Well in Cambridge over the past couple of days it has been pretty windy - the back-end of an Atlantic hurricane (well, post-tropical depression) is off the west coast of Ireland and so we've received a bit of the brunt. Most of the actual gale-force winds are off the coasts of Ireland and Wales, but it's still been blustery here. The problem with this is that Cambridge has a lot of trees - some old, some new, and most with some form of hard fruit on them.
Most probably know the tale of Newton's "eureka!" moment, when he was sitting under a tree and an apple fell on his head, causing him to realise that gravity was a fundamental force that could be described using his second law of motion (F=ma, or in this case F=mg). You can see the tree and its story in the Cambridge University Botanical Gardens, just east (and a little south) of the Engineering Department on Trumpington Street. This story may or may not be true, but today I realised that I'm in no doubt as to whether or not Sir Newton received a blow to the head from a falling tree seed.
Cycling in to work this morning was more like going through a military obstacle course - weaving in between the fallen chestnuts on the floor (and some other green spiky objects which I wasn't sure about - I don't know my trees!) and at the same time trying to avoid falling nuts and branches. Probably the worst part is the wind kicking up little bits of dust and leaves into your eyes. All in all, a pretty rough ride compared to the usual peace in the flat lands of Cambridgeshire!
As I got back to college I head a loud "thunk" as a chestnut fell out of the tree and hit a Volvo parked just next to where I was. I couldn't help but wonder if someone else more fated than I received a bump to the noggin today, and whether or not that would push them to some scientific epiphany!
Monday, 12 September 2011
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
It's all rubbish, ain't it?
(title stolen from the Fast Show. Rubbish!)
I'm always one to have a bit of a giggle at my Mum for playing the lottery every week - she has played it every week for as long as I can remember, usually 3 tickets each time. I usually take the Dr. Cox (from Scrubs) approach of telling her that "I've already burned a pile of money this morning, so I've got none spare" when she asks if I'd like a ticket.
As a maths man, I could never accept the probabilities and the odds of the lottery. I've convinced myself that given the minute chance of winning the lottery, the best strategy for long-term financial gain (I suppose "gain" is the wrong word here; "stability" is probably better) is simply to pocket the money not spent on the lottery and place it in a savings account. Although at the back of my mind is this constant nag that perhaps I could be lucky and one day win big, and of course that would then erase any financial trouble or any expenditure on tickets in the past. It's a funny psychological phenomenon that when the jackpot has rolled over to a very large amount, more people enter as they genuinely believe that it could be their chance to win. In reality, the chances of winning are of course exactly the same as before. But that "what it?" still lurks in the back of the mind . . .
Websites like TopCashBack are excellent for nagging thoughts like this, as you can get cashback on purchasing lottery tickets so you don't feel so dirty (mathematically). I tried it once - £4 cashback for £5 spent, so essentially you pay for one ticket and get five chances. Unsurprisingly enough, I won a grand total of zero pounds that week.
So I was all ready to ditch my grand dreams of winning the lottery and buying myself a nice guitar, when I came across another site through TCB, called Search Lotto (http://www.searchlotto.co.uk/index.php?rid=19609). If you remember all those years ago when P2C sites were big (Pay-to-Click) - it's among similar lines. You make searches on the websites, and earn points for doing so - the unique thing about this site is that 25 searches earns you one entry to the lottery. Not quite so simple, as actually you are entered into a syndicate of 10 people - but still entered nonetheless. 10 searches a day count towards the 25 search limit, up to a maximum of 50 per week. The search is done via Yahoo, so I use it as per usual during the day to get through my 10 a day without sitting down and wasting time unnecessarily.
I think this is quite a nifty website, and now means that when mum tells me that "you have to be in it to win it" (thank you, Lotto advertising people) I can tell her that I am in it, but I've not paid anything to do so. I'm pretty sure that in the distant future I will not win big on the Lotto, but my mind rests at ease to know that I'm not spending money on it, but that slight chance of actually winning has also been taken care of by just searching a few times a day. Give it a try! You never know. (although you probably do)
(quite late edit - I noticed today that a "Mr. D from Cambridge" had won something on the lottery via this method today - unfortunately not me!)
I'm always one to have a bit of a giggle at my Mum for playing the lottery every week - she has played it every week for as long as I can remember, usually 3 tickets each time. I usually take the Dr. Cox (from Scrubs) approach of telling her that "I've already burned a pile of money this morning, so I've got none spare" when she asks if I'd like a ticket.
As a maths man, I could never accept the probabilities and the odds of the lottery. I've convinced myself that given the minute chance of winning the lottery, the best strategy for long-term financial gain (I suppose "gain" is the wrong word here; "stability" is probably better) is simply to pocket the money not spent on the lottery and place it in a savings account. Although at the back of my mind is this constant nag that perhaps I could be lucky and one day win big, and of course that would then erase any financial trouble or any expenditure on tickets in the past. It's a funny psychological phenomenon that when the jackpot has rolled over to a very large amount, more people enter as they genuinely believe that it could be their chance to win. In reality, the chances of winning are of course exactly the same as before. But that "what it?" still lurks in the back of the mind . . .
