The Materials 4.0 CDT kicked off in October with our first training week. Hosted at the Royce Hub Building in Manchester, it brought together the six students from our Cohort 1 for the first time.
Our Cohort 1 students met for the first time in late October. This meeting offered a fantastic opportunity for them to get to know each other during the early days of their research. The students got to know each other through a series of icebreaker activities that helped them engage in discussion with each other and develop trust across the cohort.
The students met and establish connections with Chris and Rob, the Co-Directors of the Centre; Professor Ian Kinloch, Chief Scientist at the Henry Royce Institute; Tom Hancocks, Royce’s Training and Skills Manager; Paulina Hoyos, the Centre Manager for Materials 4.0; as well as other members of staff at the Royce Hub.
The training week included a series of introductory workshops on materials science, high-throughput experimental design, software carpentry practices, the basics for modelling and simulation of materials, and a 101 class on machine learning approaches.
Creative Design!
The students were set a challenge competing to design, then build, a simple paper helicopter. It involved exploring principles of design, material assessment, and iterative testing of their design. The students had to think about the importance of testing and learning from early failures. It also provoked discussion around prior knowledge and preconceptions of a particular topic. Ultimately, students started to consider how these principles will need to be applied to their own work and research projects.
At the end of the activity, the students finally got to see how their helicopter designs worked in reality and trial them in their first flight from the impressive staircase in the Royce Hub Building.
Disaster Recovery!
On the final day of the training week the cohort headed out to the scenic hills of the Peak District between Manchester and Sheffield. There they participated in a day of team-building activities themed around a simulated materials science disaster.
Working in two groups, they had to solve a series of mental, physical, and skill challenges to earn points, gain equipment, and determine the location of a ‘highly dangerous’ and ‘hazardous’ material that had been accidentally lost in the Upper Burbage Valley. Normally a beautiful and wild valley of craggy rocks, pine trees, and heather; the weather on the day led to an eerie and mist-shrouded landscape, that made the challenges more difficult to locate and complete.
Luckily, the cohort of students persevered through the inclement weather, and were adept at solving an exciting series of tasks that involved lots of teamwork. They engaged in bridge-building, orienteering, abseiling, engineering tasks, and a series of puzzles. By the afternoon, the teams had acquired a set of equipment and found the location of the material they needed to extract. Together they were able to create a device to assist them in reaching, moving, then safely recovering the lost material.
Well done to everyone involved and thank you to the team at Pure Outdoor for organising the activity!
