UCAS Days and Energy Efficiency

Around this time of year the Centre for Interdisciplinary Science hosts a series of UCAS days to prospective students, offering a tour of the labs, seminar rooms, the department’s research and computer suites, along a talk giving an overview of the course, an informal interview, and even a free lunch! For someone thinking of going to Leicester, it’s a great chance to engage with the students and staff, and the informal interview helps elucidate how a problem-based degree course works in practice. For me, coming to a UCAS day and hearing the motivations for creating the course really confirmed this is where I wanted to be, so I’d thoroughly recommend coming along! I wrote about some common questions that often come up here.

Last week the Centre also hosted another public research lecture, where Derek Charters gave a talk on the push for increased fuel efficiency in the automotive industry in light of the changing environmental and economic requirements in the 21^st century. Overall the talk with thoroughly engaging and served as a worrying insight into attempts to shift away from fossil fuels. With many years experience at MIRA, he highlighted the diverse range of solutions currently being developed to replace fossil fuels, and the complexity of the problem in light of the cheap, readily available energy source having driven the industry for so long. He also showcased some of the many designs he had played a role in in the past at the company, along with current work in investigating ways of storing hydrogen, giving an entertaining window into the life of a consultant in the automotive industry.