Websites like TopCashBack are excellent for nagging thoughts like this, as you can get cashback on purchasing lottery tickets so you don't feel so dirty (mathematically). I tried it once - £4 cashback for £5 spent, so essentially you pay for one ticket and get five chances. Unsurprisingly enough, I won a grand total of zero pounds that week.
So I was all ready to ditch my grand dreams of winning the lottery and buying myself a nice guitar, when I came across another site through TCB, called Search Lotto (http://www.searchlotto.co.uk/index.php?rid=19609). If you remember all those years ago when P2C sites were big (Pay-to-Click) - it's among similar lines. You make searches on the websites, and earn points for doing so - the unique thing about this site is that 25 searches earns you one entry to the lottery. Not quite so simple, as actually you are entered into a syndicate of 10 people - but still entered nonetheless. 10 searches a day count towards the 25 search limit, up to a maximum of 50 per week. The search is done via Yahoo, so I use it as per usual during the day to get through my 10 a day without sitting down and wasting time unnecessarily.
I think this is quite a nifty website, and now means that when mum tells me that "you have to be in it to win it" (thank you, Lotto advertising people) I can tell her that I am in it, but I've not paid anything to do so. I'm pretty sure that in the distant future I will not win big on the Lotto, but my mind rests at ease to know that I'm not spending money on it, but that slight chance of actually winning has also been taken care of by just searching a few times a day. Give it a try! You never know. (although you probably do)
(quite late edit - I noticed today that a "Mr. D from Cambridge" had won something on the lottery via this method today - unfortunately not me!)
Tuesday, 9 August 2011
If ever there was a time to use Twitter . . .
As I assume people know, there are currently a series of riots going on in the UK in the major cities (or more accurately, in areas of low socio-economic status in inner cities of the UK). Now, if ever, is a time to use Twitter. I've never engaged with it before, always seen it as something as a passing-by interest but nothing I'd do myself. Last night it was amazing to watch the riots unfold in real-time on Twitter - unfortunately being essentially a large server of Chinese whispers meant that the vast majority of "tweets" are just rumours. It's good that the police constabularies use the service to debunk the rumours though - Derbyshire and Leicestershire were two such services.
The people doing the rioting are lowest of the low. There is a quintessentially succinct phrase that springs to mind: "don't shit where you eat". Why is it that the rioters/looters (sorry, BBC, "protesters") are targeting small family businesses and a couple of smaller chain companies? It is heartbreaking to see family businesses that have been run for decades destroyed overnight by brainless thugs.
I think that the Met Police have done an excellent job in handling the situation. In a way, if they had gone in heavy-handed on Saturday night then it probably would have quelled things down and then resulted in a much larger uprising against police brutality. It's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation for them, and I sympathise with that. Hopefully with the police out in force tonight, they will be more "robust" (nudge nudge wink wink) and teach the looters that the biggest, baddest gang in London is the Met police.
The Cambridgeshire police seem to have gone south to join their London pals - the only place where there may be an issue with rioting here will be Peterborough. Cambridge need not worry - its residents are decent folk, and the University folk of course tend to be somewhat more cultured and intelligent than the idiots rioting in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. I suppose that we should probably touch on race given that generally the lower-socioeconomic groups in the inner cities are minority groups; without wishing to get too deep I shall just say that the largest minority group in Cambridge is by far the Chinese. So, we will not have any problems here. Just delicious food and brilliant mathematicians!
The people doing the rioting are lowest of the low. There is a quintessentially succinct phrase that springs to mind: "don't shit where you eat". Why is it that the rioters/looters (sorry, BBC, "protesters") are targeting small family businesses and a couple of smaller chain companies? It is heartbreaking to see family businesses that have been run for decades destroyed overnight by brainless thugs.
I think that the Met Police have done an excellent job in handling the situation. In a way, if they had gone in heavy-handed on Saturday night then it probably would have quelled things down and then resulted in a much larger uprising against police brutality. It's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation for them, and I sympathise with that. Hopefully with the police out in force tonight, they will be more "robust" (nudge nudge wink wink) and teach the looters that the biggest, baddest gang in London is the Met police.
The Cambridgeshire police seem to have gone south to join their London pals - the only place where there may be an issue with rioting here will be Peterborough. Cambridge need not worry - its residents are decent folk, and the University folk of course tend to be somewhat more cultured and intelligent than the idiots rioting in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. I suppose that we should probably touch on race given that generally the lower-socioeconomic groups in the inner cities are minority groups; without wishing to get too deep I shall just say that the largest minority group in Cambridge is by far the Chinese. So, we will not have any problems here. Just delicious food and brilliant mathematicians!
