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Young professional wins award
November 2011
Congratulations to Stephen Buggy on winning the IET’s Railway young professionals’ best paper competition. The Award was presented at an event held at the IET’s headquarters in London, during which Stephen placed his work on condition monitoring of rail components using fibre Bragg gratings within the competition theme of “austerity in the engineering industry”. Stephen won a years free membership of the IET and was presented with a trophy. The co-authors of the paper are from Cranfield (Steve James, Steve Staines, and Ralph Tatam), Tata Steel (Jay Jaiswel) and Sheffield Stagecoach Supertram (Rob Carroll), partners on the PMnIDEA EU FP7 programme under which this work was carried out.
Intelligent infrastructure for rail and tramways using optical fibre sensors
S J Buggy, S W James, R Carroll, J Jaiswal, S E Staines, and R P Tatam
Presented at the IET Railway young professionals’ best paper competition, London, 2011
IEEE Sensors, Limerick
November 2011
Steve James and Matthew Partridge attended the IEEE Sensors conference, held in Limerick. Matthew presented his recent work on the development of a surface pressure sensor based on a tapered optical fibre. Steve particularly enjoyed the banquet that was held at Thomond park, the legendary home of Munster rugby.
Curved tapered optical fibre surface pressure sensor
M Partridge, R Jarzebinska, S Higson, F Davis, S James, and R P Tatam
Presented at IEEE Sensors 2011, Ireland, 2011
Published in the 2011 IEEE Sensors Conference proceedings, 1472-1475 (2011).
SPIE board meeting
November 2011
In his capacity as director, Ralph Tatam attended the SPIE board meeting at SPIE’s headquarters in Bellingham, Washington, USA.
IOP Optical Metrology
October 2011
Ian Bledowski and Dan Francis gave presentations at the IOP meeting “Optical Metrology” that was organised by Cranfield old boy Roger Groves
Frequency division multiplexed shearography
I Bledowski, T O H Charrett, D Francis, S W James, and R P Tatam
Presented at the IOP Optical Metrology meeting, Coventry, UK, 2011
Speckle velocimetry for odometry measurements of autonomous robotic vehicles
D Francis, T O H Charrett, and R P Tatam
Presented at the IOP Optical Metrology meeting, Coventry, UK, 2011
New editor
October 2011
Andrea Cusano of the University of Sannio, Italy, has taken over as editor of Optics and Laser Technology from the DEP’s Steve James, who has come to the end of his contract with Elsevier. Over the period of Steve’s editorship, the impact factor of the journal increased from 0.635 to 1.616. Steve oversaw the introduction of the use of Elsevier’s EES system to manage the peer review process and allow electronic submission of papers to the journal. He wishes Andrea every success in his new role.
Regional editor appointed
October 2011
Ralph Tatam has been appointed as the European regional editor of Measurement Science and Technology. He will take up this role in January 2012.
IOP Optical Metrology
September 2011
Helen Ford presented her latest work on the use of imaging fibre bundles in OCT at the 4th EOS topical meeting on optical microsystems, 26-28 September 2011.
Imaging fibre bundles in optical coherence tomography
H D Ford, A Saglam, and R P Tatam
Presented at the 4th EOS Topical Meeting on Optical Microsystems, 26-28 September 2011.
Trainspotting
August 2011
An article outlining the DEP’s activities on instrumenting rail components using fibre Bragg grating sensors has appeared in Railway Gazette International, August 2011. The article reports on the work carried out on the Sheffield Stagecoach Supertram network as part of the EU FP7 PMnIDEA project, where the strains experienced by fishplates, stretcher bars, and switchblades when a tram passes over them have been monitored.
Impact factor increases
July 2011
The impact factor of Optics and Laser Technology, edited by Steve James, leapt to 1.616.
Viva Success!
April 2011
Congratulations to Stephen Topliss, who defended successfully his thesis describing his work on optical fibre long period gratings coated with nanoscale functional coatings.
Best in class
February 2011
DEP/Alphasense co-designed optics for a compact NDIR gas sensor have resulted in a 10-fold increase in signal-to-noise ratio. Housed in a standard 20 mm x 16.6 mm case, the IRC-A1 carbon dioxide sensor has unique moulded-in optics that give it distinct advantages over the competition.
Go West!
January 2011
Ralph Tatam and Jane Hodgkinson represented the Department of Engineering Photonics at Photonics West, held in San Francisco, 22-27 January 2011, Ralph attended in his capacity as a member of the SPIE board of directors, while Jane presented a paper describing the development of an instrument for use in carbon trading on landfill sites. The instrument, which is being commercialised by Geotech, represents the culmination of our Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) collaboration (which finished in January).
Jane Hodgkinson enjoys a refreshing cup of tea outside the conference centre in San Francisco.
A VCSEL based system for on-site monitoring of low level methane emission
A Kannath, J Hodgkinson, R G Gillar, R J Riley, and R P Tatam
Proc. SPIE 7952, 7942-14, 2011.
PhD Success!
January 2011
Congratulations to Ryadh Zakaria on the successful conclusion of his PhD studies on the development of NDIR instrumentation of CO2 gas sensing.
Paper Award
January 2011
An output from the ongoing collaboration between the Department of Engineering Photonics and the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering of Kitakyushu University has resulted in a Best Paper award at the PACIFICHEM 2010 conference, held in Hawaii in December 2010.
