Congratulations go to Professor William Milne, Mr Sabesan Sithamparanathan and Mr Ruilin Pei all members of staff in our Electrical Engineering Division who have received Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) awards. The annual IET Ambition and Achievement Awards Ceremony provides an opportunity to celebrate the best in the world of engineering, from those just starting out to those at a more advanced stage in their career.
The JJ Thomson Medal for Achievement in Electronics went to Professor William Milne. Bill has been an outstanding researcher for the past twenty years, in addition to making significant contributions to electrical engineering at Cambridge and elsewhere. He has helped shape many UK engineering departments and has created a successful Electrical Division here, with a steady growth in research output, student numbers and teaching quality. He is well respected in the Far East and has managed large research contracts from many industries and countries; the most recent being a large contract between Cambridge and the Korean Government. In addition, he has demonstrated entrepreneurial spirit via his involvement with a number of successful spin-out companies in the areas of TFTs, CVD machines and CMOS devices. Bill has raised many tens of millions to build the new CAPE building and was responsible for much of its design details and content.
Mr Sabesan Sithamparanathan has been awarded the Hudswell International Research Scholarship for his doctoral research on 'Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for Intelligent Airports'. Sabesan is currently a 2nd year PhD student, conducting research on passive RFID under The Intelligent Airport (TINA) project under Professor Ian White's supervision. He was previously with the successful Cambridge University spin off company ARM, as a student IP electronic engineer, and was awarded the Sir William Siemens Medal in 2006. The main aim of his research is to improve efficiency and security at airports through the active tracking of passengers and staff using RFID tags combined with advanced high definition digital CCTV. The system aims to facilitate real-time location of individual passengers within the airport, and the analysis of both mass traffic and individual behaviours. The system will also enable the location of checked-in passengers who are either missing or late, and thus reduce passenger induced delays and speed up aircraft turnaround.
Mr Ruilin Pei has been awarded the IET Postgraduate Scholarship for his doctoral research on 'Superconducting Machine with its A.C. Loss'. Ruilin is a final year PhD student under Dr. Tim Coombs's supervision in Electrical Engineering. Ruilin has over 20 journal papers, 18 conference papers and 1 patent. He has won many prizes including IEEE Life Member Graduate Study Fellowship. His research is designing and fabricating a superconducting machine for the analysis of AC losses. Ruilin employs high temperature superconducting (HTS) tapes to develop, manufacture and sell state-of-the-art wind-power electric machines which are lighter, smaller, more efficient and ultimately cheaper than their equivalent conventional counterparts. These improvements perfectly complement the requirements for scaling wind turbines to larger sizes. Ruilin is motivated to create a business team to commercialize a new type of compact HTS wind turbine electric machines without gearboxes. The HTS machines are able to provide high speed and excellent reliability compared with the conventional counterparts.