Friday, 1 July 2011
July
Thought it was about time to update the blog again - we've made it through the busiest month of the year now for academics and everything else now frees up over the summer holidays whilst the kids are home. (sorry, the undergraduates/postgraduates) Not quite so simple for my two supervisors unfortunately, one of whom is a pro-vice chancellor of the university (and thus works all year around) and the other who is an examinations officer for the Department of Engineering. They signed up for it, I suppose!
We had a mini-conference in Cambridge this week for the CASTech project (Catalytic Advances in Sustainable Technology) which was only bettered by the food at the Cavendish Labs (kidding) and the spectacularly-timed thunderstorm on Tuesday. One of the academics at the Magnetic Resonance Research Centre put up a slide with a (very) large set of complex linear algebra equations and a huge clap of thunder went directly overhead! No such dramatics for my presentation, however. For those interested, it was a 30-minute talk on "Computational fluid dynamic simulations of the hydrodynamics of trickle-bed reactors with validation using magnetic resonance imaging techniques". Short and snappy, as ever.
I'm just getting into the minefield now of techniques for predicting variable-density liquid flows, which will become important once I start considering reaction. The assumption of incompressibility is out of the window once you have strong exo/endothermic reactions going on, unfortunately. I'm about to finally start developing the new code PULSAR and shaping it the way I want it. These big milestones are always very difficult to start, but once I get started on them I find that it takes up all of my attention!
Just as a side note to physicists - why don't you ever develop your equations of state to match fairly ambient conditions? Peng-Robinson was a nightmare to get converging for a 1-atm water solution at 25 degrees C . . .
We had a mini-conference in Cambridge this week for the CASTech project (Catalytic Advances in Sustainable Technology) which was only bettered by the food at the Cavendish Labs (kidding) and the spectacularly-timed thunderstorm on Tuesday. One of the academics at the Magnetic Resonance Research Centre put up a slide with a (very) large set of complex linear algebra equations and a huge clap of thunder went directly overhead! No such dramatics for my presentation, however. For those interested, it was a 30-minute talk on "Computational fluid dynamic simulations of the hydrodynamics of trickle-bed reactors with validation using magnetic resonance imaging techniques". Short and snappy, as ever.
I'm just getting into the minefield now of techniques for predicting variable-density liquid flows, which will become important once I start considering reaction. The assumption of incompressibility is out of the window once you have strong exo/endothermic reactions going on, unfortunately. I'm about to finally start developing the new code PULSAR and shaping it the way I want it. These big milestones are always very difficult to start, but once I get started on them I find that it takes up all of my attention!
Just as a side note to physicists - why don't you ever develop your equations of state to match fairly ambient conditions? Peng-Robinson was a nightmare to get converging for a 1-atm water solution at 25 degrees C . . .
Friday, 17 June 2011
Spring has finally arrived!
Maybe an odd thing to say halfway through June, but spring has finally arrived! The UK had a ridiculously warm and dry couple of months instead of the traditional spring showers in April/May, and it looks like the rain is all finally catching up with us. Just in time for the undergraduate exams / May Balls / graduation ceremonies as well! It's been thoroughly miserable here in Cambridge for the last few days, and it's supposed to continue into next week. I shall remain grumpy as ever as I shall be doing research all through the summer holidays anyway (no more summer holidays ever as I am no longer an undergrad!) - in fact I shall be a little less grumpy because I will actually get time to do some of my own research for a change!
I saw The Hangover: Part 2 last weekend. That in itself is not exciting (although I did enjoy the film) - the exciting thing for me is that the film was shown on a "digital screen". It's all very odd - somewhat like the transition from LP to CDs all those years ago, or VHS to DVD not so long ago. At first you don't really notice anything - it's still a film projected onto a large screen (same size) with surround-sound audio blaring out all around you. Then you suddenly notice - the audio is much crisper (DTS?) and the picture is absolutely crystal-clear.
Do I like this? . . . I'm not sure. I feel somewhat nostalgic about when you go to the cinema and you see the flickers on the screen, those black spots from the reel appearing in random places and the odd crackle in the audio. It feels like this is my "format reborn" moment - I was too young really to go from LP to CD as I went straight from tape to CD. That was much better as tapes were in general dreadful quality. Even VHS -> DVD was one I largely avoided as I tended to watch a lot of videos on the PC (back on Windows 95!) and so I was already accustomed to digital format videos. The codecs back then were pretty terrible though - or good I suppose as they had to compress the video down to a tiny size to fit on your 200 mb hard drive!
I saw The Hangover: Part 2 last weekend. That in itself is not exciting (although I did enjoy the film) - the exciting thing for me is that the film was shown on a "digital screen". It's all very odd - somewhat like the transition from LP to CDs all those years ago, or VHS to DVD not so long ago. At first you don't really notice anything - it's still a film projected onto a large screen (same size) with surround-sound audio blaring out all around you. Then you suddenly notice - the audio is much crisper (DTS?) and the picture is absolutely crystal-clear.
