Industry and academia come together for first-year undergraduate poster exhibition

Within their teams, over 90 students carried out a research project which comprised of an investigation on the mechanical properties of a randomly allocated material, for example, aluminium, dental cement, foam, plastic rods or silicone cubes, which were then tested under various conditions such as material density, exposure to environmental factors or heat, fatigue tests or rotation angle.

During the research stage of the project, the students were also trained on Instron machines and both designed and delivered their own experiments. They presented their findings in the form of a poster which gave them the valuable experience of presenting their research to a panel of judges in a conference-style setting. 

The poster exhibition was well attended by staff and students and we were very happy to see friends and family joining us to cheer on the students. The winning team, to be announced, will receive a prize of £300 and a certificate from Instron which will be presented at the annual Student Award Celebration in December 2024.

The expert judging panel comprised of industry practitioners from Instron, Ansys and Element Materials Technology, as well as academics and researchers for UCL Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, UCL Mechanical Engineering and UCL Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering.

The competition was very high this year and the judges were impressed with the work carried out by the students. Thank you to all of the expert judges who attended;

Instron: Tim Feeney, Lewis Leung, Rebecca Reiff-Musgrove, Sammi Sadler and Casey Willis

Element Materials Technology: Choothum Jeenjitkaew and Sandra Royo Perez

Ansys: Michael Doherty and Lakshana Mohee

UCL Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering: Robert Moss

UCL Mechanical Engineering: Ali Abolfathi, Eral Bele, Andrea Grech La Rosa and  Vikaramjeet Singh

UCL Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering: Abishera Rajkumar

A special thank you to Pilar Garcia Souto for leading the module and offering invaluable support, advice and guidance to the students, as well as a large dose of humour to keep them on track! An additional thank you to the module Lecturers, Technicians and PGTA’s, student judges and the support of the Professional Services who helped deliver the event. 

And finally, congratulations to the first-year students who participated, it was a fantastic event!

Images: The event images were captured by Biomedical Engineering student, Anagha