How to apply for RAEng Research Chairs and Senior Research Fellowships

Title

How to apply for RAE Research Chairs and Senior Research Fellowships

Agenda

4-4:20pm	Short presentation about RAEng’s Research Chairs and Senior Research Fellowships scheme and Q&A Speaker: Joel Chen​​​​, Programme Manager, Research, Royal Academy of Engineering
4:20-4:50pm	Panel discussion on how to apply for RAEng Research Chairs and Senior Research Fellowships Panellists and Facilitator: See below
4:50-5:20pm	Q&A between the audience and the panellists

Panellists

Professor Yulong Ding (丁玉龙教授) FREng FIChemE FRSC, Founding Chamberlain Chair of Chemical Engineering & Director of Birmingham Centre for Energy Storage (BCES), University of Birmingham; Lead of EPSRC Supergen Energy Storage Network Plus Programme; RAEng-Highview Industrial Chair in Cryogenic Energy Storage (2014-19)

Professor Yang Hao (郝阳教授) FREng FIEEE, Deputy Vice Principal for Strategic Research, Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL); Director of EPSRC Research Centre on Future Wireless Connectivity; QinetiQ/Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair (2022-27)

Facilitator

Professor Hongbiao Dong (董洪标教授) FREng FIMMM, Professor of Materials Engineering, University of Leicester, UK; Scientific Director of EPSRC Doctoral Training Centre in Innovative Metal Processing (IMPaCT); Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair (2016-2022); President of ABCP

Language

The talk will be delivered in English but may switch to Chinese if all participants can speak and understand Chinese (especially for the second part).

Abstract

In the past 35 years, the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) has been offering Research Chairs and Senior Research Fellowships as unique opportunities to UK researchers, by supporting “academics in UK universities to undertake use-inspired research to meet the needs of industrial sponsors”. This scheme has successfully supported over 200 awardees and enhanced internationally renowned centres of excellence. The funding for this scheme is from the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).

More precisely, according to RAEng’s website, awardees “are expected to:

• establish or enhance a world leading engineering research group
• deliver ‘use-inspired’ research that meets the needs of their industrial sponsors
• disseminate the outcomes of their research for appropriate academic use
• become a self-sustaining research group by the end of the award (by securing substantial external grant income).”

The award opens for applications twice a year, with deadlines in March and September. The next deadline is still to be announced, but it is useful to start earlier.

This panel discussion is organised to let three senior British Chinese academics (two panellists and the chair), all Fellows of RAEng and winners of an RAEng Research Chair grant, share their personal experience in applying for RAEng Research Chairs, and answer questions from participants who are interested in applying for RAEng Research Chairs or Senior Research Fellowships in 2024 and future years.

Bio of Professor Yulong Ding

Professor Yulong Ding is founding Chamberlain Chair of Chemical Engineering and founding Director of University of Birmingham’s Centre for Energy Storage. His research has been on energy materials and processes. He has published 550+ technical papers with 450+ in peer-reviewed journals (with a Google Scholar h-index of ~90) and filed 100+ patents.

He invented liquid air energy storage technology and led the initial stage of technology developments (commercialised by Highview Power). He developed composite phase change materials for thermal energy storage and associated large-scale manufacture technologies, leading to large scale commercial applications with total installations exceeding ~500MW / ~2GWh so far. His work on passively cooled container technology has been on large scale commercial demonstration for cold chain applications.

Professor Ding currently leads the EPSRC Supergen Energy Storage Network Plus Programme, and is a member of the Royal Society Net Zero Panel and World Bank . He is an associate editor of Energy Storage and Saving (Elsevier) and Discovery Energy (Springer), and serves on editorial boards of the following journals: Energy Storage (Wiley), Thermal Science (Springer), and Particuology (Elsevier). He recently led a Royal Society briefing note on heating and cooling decarbonisation in ‘Climate Change: Science and Solutions’ for COP26 in 2021, and technical part of IRENA (International Renewable Energy Agency) Thermal Energy Storage Outlook 2030 (2020).

His work has been recognised by Humboldt Research Award (2023); ESIE Award & Medal for Lifetime Contribution to Energy Storage (2022); IChemE Clean Energy Medal (2021), election to Fellow of Royal Academy of Engineering (2020); IChemE Global Awards in three categories of Energy, Research Project and Outstanding Achievement (2019); and Energy & Environment Award and Technology and Innovation Grand Prix Award (‘The Engineer’, 2011).