Do I like this? . . . I'm not sure. I feel somewhat nostalgic about when you go to the cinema and you see the flickers on the screen, those black spots from the reel appearing in random places and the odd crackle in the audio. It feels like this is my "format reborn" moment - I was too young really to go from LP to CD as I went straight from tape to CD. That was much better as tapes were in general dreadful quality. Even VHS -> DVD was one I largely avoided as I tended to watch a lot of videos on the PC (back on Windows 95!) and so I was already accustomed to digital format videos. The codecs back then were pretty terrible though - or good I suppose as they had to compress the video down to a tiny size to fit on your 200 mb hard drive!
Sunday, 5 June 2011
The stress of moving . . .
Just on the road back to Cambridge from Milton Keynes again. This weekend the major focus was trying to find my partner a new place to live - last week she went from being the only person in her house to being a bit of a cog-in-the-machine - a Latvian family of around 8 people moved in suddenly with no prior warning from the landlord! (I thought it was a bit fishy that the landlord had repainted a couple of rooms - he isn't exactly the most utilitarian of people . . .) So we lined up on Friday trying to find places - http://uk.easyroommate.com seemed to be the best/most reliable bet - and went to three viewings to try and desperately find a place.
First room was nice - double room in a detached house - but quite expensive at £370 not including bills. (for reference, my partner currently pays £300 inc.bills - wanting to move to a nicer area means that she had to up her rent a little) The housemate was nice (and actually British!) as he was a support worker for autistic people, so he had that natural caring/friendly streak. The price was a shame really - if it had been reasonable (£370 inc bills) then I probably would have pushed her to see that. Second room was cheap (£320 inc bills) but it was in a small terraced house that looked like it didn't belong - the estate was all semi-detached and this house had been kind of "wedged" in between the two semis on either side. Both housemates were Polish and the room/house looked a little worse for wear.
The final house (which she took in the end) was a "tardis house" - looked quite small from outside but then suddenly expanded when you walked into it! The garage is open (that probably makes little sense) and has a landing above it, so it is a 4-bedroom end terrace house. It's got a large kitchen and bathroom (even with a jacuzzi!) and a nice conservatory & living room. To top it off there is a very large garden and even a gas BBQ for when we want to have a bit of a grill (but can't be bothered for the whole hog of heating charcoals). The live-in landlord is a ski instructor - handy as my partner wants to learn to ski - who has been divorced for a few months so he now has extra room in his house (unfortunately).Slightly expensive at £370/mo inc bills but easily worth the extra for the quality of the house - very clean and tidy too as the landlord lives there.
The whole episode reminded me of just how stressful it is to find a new place. You look on the internet and it looks like there are thousands of places but by the time you filter them all out, you're left with 3 or 4 (if you're lucky!) places, none of which match your criteria perfectly. You then have to find a way of contacting people (sneaky room mate websites usually need one of you to sign up to it) and have a prod around auspiciously. I suppose we were lucky in that MK has no student population - this removes a lot of the volatility in the market and means that you're not facing as much competition. On the flip side there are lots of young couples so there is demand from that segment in the market, but they will tend to look for a 1-bed flat / 2-bed house as opposed to a room in a shared house.
Thankfully all out of the way so she can have a good rest next weekend - no more 4am wake ups from the loud children & dogs! For me it is presentation time next week and completing my CPGS essay (first year PhD report essentially) - things will suddenly become much more free after the next couple of weeks.
First room was nice - double room in a detached house - but quite expensive at £370 not including bills. (for reference, my partner currently pays £300 inc.bills - wanting to move to a nicer area means that she had to up her rent a little) The housemate was nice (and actually British!) as he was a support worker for autistic people, so he had that natural caring/friendly streak. The price was a shame really - if it had been reasonable (£370 inc bills) then I probably would have pushed her to see that. Second room was cheap (£320 inc bills) but it was in a small terraced house that looked like it didn't belong - the estate was all semi-detached and this house had been kind of "wedged" in between the two semis on either side. Both housemates were Polish and the room/house looked a little worse for wear.
The final house (which she took in the end) was a "tardis house" - looked quite small from outside but then suddenly expanded when you walked into it! The garage is open (that probably makes little sense) and has a landing above it, so it is a 4-bedroom end terrace house. It's got a large kitchen and bathroom (even with a jacuzzi!) and a nice conservatory & living room. To top it off there is a very large garden and even a gas BBQ for when we want to have a bit of a grill (but can't be bothered for the whole hog of heating charcoals). The live-in landlord is a ski instructor - handy as my partner wants to learn to ski - who has been divorced for a few months so he now has extra room in his house (unfortunately).Slightly expensive at £370/mo inc bills but easily worth the extra for the quality of the house - very clean and tidy too as the landlord lives there.
The whole episode reminded me of just how stressful it is to find a new place. You look on the internet and it looks like there are thousands of places but by the time you filter them all out, you're left with 3 or 4 (if you're lucky!) places, none of which match your criteria perfectly. You then have to find a way of contacting people (sneaky room mate websites usually need one of you to sign up to it) and have a prod around auspiciously. I suppose we were lucky in that MK has no student population - this removes a lot of the volatility in the market and means that you're not facing as much competition. On the flip side there are lots of young couples so there is demand from that segment in the market, but they will tend to look for a 1-bed flat / 2-bed house as opposed to a room in a shared house.
