Engineering research

Overview

Research Contact: Professor Neil Mansfield

Staff in the Engineering Department engage in research in a range of areas that are broadly grouped under

• Health, Rehabilitation and Regeneration
• Performance and Experience
• Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering
• Medical Engineering and Design

Staff Research Areas

Hemantha Kodikara Arachchi – Video coding, processing, adaptation, error resilience, quality, and interaction.

Mahdi Bodaghi – Mechanics of smart materials, Shape memory alloys, Piezoelectric sensors/actuators, Functionally graded materials, Lattice biomedical implants and auxetics, Biomaterials and scaffolds, Bio-inspired design of structures, Adaptive metamaterials, Sustainability, Functionally graded additive manufacturing, 3D-4D printing technologies, Nano-to-macro analysis, Finite element method and simulation.

Bronek Boszczyk (Visiting Professor) – completed his medical training in Germany with electives spent in South Africa and USA, he qualified as a Neurosurgeon in 2003; he then embarked on a period of specialist spine surgery training before taking on a role as Consultant Spinal Surgeon at NUH. In 2018 he took up a new position as Head of Spine and Scoliosis Centre, Schoen Clinic, Vogtareuth, Germany.

Dr George D Boukouris (Senior Visiting Fellow) – George D. Boukouris PhD has worked in the healthcare industry for over 20 years, focusing on medical device commercialisation, marketing, and sales, and fundraising in Europe and North America.

Professor Philip Breedon – Current projects focus on new and emerging technologies and materials, including: wearable technologies, 3D printing of pathological models, additive and subtractive manufacturing for medical applications, the surgical pathway, biomimetics, surgical and process robotics, automated intelligent vehicles, extended reality systems and investigative research related to the utilisation of ‘smart materials’ for medical applications. See also the Medical Engineering Design Research Group.

Dr Steven Brooks (Senior Alumni Fellow) – Dr Brooks is a Senior Director of Global Automation at PepsiCo. He has experience as a Packaging Manager in the food and beverages industry and has an interest in manufacturing, packaging design and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG).

Bill Byrom (Visiting Senior Fellow) – Bill has worked in the Pharmaceutical Industry for 28 years and is currently Vice President of Product Strategy & Innovation at Signant Health.He is a key strategic thinker helping to shape the direction and application of eClinical solutions and is a thought leader in patient-facing technologies. This includes electronic patient-reported outcome solutions, the use of wearables and connected devices, and new novel technology-derived endpoints.

Professor Peter Cochrane (Visiting Professor) - engaged in science, technology and engineering for over 40 years, Professor Cochrane’s primary focus remains the solving of problems and the creation of wealth through the application of new technologies and business solutions.

Dr Helen Dudfield (Visiting Professor - awarded by the Royal Academy of Engineering) – Dr Dudfield leads strategic human capability areas in general science, engineering and human factors engineering capabilities. Recent focus lies in innovating and integrating emerging technologies with the human factor in complex individual, team and collective training environments.

Steve Faulkner – Dr Faulkner has been working in the field of exercise physiology for more than 10 years, investigating the effects of physiology on exercise performance and on the health of the general population. He has experience with product design and development, particularly for high profile sports events such as the Olympic Games and football World Cup. He also works on the aerodynamics and physiology of road cycling and on an EPSRC funded project on smart textiles for temperature measurement.

Katy Griggs – Human health and performance, physiological effect of the environment on both occupational and sporting performance in both the able-bodied and individuals with a disability, physiological and ergonomic impact of technology, clothing and equipment on human and sporting performance.

Dr Roy Harris (Senior Visiting Fellow) – Dr Harris is currently a research Business Manager at the University of Nottingham and a MedTech Project Development specialist.

Azfar Khalid – Industry 4.0 based smart factories characterized through networked cyber physical modules, Safety and security in cyber physical production systems, Internet-of-Things based manufacturing, Human Robot collaboration. Robotic manipulators design and development for precision engineering applications, Meso scale manufacturing, Machine tools, metrology systems and sensors development.

Setsuo Maeda (Visiting Professor) – Recognised as a world leader in health and wellbeing effects of exposure to mechanical vibration. This includes vibration arising from use of power tools (e.g. construction / forestry) and from use of off-road vehicles (e.g. mining / agriculture), which constitute important health risks for thousands of workers in the UK. Previously he pioneered use of gene expression for identification of cell damage due to exposure to hand-arm vibration.

