff Spotlight. Click here to read the full article. The article was prepared following our 40th Anniversary Celebrations earlier this year and charts Dougal's career from his beginnings as a combustion chemist to the publication of the 3rd edition of Introduction to Fire Dynamics.

What's next, Dougal?

2011 Lloyd’s Prize to fire research

Congratulations to Dr Angus Law and co-authors for winning the 2011 Lloyd’s Science of Risk Prize in the Biological/Technological category for their paper on travelling fires for structural design. Dr Law graduated in 2010 with a PhD in Fire Safety Engineering from the University of Edinburgh and now works at Arup. The Science of Risk Prize was launched by Lloyd’s to stimulate cutting edge research into the latest emerging risks facing businesses.

 Design for infrastructure protection

The winning paper  is "The Influence of Travelling Fires on a Concrete Frame" (published in Engineering Structures 33), led by Dr Law and co-authored by Dr Stern-Gottfried, Dr Gillie and Dr Rein. The work argues that the trend towards open plan offices has changed the types of fire likely to occur in modern buildings. It uses science to look at ways to improve engineering guidelines and building design, reduce the risk of travelling fires, and help insurers better quantify and model fire risk. The presentation given by Dr Law at the award's ceremony built on the concepts of acceptable risk and the margin of error of design methods in the contextt of the engineering duty to use the world’s limited resources as efficiently as possible (see presentation here). The work was founded by BRE Trust and Arup.

Best runner-up

The best runner-up in the same category was our graduate Dr Sung-han Koo for his paper "Sensor-steered fire simulation" (published in Fire Safety Journal and co-authored by Dr J Fraser-Mitchell and Dr S Welch)

2010 Awards

This is the second time that Edinburgh recieves the award. Last year Dr Francesco Colella won the 2010 (inaugural) prize in Technology for the paper "A Novel Multiscale Methodology for Simulating Tunnel Ventilation Flows During Fires". And Dr Wolfram Jahn (in Technology) and Dr Claire Belcher (in Natural Hazards) were short-listed within the top five submissions.

Related links:

• The Science of Risk - Lloyd’s Research Prize
• Press release from BRE "Centre of Excellence Student Claims Top Prize"
• The University’s BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering
• 2010 Lloyd’s Science of Risk Prize goes to Fire Technology

FireForum Award 2011 to IMFSE

The International Master of Science in Fire Safety Engineering (IMFSE) has received the inaugural FireForum Award 2011 in the Social Value category. The IMFSE program is an Erasmus Mundus degree by the EU and coordinated by Ghent University (Prof. Bart Merci) in association with Lund University (Prof. Robert Jönsson) and The University of Edinburgh (Prof. José Torero).

Prof Bart Merci (right) receives the award as coordinator of IMFSE

The award

FireForum Awards is a new Belgium prize to celebrate excelence in fire safety engineering. It is organized by Fire Forum in cooperation with the Federal Public Service Home Affairs and the Federal Civil Security Knowledge (KCCE). The first edition of the awards was celebrated at the Koloniënpaleis, Tervuren, on 17 Nov 2011.

During the ceremony at the Kolonienpaleis

Awards to Edinburgh students at the 10th IAFSS

The last Symposium of the International Association for Fire Safety Science (IAFSS), held at the University of Maryland, was attended by 18 members of the group who presented a total of 6 papers, 4 workshop talks, 9 posters, and 5 photos. 

Members of the University of Edinburgh at the 10th IAFSS Symposium 2011.

Congratulations to our two students who recieved awards for their research:

Angus Law recieved the Best PhD Thesis Award in Europe/Africa for his thesis titled The Assessment and Response of Concrete Structures Subject to Fire (2010).

Cristian Maluk recieved the Best Student Poster Award for his work Bond Strength Degradation for CFRP Bars and Steel Prestressing Wires in Concrete at Elevated Temperature Fire Behaviour of Novel Concrete Structural Elements.

Fire Group News Overview Jan to Aug 2011

News overview from the BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering at the University of Edinburgh during the first semester of 2011 (extracted from the IAFSS Newsletter n31, August 2011).

Since Jan 2011 two new PhD students have joined us: Shaun Devaney (Ireland) and Ryan Hilditch (UK). During the same time, three students received the PhD degree: Dr Rory Hadden (now at University of Western Ontario, Canada), Dr Pauline Bartoli (now University of Corsica, France) and Dr Jamie Stern-Gottfried (now at Arup, UK). Two Research Associates promoted outside the group: Dr David Lange joined SP, Sweden, and Dr Claire Belcher got an academic position at University of Exeter, UK, in Earth System Science. The current group consists of nine academics, four research associates and 26 PhD students. Other worthy news are summarized as follows.