Thankfully all out of the way so she can have a good rest next weekend - no more 4am wake ups from the loud children & dogs! For me it is presentation time next week and completing my CPGS essay (first year PhD report essentially) - things will suddenly become much more free after the next couple of weeks.
Tuesday, 17 May 2011
That time of year . . .
It's that time of year when things get very busy in the academic world - final examinations for the undergrads. It seems strange to think that a whole academic year has already gone by - but the academic year is very short for Cambridge undergrads (a whole 21 weeks!) so in essence it's actually about half of the year for myself. The summer holidays are somewhat of a blessing in disguise as there are no undergrads running around, which means no interruptions, no marking and no supervisions or tutorials!
Oxford has the slightly perverse tradition that undergrads wear gowns to their examinations - thankfully Cambridge does not share the same tradition. Unfortunately, the examiners have to wear the gowns - which means that myself, as an invigilator, will have to wander around Cambridge for a few days in my BA status gown. This is one of the put-me-downs of the system - as I did not get my undergrad degree from here, I'm not entitled to 1) wear my colours of my subject (MEng) and 2) wear the gown corresponding to my status (Masters graduate; but <24 years old so have to wear a BA gown). So I shall walk around the exam room and no doubt the undergrads will know that they are being examined by a "dirty" academic!
Although the joke is on them. I attended a student-supervisor dinner at Robinson College last week (food/wine was excellent as always) and most of the fellows on the table are fellow "dirty" academics. My supervisor, who was previously the head of department and is now the pro-vice chancellor for research, graduated from Bristol as an undergrad before doing her PhD at Cambridge. She told me that when she applied for her PhD, she was told in no unerring fashion that "if a Cambridge student wants to do it, then we will give it to them instead." Luckily it wasn't the case, and Cambridge didn't lose one of the brightest academics of that generation! It perhaps explains why she told me the first time I met her that they preferred to take on non-Cambridge undergraduates for PhD positions in the department - I presume that it's probably a "fresh blood" sort of thing as well.
My other supervisor is filthy in comparison - St. Andrews undergraduate and UMIST (now University of Manchester) PhD student. Transferred to Cambridge soon after and has stayed there since, becoming a Professor recently. It's all a confusing game!
Oxford has the slightly perverse tradition that undergrads wear gowns to their examinations - thankfully Cambridge does not share the same tradition. Unfortunately, the examiners have to wear the gowns - which means that myself, as an invigilator, will have to wander around Cambridge for a few days in my BA status gown. This is one of the put-me-downs of the system - as I did not get my undergrad degree from here, I'm not entitled to 1) wear my colours of my subject (MEng) and 2) wear the gown corresponding to my status (Masters graduate; but <24 years old so have to wear a BA gown). So I shall walk around the exam room and no doubt the undergrads will know that they are being examined by a "dirty" academic!
Although the joke is on them. I attended a student-supervisor dinner at Robinson College last week (food/wine was excellent as always) and most of the fellows on the table are fellow "dirty" academics. My supervisor, who was previously the head of department and is now the pro-vice chancellor for research, graduated from Bristol as an undergrad before doing her PhD at Cambridge. She told me that when she applied for her PhD, she was told in no unerring fashion that "if a Cambridge student wants to do it, then we will give it to them instead." Luckily it wasn't the case, and Cambridge didn't lose one of the brightest academics of that generation! It perhaps explains why she told me the first time I met her that they preferred to take on non-Cambridge undergraduates for PhD positions in the department - I presume that it's probably a "fresh blood" sort of thing as well.
My other supervisor is filthy in comparison - St. Andrews undergraduate and UMIST (now University of Manchester) PhD student. Transferred to Cambridge soon after and has stayed there since, becoming a Professor recently. It's all a confusing game!
Tuesday, 10 May 2011
Losing sight of the loss leaders
The phrase "loss leading product" really came to a head this weekend. My partner likes the Muller Corner yoghurts (far too sweet for me - I'm hippyish enough to by pro-bio yoghurts, and cheap enough to buy the Sainsbury's basics version at 28p/4 yogs) and we went to Morrisons this weekend. In the shop front was a big POS (point of sale, not piece of . . . ahem) saying 2 for £2 on 6 packs. For those who don't buy them, they are usually around £3.80 ish for 6. I figured that the POS was wrong and that it was intended for another product. But lo and behold, at the yoghurts section, the offer is emblazoned all over the products there. Truly a loss leader - almost half the price for twice as much! By contrast, Sainsbury's has an "offer" of 2 packs for £5. Not to be complaining too much, we bought 2 packs and double- and triple-checked the receipt.
