The Tribology group hosted the 2017 TriboUK conference for research students

TriboUK 2017 participants

The Tribology Group at Imperial College London hosted the fourteenth annual TriboUK conference on 27-28th April 2017.

TriboUK aims to bring together PhD students in the field of tribology. The conference offers an excellent opportunity for young researchers to share their work with peers and to build a network with both academic and industrial representatives.

This year, the event was organised by Imperial PhD students; Elze Porte, Harriet Stevenson, Ruby McCarron, Zhengchu Tan, and Annelise Jean-Fulcrand. Photography for the event was kindly provided by PhD student Li Shen, a collection of images can be found here.

The organising committee

The event was a great success, with over 100 delegates attending from universities all over the UK and Europe. The conference included many oral and poster presentations from PhD students as well as networking events including a drinks reception and a conference dinner. Excellent keynote presentations were given by Professor Anne Neville (University of Leeds), who spoke about her research in biotribology, and Professor John Williams (University of Cambridge), who gave a talk on his work on switchable adhesion.

A panel discussion, chaired by PhD student James Ewen, also took place between early stage researchers; Dr Marc Ingram (Afton Chemical), Dr Daniel Mulvihill (Glasgow University), and Dr Doris Khaemba (University of Leeds). This session gave attendees an insight into the challenges and opportunities of progressing from a PhD to undertaking research in both academic and professional environments.

The conference was held in the City and Guilds (Mechanical Engineering) building. Generous sponsorship was secured from; Shell UTC, SKF UTC, Rolls-Royce Nuclear UTC, PCS Instruments, Bruker, Anton Par, Swansea Tribology Services, The Institute of Physics, The Institution of Engineering and Technology, and The Jost Institute. This allowed networking events, lunches, coffee breaks and other costs to be heavily subsidised for attendees.

Panel discussion

Poster Prizes: 1^st - Sufia Fatima (University of Leeds), 2^nd - Stephen Jeffreys (Imperial College London), 3^rd - Bilel Meziane (INSA Lyon) – awarded by panel discussion members

Oral Presentation Prizes: 1^st - Heather McLaren (University of Leeds), 2^nd - Olivia Manfredi (University of Sheffield), 3^rd - Rangarajan Ramesh (University of Oxford) – voted for by all attendees

In 2018, TriboUK will be hosted by The Leonardo Centre for Tribology at the University of Sheffield.