Bio of Professor Yang Hao

Professor Yang Hao, a distinguished figure in the field of electrical and electronic engineering, stands at the forefront of cutting-edge research in wireless connectivity and metamaterials. He currently serving as the Director of the EPSRC Research Centre on Future Wireless Connectivity, Prof Hao’s impact is not confined to the academic realm; he has been a driving force in fostering collaboration between academia and industry. His role as the QinetiQ/Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair underscores his influence in shaping the future of wireless technologies. He co-founded “Isotropic Systems (All.Space)”, a successful satellite communication company creating more than 100 engineer jobs in Reading, exemplifies his commitment to bridging the gap between theoretical research and practical applications.

Throughout his illustrious career, Prof Yang Hao has contributed extensively to patent applications and scientific journals including Physics Review Letters, Nature Communications, Advanced Science, Proceedings of the IEEE, NPJ Computational Materials, etc. (with >20,000 citations and an h-index of 66). He received honors and awards, including the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, BAE System Chairman’s Silver Award and the IET AF Harvey Research Prize, mirror the significance of his work. His leadership extends to various capacities, from being a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering to serving as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters and the Vice President of Publication Committee for IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society. He serves the Fellowship Committee, Research Committee and Enterprise Hub for the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Since 2000, Prof Hao has supervised more than 70 Postdocs and PhD students. They are now working in global industries and universities including Samsung Electronics, Airbus, Cobham, Cadence Design Systems, Isotropic Systems, Lawrence Livermore; Heriot-Watt, Glasgow, QMUL, KTH, Dublin, and Penn State University. Three of them have set up spinout companies. Four of them winning Royal Society Research Fellowships.

In addition to his prolific research career, Prof Hao has excelled in academic leadership roles. He went through the training via the Oxford Executive Leadership Programme, Saïd Business School at University of Oxford. As the Deputy Vice Principal for Strategic Research at Queen Mary, University of London, and the Dean for Research at the Faculty of Science and Engineering, he has played a pivotal role in REF 2021 submission (ranked joint 7th in the UK for the quality of its research), setting up university research institutes and steering institutional research agendas.

Bio of Professor Hongbiao Dong

Hongbiao Dong is Professor of Materials Engineering and Deputy Head of School of Engineering at the University of Leicester, Fellow of Royal Academic of Engineering (FREng). He obtained his BEng and MEng degrees in metallurgical engineering from University of Science and Technology Beijing, DPhil in materials science at the University of Oxford. He was a Royal Society Industry Fellow at Rolls-Royce Plc (2006-2008), PI and coordinator for a major EU research project (Mintweld) (2009-2013), Research Chair of Royal Academy of Engineering (2016-2022), and PI for an EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Innovative Metal Processing (2014-2023).

He is internationally renowned for materials modelling and its application in metals and have made seminal contributions to the metals industry. His work on modelling the columnar-to-equiaxed transition in metal solidification has far-reaching influence in both theory and industrial application. It provides new understanding of solute-driven solidification grain-structure evolution; his solidification simulation videos have over 60,000 views in YouTube, and have been used in undergraduate teaching at universities. This underpinning work laid down the concepts of subsequent work on multi-scale, multi-physics modelling of casting and welding, provides novel insight into key solidification phenomena at different length scales and more importantly allows industry to design and optimise casting and welding processes to give better performance and reduced costs.

His work has been exploited in various sectors, including in aerospace by Rolls-Royce, energy by the Welding Institute and steel by NISCO and NISCO and the Materials Processing Institute. He has played a key role in establishing international partnerships between the UK and China, India and South Africa.

How to Participate

Please join the panel discussion remotely using the following Zoom meeting information:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85385174702?pwd=vRSph4nec1iB0AJrhkH0MrcycyDXVP.1

Meeting ID: 853 8517 4702
Passcode: 960820

—

One tap mobile
+442080806592,,85385174702#,,,,*960820# United Kingdom
+443300885830,,85385174702#,,,,*960820# United Kingdom

—

Dial by your location
• +44 208 080 6592 United Kingdom
• +44 330 088 5830 United Kingdom
• +44 131 460 1196 United Kingdom
• +44 203 481 5237 United Kingdom
• +44 203 481 5240 United Kingdom
• +44 203 901 7895 United Kingdom
• +44 208 080 6591 United Kingdom

Meeting ID: 853 8517 4702
Passcode: 960820

Find your local number: https://us06web.zoom.us/u/kciZAe6iQZ

Registration Form

If you are interested in attending the event, please fill in the following form by 8th January Monday 9am. We will consider the information to plan the event.

The deadline for the event registration has passed! You can still join the event since the registration is more for collecting information to help shape the event.