Great turnout at the CNIE and Knowledge Transfer Network Event

On Thursday 27th February the Centre for Nature Inspired Engineering (CNIE) and KTN (Knowledge Transfer Network) co-hosted the event Nature Inspired Solutions to Industrial Challenges.

Held at the Bloomsbury Ambassadors Hotel and, with over 120 delegates registered, the event aim was to create a forum for collaborator networking, bring together academics and researchers working in nature-inspired technologies, SMEs developing new solutions and larger companies with industrial challenges to create discussions addressing some of the Grand Challenges facing us today. 
 
Introduced and facilitated by the KTN's Head of Emerging Technologies, Mark Littlewood, the day included a talk from Professor Marc-Olivier Coppens, a fascinating discussion in which delegates were encouraged to submit 'live' questions electronically using 'Slido' to our panel (Professor Siddharth Patwardhan (Sheffield University), architect Anna Liu (Tonkin Liu), Mike Poole (AutoNaut Ltd),  Professor Asterios Gavriilidis, and Ruben Krupier (Heriot-Watt Uni)), further talks from Kemil Thomas (UCL Innovation and Enterprise) and Mark Littlewood, followed by a breakout and workshop session facilitated by Dr Matt Davis (BEAMS Research Coordination Office, UCL) and Dr Eugenio Zapata-Solvas (BEAMS School Research Facilitator, UCL).
 
Following the breakout sessions and workshops, the CNIE will further extend its reach into becoming a national Nature Inspired Solution hub for potential collaborators to develop ideas for future projects.