The Ove Arup Foundation has made a major investment to tackle the obdurate problems surrounding fire safety. Working with Fire Safety Engineers and Architects at the University of Edinburgh, The Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation (ISSTI) will explore how to ensure the effective adoption of technical advances in the built environment. The Ove Arup Foundation has agreed to invest £200,000 over the next 5 years in a major interdisciplinary research and knowledge transfer initiative aimed at Integrating Technical and Social Aspects of Fire Safety Engineering Expertise (ITSAFE).

The Centre has secured a major grant from The Lloyd's Register Educational Trust (LRET) to hold a series of three annual week-long intensive seminars ("think tanks") in areas related to Fire Safety Engineering. This series of seminars was motivated by the need to have a new generation of leaders in Fire Safety Engineering that can drive the field through the drastic transition it is currently experiencing. An ever evolving construction industry, drastic changes in regulatory environment, multi-disciplinary drivers for innovation, and ever increasing demands for the fire service require a new face of leadership. The seminars are intended to bring together selected leaders of today with the leaders of the future to define a coherent path for different areas of critical importance to the field. This unique initiative was launched this year with The 1st Annual LRET/UoE Global Technical Leadership Seminar in Fire Safety Engineering. The seminar had the theme of "Education for the Future of Fire Safety Engineering," and was held in Scotland between 30 May and 3 June 2011. Participants were selected as key players in defining the future of advanced fire safety engineering as a professional/academic discipline. The seminar was run as a five day retreat, delivered by the BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering at a residential venue close to Edinburgh. Each session began with a presentation to be given by one of the participants. This initiated discussions on the relevant issues. A small group of undergraduate and graduate students, some of whose studies are also financially supported by The LRET, were also competitively selected to join the seminar, bringing the total number of participants to approximately 20. Dissemination activities will include the publication of a "white paper" based on the seminar's discussions and outcomes. All of the participants felt that the event was a great success and will lead to a number of important changes, actions, and significant progress for fire safety engineering education globally. Feedback has been very positive thus far, and several participants have formulated specific personal action items within their own organizations.

Prof José Torero delivered the public lecture: "The Twin Towers: 10 years – 10 Lessons on Sustainable Infrastructure" on 14th March 2011. This was a joint event of The Royal Academy of Engineering and The Royal Society of Edinburgh. The collapse of the World Trade Center towers represents one of the most dramatic failures of modern structural engineering. One of the most exhaustive and expensive failure analyses in history was conducted in the midst of speculation, controversy and conspiracy theories. In parallel, the world has seen an extraordinary evolution of the super-tall building. Seven of the ten tallest buildings in the world have been built after 9/11. These not only include the tallest four, but eight of these buildings are outside the USA. Furthermore, a strong drive towards sustainability has driven tall building design to levels of innovation never seen before. Prof Torero’s presentation extracted, from a decade of questioning and innovation, ten lessons on what is sustainable infrastructure.

Prof José Torero was awarded the 2010 Tom Dalyell Prize for Science Communication at the University of Edinburgh during his Christmas Lecture "Fire: A story of fascination, fear and familiarity". In his lecture, Prof Torero discussed how humans have been fascinated with fire for millions of years. He examined how fire can provide welcome warmth in everyday life but, on a bigger scale, the unpredictability of fire can be terrifying. He contrasted the emotions associated with fire, depending on whether it is under control or not.

Congratulations to Dr Francesco Colella for winning the Lloyd’s Science of Risk Prize in the Technology Category. The prize was for his research paper "A Novel Multiscale Methodology for Simulating Tunnel Ventilation Flows During Fires" (published in Fire Technology). He led this work as a Research Associate at The School of Engineering from 2007 to 2010. This is Lloyd’s research prize for academics and aims at keeping the world’s leading specialist insurance market with the pace of academic knowledge and cutting edge thinking. For the same award competition, the fire group had two more papers short-listed as the top of each category. Dr Wolfram Jahn was short-listed in Technology Risk, for his paper "Forecasting Fire Growth using an Inverse Zone Modelling Approach" (published in Fire Safety Journal). And Dr Claire Belcher was short-listed in Climate Change Risk for her paper "Increased fire activity at the Triassic/Jurassic boundary in Greenland due to climate-driven floral change" (published in Nature Geoscience).