Another close loss-leader this month was my college bill for residence charges, who tried to charge me almost £1000 for accommodation that I have already paid. Thankfully the finance lot here are easy to deal with and it was refunded straight away. If only multiphase flows were as simple to resolve . . .
This is the time of year when the first year PhD students give a 20 minute presentation and complete a CPGS essay about their work so far in order to progress into the second year as a fully-fledged PhD student. I missed the presentation sessions last week to meet both of my supervisors (you can count the days in the year when they are both free on one hand) and I shall miss next week's one due to an exam invigilation meeting. I shall make tomorrow's one and my own one (of course) - hopefully the talks will be interesting, and there won't be too much biotechnology!
All the Chemical Engineering departments around the country now seem to be incorporating biotechnology / biochemical engineering (trojan horse word I think to let them into the Chem Eng world!) and it's all a little odd. Here in Cambridge they have their own building so they don't really incorporate themselves that much - I always thought it made more sense to merge with either biochemistry or biology. Cambridge has a very large school of biology so I figured that it would merge that way. Thankfully with me being over in the Engineering building I avoid bio stuff for the most part - I was somewhat shocked at having to do 3 biology courses during my undergraduate years as a chemical engineer, especially since I had last picked up a bio textbook at the age of 16!
Although apparently, to do Chem Eng you just need to do maths + a science at A levels. I graduated from the University of Sheffield and I was fairly shocked to see people with only biology as their science - I presumed that physics was pretty much a given for any engineering subject, and that chemistry was the natural second science to take for Chemical Engineering! 1 chemistry module and 3 biology modules later spoke differently in the end though . . .
Another close loss-leader this month was my college bill for residence charges, who tried to charge me almost £1000 for accommodation that I have already paid. Thankfully the finance lot here are easy to deal with and it was refunded straight away. If only multiphase flows were as simple to resolve . . .
This is the time of year when the first year PhD students give a 20 minute presentation and complete a CPGS essay about their work so far in order to progress into the second year as a fully-fledged PhD student. I missed the presentation sessions last week to meet both of my supervisors (you can count the days in the year when they are both free on one hand) and I shall miss next week's one due to an exam invigilation meeting. I shall make tomorrow's one and my own one (of course) - hopefully the talks will be interesting, and there won't be too much biotechnology!
All the Chemical Engineering departments around the country now seem to be incorporating biotechnology / biochemical engineering (trojan horse word I think to let them into the Chem Eng world!) and it's all a little odd. Here in Cambridge they have their own building so they don't really incorporate themselves that much - I always thought it made more sense to merge with either biochemistry or biology. Cambridge has a very large school of biology so I figured that it would merge that way. Thankfully with me being over in the Engineering building I avoid bio stuff for the most part - I was somewhat shocked at having to do 3 biology courses during my undergraduate years as a chemical engineer, especially since I had last picked up a bio textbook at the age of 16!
Although apparently, to do Chem Eng you just need to do maths + a science at A levels. I graduated from the University of Sheffield and I was fairly shocked to see people with only biology as their science - I presumed that physics was pretty much a given for any engineering subject, and that chemistry was the natural second science to take for Chemical Engineering! 1 chemistry module and 3 biology modules later spoke differently in the end though . . .
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
Credit cards and tea
Well it was definitely an interesting weekend! On Friday I went to a "party" to celebrate the Royal Wedding at the house of my partner's boss. Nice to meet some different people, and I'm totally glad that I do Engineering. It turns out that her boss's wife is a high school teacher who despises any sort of degree/career that doesn't involve science or mathematics. To be fair, she has a point - how many psychologists/photographers/media studies graduates do we need? (except for those keeping the engineers from committing suicide / taking photographs for wall hangings / making rubbish daytime TV)
I saw my Dad on Friday after the party in central Milton Keynes - he had come over from France that week as my half-brothers were all on Easter holidays (I shall not go into the details of my confusing family structure!). Just as we got to the centre MK, a clap of thunder shuddered overhead and bang! A downpour. Apparently there was no thunder at all in Cambridge that day. It was a typical British storm - appeared in no time, poured down for 10 minutes, and then dissipated into nothing as the sky turned back to its azure blue again.
On Sunday my partner's company was hosting a delegation from a publishing press in Chongqing at the University of Cambridge and (for reasons I probably shouldn't go into) I was required to sit in the meeting and listen through a couple of presentations and good old fashioned business. It makes me glad I'm not in business and firmly entrenched in academics - the politeness (English and Chinese!) was overwhelming, but neither side was budging from the position of "we want you to help us, but we can't help you for a certain reason right now". Awkward times aside, I pilfered some of the excellent tea they serve at the University Centre, and was given a couple of tins of Chinese green tea, so a good haul all round there!
We're all back here working now that the seemingly-endless bank holidays have finished. I'm meeting up with both of my supervisors tomorrow to go through this journal article that we want to publish, and also meeting to discuss another topic that is fairly linked to my topic. It's been a while since I've done any work on that topic though so I am going to have a read-up this afternoon. Lunchtime first I think! Incidentally, the Sainsbury's Taste the Difference seeded batch bread on offer at the moment (£1) is far better than any other supermarket-bread on the shelf. Bakers bread is top-tier of course, but it's all very expensive here. I'm fairly sure that London is not really any more expensive than here!
