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Department of Engineering

Join us at the 2021 Cambridge Festival

Join us at the 2021 Cambridge Festival

Demonstrations of how to build a model space exploration vehicle, virtual lab tours of manufacturing research, and an introduction to how ‘smart infrastructure’ can bring buildings to life, are among the engineering topics being explored during the inaugural Cambridge Festival, running online from 26 March to 4 April.

The new festival brings together the popular Cambridge Science Festival and the Cambridge Festival of Ideas, aiming to tackle and offer solutions for humanity’s most pressing issues, from pandemics, climate change and global economics, to human rights and the future of democracy.

Divided into four key themes: health, environment, society and ‘explore’, the festival includes over 350 events spanning debates, discussions, talks, exhibitions, lab tours, workshops, films and performances, presenting new ideas, research and insight into our daily lives and the issues that are affecting all of us.

As part of the Festival, the Department of Engineering, including the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC) and the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB), will feature in the following sessions:

Running all day from Friday 26 March until Sunday 4 April

  • Project MoonBase: Habitation – Your task is to design a Moon base for the Artemis Mission – NASA’s modern lunar exploration programme. The best entries will be collected into an online exhibition in summer 2021.
  • Help manufacture a better world – Become an honorary member of the Fluids in Advanced Manufacturing research group at the IfM. Join a researcher by video in the lab as they plan and carry out cutting-edge research experiments and much more.
  • Panoramic holographic projections to improve safety in cars – Our researchers are working on a collaborative project to develop the next generation of vehicle safety in the form of panoramic holographic projections. Human-machine interaction studies are being used to optimise this technology for drivers and may serve as a basis for future advances in virtual reality.
  • Why creative writing is like engineering – The process of creative writing and engineering design are very similar. This talk by creative writer Fraser Grace and engineer Ian Hosking will make a side-by-side comparison of the creative writing and engineering design processes to show the similarities between them.

Sessions running at select times on the following dates:

Friday 26 March

  • Creating food security with African yam bean – Dr Nadia Radzman from the Sainsbury Lab and Dr Curie Park from the IfM will showcase their interdisciplinary research project about this native African crop, raising awareness about its potential to enhance food resilience in Africa, at a time of extreme weather and climate change.

Saturday 27 March and Monday 29 March

  • Four futures, one choice – Join the CDBB to explore what the UK’s buildings, places and spaces could be like in 2040 and how the choices we make today could lead to fairer, greener future for all.

Wednesday 31 March

  • Using 3D printing and laser cutting to produce PPE in Ethiopia and Malawi during the pandemic – The event will consist of a live panel discussion, including video footage recorded and presented by the Ethiopia and Malawi teams. There will then be a Q&A, inviting members of the public to join a conversation about the benefits and challenges of using digital fabrication in a crisis. Organised by the IfM, the Centre for Global Equality and Cambridge-Africa.
  • Invention and innovation – Professor Tim Minshall will look at the ways in which engineers, as creative problem solvers, are trying to address the many challenges we read about in the news, from COVID-19 to climate change, from toilet paper shortages to living on Mars.
  • The OVSI story – Hear more about the Open Ventilator System Initiative (OVSI). OVSI is a consortium of academics, engineers, intensive care medics, innovators and industry partners from across Africa and the UK that evolved an initial idea proposed at the University of Cambridge in March 2020. This was for a low-cost, high quality ventilator and oxygen concentrator.
  • AI: Hype vs reality – Data science and AI have the potential to transform the discovery and development of medicines. Professor Mihaela van der Schaar (Director, Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine) will be one of the panellists on this discussion.

Friday 2 April

  • Growing underground – Presenting the environmental monitoring and modelling of the world’s first underground farm in London, located in tunnels designed as a WW2 air raid shelters in the 1940s. Session led by Dr Ruchi Choudhary who specialises in simulation methods for predicting energy demand of the built environment.

Saturday 3 April

  • Project MoonBase: Transportation – In this activity you will be tasked with building a model Lunar Rover, and see what kind of experiments astronauts carry out on the Moon. Run in conjunction with the Institute of Astronomy.
  • Smart infrastructure at the Civil Engineering Building – Curious minds of all ages will have the opportunity to virtually visit the Civil Engineering Building – home to the CSIC. Visitors are invited to see how smart infrastructure brings a building to life by engaging with platforms that collect and visualise rich streams of data. This data comes from sensors deployed across the structure, which let researchers know if the building is performing as designed.

View the complete Cambridge Festival 2021 programme.

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