The University is one of 13 partners collaborating on a three year, EU FP7 funded research project on Aircraft Fire Safety. The 'kick-off' meeting was in Poitiers, France, in January 2010.

On Nov 2010 Dr Guillermo Rein was interviewed by Scottish TV about a recent research paper published in Fire Safety Journal on "Forecasting Fire Growth". On the same day he was interviewed for BBC Radio and newspaper The Scotsman.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh has awarded a JM Lessells Scholarship Award to the fire group PhD student Holly Smith. She will spend two months at the Department of Civil Engineering, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada and work on shear failure of concrete structures during fire.

We continue communicating views, news and achievements in our blog

Holly Smith receives JM Lessells Travel Scholarships from Royal Society of Edinburgh

The Royal Society of Edinburgh has awarded a JM Lessells Scholarship to the fire group PhD student Holly Smith.

Holly will spend two months at the Department of Civil Engineering, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. She will be examining methods of using digital image correlation in support of her PhD work on shear failure of concrete structures during fire, which is supervised by Dr Tim Stratford. This technique has only recently been applied in structural engineering by Dr Andy Take of Queen’s University and as a consequence there are a number of challenges in its use. Her visit to Queen’s University will allow her to gain expertise from Dr Andy Take and Dr Neil Hoult, who have been extending Take’s digital image analysis methods to structural measurements and work on a post-processing technique to interpret the initial results that she has obtained from her first set of experiments. Queen’s University also has concrete structures in fire research activity, led by Dr Mark Green, and working with this group will also be very beneficial for Holly’s research.

We are number 1!

FireScienceDegree.com has just posted a list of the 45 best fire science blogs. And we are number 1!

Thanks!

Lloyd’s Science of Risk Prize goes to Fire Technology

Congratulations to Dr Francesco Colella for winning the Lloyd’s Science of Risk Prize in the Technology Category.

The prize was for his research paper "A Novel Multiscale Methodology for Simulating Tunnel Ventilation Flows During Fires" (published in Fire Technology). He led this work as a Research Associate at The School of Engineering from 2007 to 2010.

Dr Richard Ward, CEO of Lloyds told Francesco "The judging panel, comprising experts from academia and insurance felt your paper illustrated how novel computational methods can be used to reduce fire risk in the future. The panel were particularly impressed with how you reduced model run-time by concentrating on what is critical and by coupling fast and slower models".

This is Lloyd’s research prize for academics and aims at keeping the world’s leading specialist insurance market with the pace of academic knowledge and cutting edge thinking.


On top of this winning paper, The University of Edinburgh had three more papers short-listed as the top of each category (two of them from the fire group as well):

* Mr Craig Poland, short-listed in Technology Risk (best runner up), from the School of Medicine for his paper "Carbon nanotubes introduced into the abdominal cavity of mice show asbestos-like pathogenicity"  (published in Nature Nanotechnology).

* Dr Wolfran Jahn, short-listed in Technology Risk, from the School of Engineering for his paper "Forecasting Fire Growth using an Inverse Zone Modelling Approach" (published in Fire Safety Journal).

* Dr Claire Belcher, short-listed in Climate Change Risk, from the School of Geosciences for her paper "Increased fire activity at the Triassic/Jurassic boundary in Greenland due to climate-driven floral change" (published in Nature Geoscience).

See related article Hot talent in risk research in the Staff Bulletin of the University of Edinburgh.
See press release by Springer.

Christmas Lecture

This years University of Edinburgh Christmas Lecture will be given by the winner of the Tam Dalyell Prize 2010 - Professor Jose Torero.

The lecture is entitled: Fire: A story of fascination, fear and familiarity. Prof Torero will examine how fire can provide welcome warmth in everyday life but, on a bigger scale, the unpredictability of fire can be terrifying.

More information on the talk and the prize here.



Wednesday, December 08, 2010 from 6:00 PM - 7:15 PM
at George Square Lecture Theatre, EH8 9LK
http://www.ed.ac.uk/maps/buildings/george-square-lecture-theatre

Book free tickets online at: http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/all-news/dalyell-171110
Note that tickets have run out fast for this event in previous years.

Fire Scholarships from The Lloyd’s Register Educational Trust

New Fire Safety Engineering scholarships from The Lloyd’s Register Educational Trust aim to make buildings safer from fire.


Modern buildings and the people who live and work in them will be better protected from the risk and consequences of fire, thanks to new education and research initiatives within the BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering at the University of Edinburgh.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh are aiming for a better understanding of how contemporary building features – such as lighter construction materials and open-plan interiors – can influence how fires take hold and how fast they spread.