Neil Mansfield (Professor and Head of Department) – Human Factors Engineering and Ergonomics, Vehicle occupant perception, comfort and health, Human response to vibration and shock, Futurist and design for future users. Keynote and media speaker.

Ahmet Omurtag – Neuroergonomics. Non-invasive EEG and fNIRS for monitoring neurovascular coupling for applications in human factors and in the clinic. Hybrid automated classification of cognitive and motor tasks and predicting human performance.

Professor Nasir Quraishi (Honorary Professor) - An experienced Consultant Spine Surgeon working at the Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham, UK since 2009 – an internationally renowned centre of excellence for spinal surgery and the largest teaching institution for spine surgery in Europe.  

Yvonne Reinwald – Biomedical Implants and engineered tissues (internal structure, materials, cellular response). In vitro 3D tissue models and stem cell material interaction. Bioreactors as tissue growth environments. Regenerative medicine manufacturing for clinical translation.

Amirreza Rouhi - Computational Thermo-Fluid Dynamics - specifically, high-fidelity simulation and modelling of turbulent flows in various applications, including rough-wall turbulent flows, rotating flows, thermal convection and blood flows.

Ahmad Serjouei – 3D and 4D printing, Metal Additive Manufacturing, Metamaterials, Material Modelling, Finite Element Methods, Soft Actuation for Biomedical Applications, High Rate Dynamics.

Petros Siegkas – 3D-printed materials, Porous materials, Biomechanics, Traumatic Brain Injury, Material characterisation, Multiscale Modelling of Materials.

Ben Simpson – ‘Open source’ heart pump and cannula design, Nutrient and cell flows through 3D printed bone scaffolds. Sports Engineering Research in hydrodynamics of elite swimmers, Active drag devices for training swimmers. Mechanical Engineering Research in wind loading predictions on mining infrastructure, Aerodynamics of a converted electric utility vehicle.

Vahid Vahidinasab – a senior power and energy systems academic and researcher and with over 17 years industry experience. He has worked with well-known international researchers on problems in power and energy systems, economics, operation research, and control theory including Integrated Power and Energy Systems Operation and Planning; Machine Learning and Advanced Optimization Techniques in Power and Energy Systems; Energy Markets and Transactive Energy; and Energy Systems Integration. He has worked on smart grids, microgrids, and active buildings design, operation, and economics, and he is most interested in the application of advanced optimization and machine learning algorithms in these studies. He works with a focus on the whole system approach to energy with the aim of sustainable and resilient future energy systems.

Frederique Vanheusden – Objective assessment of hearing loss. Detection of cortical responses to running speech stimuli based on decoders estimating speech envelope from EEG. Brainstem response detection to vowel stimuli. Body Surface Mapping – estimation of endocardial sources of atrial fibrillation from body surface measurements.

Michael H J Vloeberghs (Visiting Professor) – Michael has experience in plastic, orthopaedic, cardiovascular and digestive surgery, his current clinical practice is as a Consultant neurosurgeon with a subspecialty in Paediatrics. His main clinical focus is the treatment of movement disorder in cerebral palsy, for example; spasticity by means of Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy (SDR) and Intra Thecal Baclofen (ITB) pumps.

Yang Wei – has over 10 years`s experience on printed wearable devices for healthcare applications. His research covers wearable respiratory sensor, functional stimulator for managing Lymphoedema, glucose sensor with integrated NFC communication as well as wearable devices with printed active electrodes for capturing Electrocardiogram (ECG), Electroencephalogram (EEG) and Electromyography (EMG) signals. He has also been working on sensing technology including those measuring pressure, motion, acceleration, touch, proximity, fluid level, noise level and CO2 gas.

Professor Neil White (Visiting Professor) – Professor White obtained a PhD from Southampton University in 1988 and was awarded the 1989 Educational Prize from the International Society for Hybrid Microelectronics (ISHM). He has published several books and over 200 scientific papers on sensors and instrumentation systems and holds 10 patents.

Qimei Zhang – Qimei’s main research focus is to develop novel fabricating technologies for minimum invasive biosensors and chemical sensors based on optical fibre technologies. She has interests in detecting and monitoring biomarkers that reflect medical signs using optical fibre sensors. She is working on projects exploring novel applications of fibre Bragg grating sensors. Qimei also has experience of hybrid optics and ultrasound imaging techniques, and biomedical optics simulation.