The Silver Medal celebrates outstanding personal contributions to UK engineering, which has resulted in successful market exploitation.
Dr Damian Gardiner is a research scientist and business development manager at Johnson Matthey, a speciality chemicals and sustainable technology company. He developed a method of printing ‘liquid crystal’ material onto any surface using an ink-jet printer. This method is secure, economical and ideal for security-tagging products, from cosmetics and perfumes to drugs and banknotes. It supports multiple layers of authentication, taking the form of aesthetically striking digital images that change colour with direction. However, ilumink also allows the inclusion of unique, hidden optical elements and also highly secure, forensic-level elements – all are practically impossible to fake.
Dr Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google’s DeepMind subsidiary, is recognised for his pioneering work in artificial intelligence. The organisation’s AlphaGo project successfully beat the world’s number one Go player this year, in a contest in Seoul, long seen as a grand challenge of AI research.
DeepMind differs from many other AI efforts in that it is developing general AI – machine intelligence capable of learning for itself how to do a task directly from raw data, rather than being pre-programmed for a single specific task. Although games are a good test bed for developing general AI algorithms, the ultimate aim is to apply these technologies to real-world problems in areas such as healthcare and science.
Professor Tong Sun, Professor of Sensor Engineering at City University London, is a leader in the use of optical fibre sensors to monitor sensitive equipment, particularly in extreme conditions. One of Prof Sun’s major new projects is a fibre optic sensor system to measure strain and temperature changes in pantographs – the connectors used by electric trains to link to overhead power cables. Pantographs are crucial systems, so they are inspected regularly as a key part of the train maintenance schedule. However, visual checks can easily miss vital clues and integrated fibre optic sensors offer continuous monitoring of these high voltage systems while they are in operation and in all weathers.
Prof Sun’s work has also enabled the design of special humidity sensors that are being used in widely different and challenging environments.Sydney Water is using them in highly acidic sewers while China’s Shandong Academy of Science is configuring the sensors to monitor rice stores to try and stop rot setting in. She has also worked with the Home Office and Smiths Detection as part of the Cargo Screening Ferret project, in which her sensors enable a ‘robotic nose’ to detect illicit substances such as cocaine, particularly when it is loaded in freight with other loads which may mask its presence.
Professor Dame Ann Dowling, president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said: “Damian Gardiner, Demis Hassabis and Tong Sun have all demonstrated the power of use-inspired research in taking ideas they have developed in academia and applying them to solve real-world problems. They are working with colleagues all over the world and making an enormous impact early in their careers that is both enriching academic knowledge and generating real economic benefit for the UK.”