More than £200K in new student scholarships supported by The Lloyd’s Register Educational Trust will help to create a core of leaders who will use new understanding to bring change to the field.

Research and teaching programmes will seek to influence safety planning and design such as building evacuation procedures, fire-safe construction, and guidance for firefighters.

Top-flight undergraduate and postgraduate scholarship students will be recruited to create a cohort of fire safety specialists with expertise in all aspects of modern fire safety techniques.

Three LRET international MSc scholars will be sponsored through a new two-year International MSc in Fire Safety Engineering (IMFSE). The degree, the first multi-institution course of its kind globally, is operated by the Universities of Edinburgh, Lund and Ghent and funded by the European Commission’s Erasmus Mundus programme.

A further six LRET International MEng scholars will be supported in their final two years of the existing degree in Structural and Fire Safety Engineering at the University of Edinburgh.

Dr Luke Bisby, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh’s BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering, said: “Building design has changed radically in recent decades – we need a pioneering approach to developing fire safety solutions. We have to ensure that the chances of fire are as low as possible and that if a fire should occur, it will have little chance to spread, everyone inside can be evacuated safely, and economic and environmental losses can be minimised. Only through research linked to innovative educational programs can new approaches to fire safety take hold.”

Michael Franklin, Director of The LRET commented: “The Lloyd’s Register Educational Trust funds exceptional students studying science, engineering and technology throughout the world. We want to encourage and help them to become the future leaders in their chosen field. We hope The LRET scholarships at the University of Edinburgh will help to increase fire safety significantly in the years to come.”

The 2010 winners of the LRET Scholarships are (from left in the photo below):

• Ieuan Rickard, LRET MEng Scholar in Fire Safety Engineering
• Sarah Higginson, LRET MEng Scholar in Fire Safety Engineering
• Eduardo Maciel, LRET International MSc Scholar in Fire Safety Engineering

Congratulations to all three of the winners!

For further information, please contact:
Dr Luke Bisby, School of Engineering, tel 0131 650 5710; email Luke.Bisby@ed.ac.uk.


Notes:

The Lloyd’s Register Educational Trust is an independent charity that was established in 2004. Its principal purpose is to support advances in transportation, science, engineering and technology  education, training and research worldwide for the benefit of all. It also funds work that enhances the safety of life and property at sea, on land and in the air.

Heron Tower and the begining of the concept of travelling fires in design

A recent article about Arup's fire design of Heron Tower (among the tallest buildings in London) appeared in Info4fire.com. The Heron Tower project won the Fire Safety Engineering design category at the Fire Excellence Awards in May 2009.

Case Study - Multi Storey Open Spaces

14 September 2009, Info4fire.com

Heron Tower is a landmark in our collaboration with Arup since it led to a joint PhD thesis and a series of papers. Since 2007 we are working together to define novel design fires in similar large spaces to that in Heron Tower. We came up with the concept of "travelling fires". The initial work was presented at Interflam 2007.

Figure: Snapshot from the fire model using FDS published here. Temperature map for a 500 kW/m2 well-distributed fire on the bottom floor with top and bottom floor ventilation. The atrium acts as a chimney, linking the bottom and the top floors.

Since then, the research has advanced significantly and led to several other papers and case studies. We recently published an overview and a building survey in the magazine Fire Risk Management. The key element behind this research is the need to provide design solutions to the large parts of modern buildings that fall outside the limits set out in the Eurocodes.

The two articles published in Fire Risk Management led to an unusual number of Letters to the Editor. Letters from Mike Wood, Pilkington Group, and from Dr Kirby, Sirius Fire Safety Consultants, were received. This and this were our respective replies (our reply to Dr Kirby is also attached below).

NOTE: Thanks to Chris for mentioning the article.


---
On Fire Risk Management Feb 2010, Dr Kirby from Sirius Fire Safety Consultants commented on our article "Out of Range".

