The 1st year PhD Students’ Conference, organised and run by the students at the IfM, showcased the work of 19 researchers.

They presented their work, ideas and results in a full day of presentations on May 21, ending with a poster competition.

The poster winner was Jon Parkins (supervisor Bill O’Neill, advisor Martin Sparkes), for Increasing throughput of laser additive manufacturing in metal powders for biomedical applications.

Titanium biomedical parts with a porous outer layer similar to the structure of bone can be built using additive manufacturing. Laser additive manufacturing currently has slower process rates than competing technologies despite other advantages. In his research, Jon looks at the industrial demand, process limitations and potential technologies for designing a rapid laser additive manufacturing system. To see Jon’s poster email him at jp623@cam.ac.uk 

Joint second place went to Tianqi Dong (supervisor Bill O’Neill) and Jessy Zhou (supervisor Yongjiang Shi).

This year the presentations covered:

• Service experience management in business-to-business settings
• Supply chain sustainability in food production driven by water scarcity
• Developing the next generation of metal building additive manufacturing machines
• Context assessment and value creation in early-stage design of medical devices for low-resource settings
• Designer’s techniques to embody their intentions in product form and consumers understanding of the intended message
• Modelling of maintenance, production schedule and quality control
• Increasing throughput of laser additive manufacturing of metal parts for biomedical applications
• Laser detonation enhanced supersonic metallic coatings
• Production of CNT based cold cathodes
• Laser beam shaping
• Emerging Industrial Systems in Healthcare: Value Network Approach
• Applications of additive manufacturing in regard to mass customisation
• CO2 impact of cement industry
• Business ecosystem; resource management; rare earths industry
• Recyclable composite materials for wind turbine blades
• Laser based graphene fabrication
• Technology management
• Improvement of product sustainability by up-cycling
• Venture capital innovation
• Global manufacturing in emerging countries

The photograph above shows poster judges and researchers, from left, Professor Ian Hutchings, Denise Chappell, Jessy Zhou, Tianqi Dong, Jon Parkins and Professor Sir Mike Gregory.