BBC Weather has once again lied as well, it's a much nicer day here than the weather forecast would suggest. I think the old rule is take what BBC weather says and expect the opposite - I would have thought that they would have cottoned on by now as well!
I saw my Dad on Friday after the party in central Milton Keynes - he had come over from France that week as my half-brothers were all on Easter holidays (I shall not go into the details of my confusing family structure!). Just as we got to the centre MK, a clap of thunder shuddered overhead and bang! A downpour. Apparently there was no thunder at all in Cambridge that day. It was a typical British storm - appeared in no time, poured down for 10 minutes, and then dissipated into nothing as the sky turned back to its azure blue again.
On Sunday my partner's company was hosting a delegation from a publishing press in Chongqing at the University of Cambridge and (for reasons I probably shouldn't go into) I was required to sit in the meeting and listen through a couple of presentations and good old fashioned business. It makes me glad I'm not in business and firmly entrenched in academics - the politeness (English and Chinese!) was overwhelming, but neither side was budging from the position of "we want you to help us, but we can't help you for a certain reason right now". Awkward times aside, I pilfered some of the excellent tea they serve at the University Centre, and was given a couple of tins of Chinese green tea, so a good haul all round there!
We're all back here working now that the seemingly-endless bank holidays have finished. I'm meeting up with both of my supervisors tomorrow to go through this journal article that we want to publish, and also meeting to discuss another topic that is fairly linked to my topic. It's been a while since I've done any work on that topic though so I am going to have a read-up this afternoon. Lunchtime first I think! Incidentally, the Sainsbury's Taste the Difference seeded batch bread on offer at the moment (£1) is far better than any other supermarket-bread on the shelf. Bakers bread is top-tier of course, but it's all very expensive here. I'm fairly sure that London is not really any more expensive than here!
BBC Weather has once again lied as well, it's a much nicer day here than the weather forecast would suggest. I think the old rule is take what BBC weather says and expect the opposite - I would have thought that they would have cottoned on by now as well!
Thursday, 28 April 2011
It's like waiting for a bus to arrive . . .
Unfortunately the old allegory of "it's like waiting for a bus to arrive; nothing for a while and then two turn up" didn't quite hold today. I was waiting for the X5 bus tonight (Cambridge -> Oxford) and ended up waiting for 2 hours before giving up and going back to college. They are supposed to be every 30 minutes from Cambridge to Milton Keynes - two turned up and drove straight past as they were full up! Not sure why it was full up, but it means that I now have to catch the crack-of-dawn bus tomorrow morning to MK or face an angry girlfriend, which is always very inadvisable.
Today we had a group meeting at the Magnetic Resonance Research Centre (http://www.cheng.cam.ac.uk/research/groups/mri/html/mrrc.htm) which is a fortnightly thing. Generally a couple of members present updates on their work and we discuss things about the site - usually which doesn't really concern me as I am based over in Engineering for the bulk of my work as my second (and arguably more important) supervisor is based there too. I find the others' work very interesting though - it feels as though they are doing "real" science whereas I just play with maths and computers all day! It can be a little overwhelming as the bulk of it is magnetic resonance imaging and catalysis, but I suppose that it's good for me to get a grip on the research going on and the techniques as it can serve me well. I'm collaborating with one third-year PhD student at the moment there as her work should provide some good insights into the two-phase models that I want to implement.
Sad to see the cloud back again though, it's been like a glimpse of summer here for the past couple of weeks! The ducks are all out and pestering the tourists for bread and other treats. The West Cambridge site is curious, as it's the only place where the University can actually build new buildings - good location for me (right next to Robinson College) but it's always very windy there! There is no protection from the natural Easterly breeze that rolls through Cambridge. There's a very nice pond and "garden" for the site though with a few picnic benches. Today when I was on my way back I saw a Chinese mum and her little daughter who was telling her mum "我要抱抱鸭子!" - "I want to hug the duck" - the duck though apparently didn't share the same want for physical contact. He did like the posh bread though!
Today we had a group meeting at the Magnetic Resonance Research Centre (http://www.cheng.cam.ac.uk/research/groups/mri/html/mrrc.htm) which is a fortnightly thing. Generally a couple of members present updates on their work and we discuss things about the site - usually which doesn't really concern me as I am based over in Engineering for the bulk of my work as my second (and arguably more important) supervisor is based there too. I find the others' work very interesting though - it feels as though they are doing "real" science whereas I just play with maths and computers all day! It can be a little overwhelming as the bulk of it is magnetic resonance imaging and catalysis, but I suppose that it's good for me to get a grip on the research going on and the techniques as it can serve me well. I'm collaborating with one third-year PhD student at the moment there as her work should provide some good insights into the two-phase models that I want to implement.