Our reply, Beyond Limits, in Fire Risk Management March 2010 read:
We are pleased to read the letter that Dr Kirby, from Sirius Fire Safety Consultants, wrote in response to our December cover article, "Out of range". In our article, we reported a survey of 3,080 compartments on the campus of the University of Edinburgh buildings underlining the compartment volume that falls inside of the design fire specifications of current Eurocode 1 (66 % of the older buildings, but only 8% of the most modern one). Instead of volume, Dr Kirby prefers to quote our results as % of the number of compartments (95 % of the older buildings, but only 63% of the most modern one), assuming perhaps that all compartments are equally important regardless of the very large differences in size (e.g., atria vs. single desk office). But the main conclusion of our article, that the modern building contains a very large portion of built environment outside the limits of the Eurocode, stands true no matter what survey quantity is quoted.
Dr Kirby also refers to the UK National Application Document which extends beyond the Eurocode 1 range and without limit, the use of these post-flashover design fires. We consulted this document while investigating the technical origins of the Eurocode, but after two years of searching and requests, we have not been able to find a copy of the validation work it cites. If Dr Kirby or any reader of the FRM magazine could kindly send us a copy of the validation work, we would be grateful. We hope that full details of these studies are made available to the fire research community at large for the benefit of all.
We agree that Eurocode 1 is a good document and a first step putting fire engineering into a codified form. We appreciate Dr Kirby's kind words of support for research in alternative design fires. His comments on fuel-control fires in large compartments resonate very well with our previous article in this publication ("Travel guide", November 2009, pp.12-16 by J Stern-Gottfried, G Rein and J Torero). In that article, we highlight that in large compartments, a post flashover fire is not likely to occur, but that a travelling fire spreading across the floor plate should be considered instead. We think that in the future travelling fires should also be considered as design fires and compliment the current Eurocode. Work conducted to date is available and easily accessible to the fire research community at large for the benefit of all.
Dr Guillermo Rein, BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering, The University of Edinburgh

2009 Hinshelwood Award for Dr Rein

[Photo courtesy of Prof Jose Torero]

Dr Guillermo Rein was awarded the 2009 Hinshelwood Award at the Annual General Meeting of the Combustion Institute held at the University of Cambridge on September 15^th, 2010.

The Hinshelwood award is named after Prof. Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, 1956 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry. This award is given for the “Meritorious work of a young scientist of the British section of the Combustion Institute” and, together with the Sugden prize (for best journal paper), is the most important award the Combustion Institute delivers in the United Kingdom. The award was presented by Prof. Allan Hayhurst, Chair of the British Section of the Combustion Institute.

Congratulations Guillermo!

Guillermo Rein, together with Sugden Prize winners Prof Derek Bradley & Gautam Kalghatgi.

Prof Torero elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering

Congratulations to Prof Jose Torero on being elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng).  FREngs are UK's leading engineers and a unique national resource.

Prof Mike Forde said "This is an incredibly competitive award and reflects Jose's personal engineering achievements related to advances in structural behaviour in fire, material flammibility, tunnel fire safety,  contaminant remediation technology and sensor driven emergency response. It also recognises Jose's engineering contributions as an advisor to industry and governments worldwide".

Official announcement can be read here: Academy elects 'unique national resource' to assist in economic recovery, RAEng News Release, 08 July 2010

AXA Fellowship and NFPA Scholarship go to Edinburgh fire researchers

Congratulations to Adam and Jamie!

Dr Adam Cowlard was awarded a 2010 Post-doctoral Fellowships from AXA Research Fund for a proposal to study the burning behaviour of wildland fuels and improve wildfire risk calculations. AXA grants are to "uphold the emergence of the world's scientific leaders".

and


Jamie Stern-Gottfried is the recipient of the 2010 David B. Gratz Scholarship from the National Fire Protection Association in USA. The funds ($5000 USD) are to travel to international conferences overseas and present his thesis work on the role of travelling fires in the structural design of large buildings. This is the fourth Gratz Scholarship that goes to Edinburgh since it was created in 1997.
This scholarship is named for David B. Gratz, the NFPA’s first executive director for international operations, a position he held for 22 years. The scholarship is awarded to recognize the growth of fire science and fire engineering programs. The award was covered by Security Info Watch News.

Lessells Travel Scholarship for Sam Grindrod

Congratulations to BRE Trust PhD student Sam Grindrod who has been awarded 2010 J M Lessells Travel Scholarship from the The Royal Society of Edinburgh.

The funding (£8,750) is for Sam to travel to Lund University, Sweden for seven months, where he will be collaborating on project M*E*T*R*O, mainly on the medium-scale tunnel fire experiments.

Visiting researcher at Tokyo University of Science

Our PhD student Sung-Han Koo has been awarded an International Young Researcher Scholarship which will fund a 3-month visit to the Center for Fire Science and Technology in the Research Institute for Science and Technology at Tokyo University of Science, Japan. 

