Posts filed under ‘engineering’
Moving forward: the growth of women in science
Entrepreneurial women in the East of England talk about how times have changed, why including men is important for work equality, and what could encourage more women entrepreneurs in male-dominated industries.
This is part of a podcast series. You can listen to this episode or read the transcript.
How women in science balance careers with motherhood
Entrepreneurial mothers working in science, engineering and technology in the East of England discuss how they juggle work and family.
This is part of a podcast series. You can listen to this episode, or you can read the transcript.
Why women in science, engineering and technology start businesses.
Women entrepreneurs in science, engineering and technology in the East of England talk about why they started working for themselves.
This is part of a podcast series. You can listen to the episode, or read the transcript.
End of monopoly could mean better connectivity in west Africa
The Association of African Universities has called for African leaders to use the end of a monopoly on a submarine communications cable to provide cheaper Internet access for students.
The SAT-3 submarine communications cable — which runs from Europe down Africa’s west coast — is currently monopolised by a consortium of state-owned and private telecommunications providers in different countries, and pricing structures have been the subject of criticism.
That monopoly ends in June, which could open up internet access for west African nations.
Information and communication technology (ICT) initiatives in African universities are suffering due to expensive, slow and limited connectivity, says Akilagpa Sawyerr, the executive secretary of the Ghana-based Association of African Universities (AAU).
“In our universities you’ve got 18,000 students and 1,000 teachers using the same amount of bandwidth as an American household,” said Sawyerr at a conference on African development at the UK-based Open University last week (16–17 May).
“The more people that use it, the slower it works. And because of the monopoly pricing in Africa, that university will pay 50 times more per unit than the American household.”
Sawyerr says the association needs to persuade governments that ICT programmes will not work without connectivity and effective networks between universities.
Rather than looking at expensive satellite Internet services as a solution, west African universities should be accessing the SAT-3 cable, he says.
“The monopolies run out in June and it is very important that before our governments renew their licenses we persuade them that these companies could give away a portion of their lines at a discounted rate to us,” Sawyerr said.
“We need those who are making the choices at higher levels to realise that it would cost them quite little and make a difference.”
He said the AAU is keen to work with other African organisations to lobby governments to this end.
Read the whole story on the Science and Development Network.
Biologists and engineers unite to make gut
Scientists and engineers in the East of England have worked with intellectual property experts to create the world’s first biochemically and physiologically accurate human gut model.
Dr Martin Wickham, the project’s lead scientist at the Institute of Food Research (IFR) in Norwich, worked with engineers from TWI in Cambridge to build the model.
Dr Wickham said the first six months of communicating with engineers was a challenge:
“We had to sit down and give them hours of biology lessons over several months, as we refined the model. I also had to learn a lot about engineering principles, like how stresses are applied to the gut. We’ve found middle ground and developed language that allows us to communicate about how the model gut works. The engineers now know more about the biology of the human gut than most biologists,” he said.
Dr Roger Wise, the lead engineer on the project, found it a rewarding experience.
“It was a very stimulating space that we explored together on the boundaries of biology and engineering. It took some time to acclimatise to the space but it was a very fertile and stimulating environment to work in,” he said.
After two years of cross-discipline collaboration the team have a sophisticated device that is already attracting the attention of major drug and food companies, as an accurate and non-invasive testing tool, with the potential to reduce human and animal trials.
Dr Wickham had the idea for the model gut twelve years ago whilst doing his PhD at the University of East Anglia studying the gut as a bioreactive model, and later developed the concepts further under funding at IFR from the BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council).
Three years ago Dr Wickham took his idea to Plant Bioscience Limited (PBL), the commercialisation company at the Norwich Research Park. PBL filed patents on the invention and funded TWI to design and build the instrument.
PBL and Dr Wickham have started commercialising the model gut in a new space at the Norwich BioIncubator at the John Innes Centre. They’re developing the business with a select group of customers from different industries.
This article appeared in Innovation East magazine. Read this article on the i10 website or download the magazine.
