RAEng invests £10mln in four academic engineers

Each engineer will receive £2.5mln for employment and research costs so they can progress their technology for up to 10 years.

Four engineering academics have been awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies.

Professor Hason Hallett from Imperial College London was chosen for his solvent-based approaches within a circular bioeconomy, developing alternative products to demonstrate renewable feedstocks.

Professor Mehul Malik at Heriot-Watt Univeristy will develop an emergent photonics platform that leverages high-dimensional quantum states of light for future quantum networks.

Professor Rachel Oliver FREng CEng FIMMM from the University of Cambridge aims to engineer new properties in compound semiconductor materials by creating porous structures, such as in LEDs.

Professor Silvia Vignolini's group at the University of Cambridge discovered that plants produce bright and vibrant colouration without pgiments by organising cellulose into periodic nanostructures. Prof Vignolini will develop new manufacturing processes to produce pigments using naturally derived biomaterials.

The programme has been running since 2017 and has awarded more than £90mln to 38 chairs.