Society of Oxford University Engineers

The alumni society for Oxford engineering graduates

Open Day 2010 (Thursday 13 May 2010)

The day's programme of events ran as follows (also available in PDF format):

During the day undergraduate project work was on view in Thom Building Lecture Room 3. A competition was held for the best displays (in various categories), with prizes totalling £2500 in value on offer from Atkins, GlaxoSmithKline and Sony BPRL, arranged by the Society of Oxford University Engineers. The competition judges were all graduates of the Department from the last 5-15 years, now engineers in industry; as usual the standard was very high, with 18 entries of which nine won prizes.

There were also opportunities during the afternoon to see the final stages of some one-week Coursework Modules undertaken by the second year students, e.g. on Mobile Robots and Mechanical CAD, and to visit an exhibition of spin-out companies in the Holder Building Common Room.

In the packed Thom Building Lecture Room 1 (relayed to an equally packed Lecture Room 2 and broadcast on the web), there were three lectures during the afternoon. The first two talks described work in progress in the Department: Dr Constantin Coussios spoke about some of the very exciting research that has been established in our Institute of Biomedical Engineering, opened in 2008, and Dr Ian Reid presented some of his work on imaging, in which the Department has a long-established reputation for excellent research. The Lubbock Lecture at 4.45pm was given by Professor David MacKay, FRS, Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). Professor MacKay talked on the topic of his hard-hitting and highly influential book "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air", a lecture that was both thought-provoking and entertaining.

The day ended with a buffet supper in the Holder Common Room.

A biographical note about Professor MacKay is available in PDF format.