Welcome to our October newsletter from the Lloyd's Register Foundation. It's packed full of interesting updates along with a forward look at events in the pipeline. Did you know that we've just been named the number one Foundation in the UK in terms of grants giving? Did you know that we're working on assuring the safety of the world's largest 3D printed metal structure? Well read on and you'll find out all about these. Good reading.
Lloyd's Register Foundation at #1!
The Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF) has published its annual 'Giving Trends' report on grant activity across the UK, and it reflects a fantastic year for Lloyd's Register Foundation. As a foundation, we seek to maximise our impacts through a blend of mixed motive investments and a complex grant programme centred on our strategic themes. It is this grant activity that the ACF has highlighted in its 2017 Report, showing that we are now in the top-ten of grant givers in the UK (by size of grants made) with £31.9M awarded in the year up to June 2016. The ACF has chosen to define us as a 'corporate foundation' (due, no doubt, to our strong ties with the Group), and in the 2017 report we are delighted to be positioned at the top of the table in this category. The full report can be found here with pages 18-19 featuring the Foundation.
MX3D 3D Printed bridge
The world's largest metal 3D printed structure is under construction in Amsterdam; a pedestrian bridge that will be installed over one of Amsterdam's canals and will be opened to the public in 2018. The Foundation has awarded a grant to MX3D, the people behind the bridge that will use sensors and big data to create a living laboratory that demonstrates the bridge's ongoing safety, provides feedback for future design improvements, adds to resilience studies of Amsterdam and generates open data. MX3D has leveraged our funding creating a consortium that that now includes The Turing Institute amongst others. Photo credit Olivier de Gruijter.
London air quality
The Mayor of London, UK, Sadiq Khan, has this week started a two-year collaboration with the prestigious Alan Turing Institute to explore ways to improve how air quality is modelled in London by collating existing and new data sources and enhancing the way it is analysed.
The work with the Alan Turing Institute will complement the Mayor's existing work with other major London institutions, such as King's College London, who work with boroughs and City Hall to undertake local air quality monitoring and to develop the London Atmospheric Emissions Inventory. It is taking place as part of the Turing-Lloyd's Register Foundation programme in data-centric engineering, which aims to use data science to transform the safety and efficiency of complex infrastructure systems. .
Call for Research
Research and innovation in science and technology is vital to solving the economic and societal challenges of our world, including improving the safety of critical infrastructure and our interaction with it. These solutions often require access to high quality research equipment and infrastructure.
The Foundation has recently opened a call for applications from researchers that require access to research infrastructure in support of studies leading to improved safety of life and property. The primary goal is to support researchers who would benefit from accessing world-class research infrastructure that is not available in their host institution or country and where the funding schemes available in their country of residence does not facilitate such access.
This call will further enable the Foundation to achieve its strategic goals of supporting excellent scientific research, and accelerating its application whilst ensuring maximum impact is derived from its grants.
Royal College of Art
Royal College of Art researchers would like to invite global experts to participate in an online questionnaire which will be launched by the end of October. The questionnaire aims to collect global knowledge on Design for Safety in the following sectors: Consumer Products and Services, Food Product and Services, Medical Technology and Services, National Infrastructure and Services, Manufacturing Technology and Services and Transportation Technology and Services. If your skills and expertise are in one of the above sectors and you would like to offer your knowledge and contribution to the Foresight Review please send a short bio and the reason why you would like to take part to the questionnaire to this email address
Upcoming
Digital ship conference and exhibition
01-02 November 2017: Gary Pogson, Lead Technical Specialist for Lloyd's Register Foundation and The Alan Turing Institute "I am looking forward to presenting my report of distributed ledgers and blockchain within engineering and discussing potential opportunities for these technologies to address some of the challenges of the industry" The conference will be held in Athens, Greece. See here for more information. #dsathens
Public Understanding of Risk Fellowship
15-18 January 2018: Lloyd's Register Foundation Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk (LRFI) at the National University of Singapore is offering fellowships to professionals from developing countries in Asia to attend an executive education programme “Understanding and communicating risks: Facts, fears and fallacies” in Singapore. For more information see here.
International Consortium in Nanotechnologies open call
31 March 2018: 4th LRF-ICON open call International Consortium in Nanotechnologies (ICON) for more information and how to apply please see here
Lloyd's Register Foundation International Conference
09-10 May 2018: The conference registration site can be found here, where you can also register your place. #bringingsafetytolife