Distinguished Paper Award from the Combustion Institute

The 2008 Distinguished Paper Award on Fire Research at the 32nd International Symposium on Combustion was given to the paper "Carbon Emissions from Smouldering Peat in Shallow and Strong Fronts" by Guillermo Rein, Simon Cohen and Albert Simeoni.

This prestigious award is given by the Combustion Institute to the paper in the Fire Research colloquia which is "judged to be most distinguished in quality, achievement and significance".

Figure: Depth vs. time sketch of a downward smouldering
front showing the evolution of the front structure.

The paper reports on a series of laboratory experiments measuring carbon emissions from smouldering fires of boreal peat. It provides a novel framework to study smouldering dynamics by varying the controlling mechanisms and providing burning conditions that otherwise cannot be obtained in the laboratory. The paper is available in open access in ERA.

HEC technology innovation award for FireGrid

Edinburgh students Sung-Han Koo & Sungwook Kang got the third prize HEC technology innovation award for their paper "Real-time fire prediction using sensors" on FireGrid.

Photo: Award reception of the 3rd Hyundai Engineering & Hankyung Technical awards. (From left to right) Co-chair of Hyundai Engineering, Sung-Wook Kang (MSc student UoE) and Bon-Ju Koo (father of Sung Han Koo, PhD student UoE).

The HEC is an award to post-graduate students who propose "technical renovation, new paradigms, new enterprise", conferred by Hyundai Engineering Co. Ltd. and Hankyung Economy (a media company); this was the third annual award.

Students Sung-Han Koo (BRE Trust/FireGrid PhD student) and Sungwook Kang (SAFE MSc student) submitted a technical paper related to the FireGrid project and were selected as one of the 14 finalists from about 70 initial entries.  They then presented the work in person in Korea on 15 October and were later announced as one of the 7 final prize-winners, being awarded the joint "third prize" (3 million KRW, c. £1500).

The work was supervised Dr Stephen Welch.

Congratulations for winning the 2009 Lord Ezra Award in combustion

Congratulations to the STAR team for receiving the 15th Lord Ezra Award for their innovative combustion technology to treat industrial soil pollution.

Photo (from left to right): Prof Jason Gerhard, Prof Jose Torero, Lord Howie of Troon, Christine Switzer, Guillermo Rein.

The award was given on 8th October 2009 during a lunch at the House of Lords, Westminster, by the UK Combustion Engineering Association for "outstanding achievement in the study of combustion engineering". The lunch was hosted by Lord Howie of Troon, Civil Engineer and MP.


The preceding David Gunn Memorial Lecture ‘Sugar the Energy Bill’ (Energy Efficiency at British Sugar) was presented by Paul Gardiner of British Sugar & Combined Heat & Power Association.


NOTE: this is the second Erza Award that goes to Edinburgh; Valentina Cvoro won the 2003 Derek Ezra Award.

---

History of the Lord Ezra Award.


The invitation to the Award Ceremony contained the following description of the award:

Lord Ezra was very keen that CEA should continue to support the industry through education and training. He wanted to add his own
personal support and commitment to that end by offering a prize to encourage new entrants to the industry and new innovation where possible. Thus, in 1995, the Lord Ezra Award was initiated and presented each year. By way of further encouragement and
equitability, the Award is open to a large field and entrants are asked to submit competitively based schemes in order to actually win the award. The meritorious entrant or entrants receive the Award every October in the House of Lords.

Combustion Engineering Association, on behalf of Lord Ezra, is proud to present the Award and invites entries from a person or group of persons in combustion engineering who have created or facilitated a benefit to that industry, especially through a new, innovative or novel nature.

Entry for the Award is by nomination and may only be made by Combustion Engineering Association Members. The award is not restricted to one student or person only but can be to a team, group or department for example, providing the members fulfil the entry criterion.

CEA is especially keen to receive applications from students, graduates or trainees new to the industry. The project entry should of course be concerned with combustion, combustion engineering and related fields.

Entries may be of a pure scientific nature or technological development in product, process or plant. Entries are also welcome in the area of fuels, energy or major cost saving and project management.

Accordingly, the following are the Terms of Reference for the Award: Qualifying projects should be innovations in either: planning, design, manufacture, installation, utilisation and maintenance of energy consuming industrial plant. The innovation should achieve a significant measurable improvement or benefit in any one or preferably more of the following categories :
Safety, Reliability, Durability, Longevity, Efficiency, Economy, Environment, Emissions, Technical, Product, Process, Plant, Fuels, Management."