Sad to see the cloud back again though, it's been like a glimpse of summer here for the past couple of weeks! The ducks are all out and pestering the tourists for bread and other treats. The West Cambridge site is curious, as it's the only place where the University can actually build new buildings - good location for me (right next to Robinson College) but it's always very windy there! There is no protection from the natural Easterly breeze that rolls through Cambridge. There's a very nice pond and "garden" for the site though with a few picnic benches. Today when I was on my way back I saw a Chinese mum and her little daughter who was telling her mum "我要抱抱鸭子!" - "I want to hug the duck" - the duck though apparently didn't share the same want for physical contact. He did like the posh bread though!
Wednesday, 20 April 2011
Delving into Multiphase Flow
Thought I would change the title from something weather-related to something more academic related. Although having said that, the weather is glorious here at the moment. Sunshine, 23 degrees - all in April in the UK (which for those not accustomed to UK weather, is typically the month when it rains fairly consistently - "April showers"). Cambridge is gorgeous in the spring, with blossoms everywhere and large old trees adorning the River Cam. I'll take some photos later to show that it's not just me being misty-eyed.
I started to delve into some two-phase flow stuff this week. I'm trying to decide on a model to implement into my CFD code, and this is more difficult than it sounds. On one hand, I want to choose a model that will converge nicely and give accurate answers for my test case, but on the other hand I want to make the code multi-functional as the idea is that other people can use it at the end. Unfortunately I don't have the time to implement all the models into my code (like in FLUENT for example) so it's really a toss-up between versatility/robustness, accuracy and ease of implementation at the moment.
The new code itself needs a bit of work on first as well. At the moment it can do multi-species modelling and combustion which is more than the old code, and it's also parallelised which helps out a lot. Problem is that it only models ideal gases at the moment, and only models a pressure inlet. Not really any use for me - I'm at the low-velocity end of the spectrum whereby the fluids are essentially incompressible, and I'd like to use liquids too.
Other problem is that the geometry definitions itself has changed. My old code was cell-vertex based, whereby all the fluid values (velocity, density, temperature . . .) are stored at the nodes of each tetrahedral cell. The values at the face (from which the appropriate fluxes are calculated) are then interpolated from these vertices by taking into account the appropriate contribution and the area of the face from the vector cross-product of the nodal distance vectors. The new code is cell-centred, whereby those values are stored at the centre of the cell and then interpolated out to the faces. This is (in the grand scheme of things) a better way of doing it. The only problem is that all my old meshes and case files are now not compatible!
That brings me into my current work - ICEM-CFD. I have my old geometry file which I can read in as co-ordinate point data to Ansys ICEM-CFD, and now I have to reconstruct the geometry, mesh the faces and volume and see if it works with PULSAR. (which it should - it just needs a lengthy conversion of uns (unstructured ICEM-CFD mesh) -> msh (FLUENT) -> mcv (NEWT) -> pcv (PULSAR) Once that is all done the code needs to be edited to cope with incompressible flows and a velocity inlet.
Hopefully this will all result in some sort of code shoot-off. I have CFX and FLUENT to compare to, and my code (PULSAR) has a couple of options for determining the flow field. I'm thinking of some kind of shoot-out to test the effectiveness of each code by monitoring the residuals and velocity values at some point to see which one converges most quickly, and which gives the most accurate result in comparison to the available MRI data.
Of course, I won't publish the results if my code comes last! Or maybe I will, in true academic spirit. I'm about to send off a journal to (hopefully) be published in which I disseminate what's bad about CFD rather than highlighting what's good - I think that veracity and realising the short-comings of the method is more pertinent in some ways than just cherry-picking the best results and showing them off to the world.
All this rambling makes my stomach hungry . . . lunch time I think. Have a good week wherever you are!
I started to delve into some two-phase flow stuff this week. I'm trying to decide on a model to implement into my CFD code, and this is more difficult than it sounds. On one hand, I want to choose a model that will converge nicely and give accurate answers for my test case, but on the other hand I want to make the code multi-functional as the idea is that other people can use it at the end. Unfortunately I don't have the time to implement all the models into my code (like in FLUENT for example) so it's really a toss-up between versatility/robustness, accuracy and ease of implementation at the moment.
The new code itself needs a bit of work on first as well. At the moment it can do multi-species modelling and combustion which is more than the old code, and it's also parallelised which helps out a lot. Problem is that it only models ideal gases at the moment, and only models a pressure inlet. Not really any use for me - I'm at the low-velocity end of the spectrum whereby the fluids are essentially incompressible, and I'd like to use liquids too.
Other problem is that the geometry definitions itself has changed. My old code was cell-vertex based, whereby all the fluid values (velocity, density, temperature . . .) are stored at the nodes of each tetrahedral cell. The values at the face (from which the appropriate fluxes are calculated) are then interpolated from these vertices by taking into account the appropriate contribution and the area of the face from the vector cross-product of the nodal distance vectors. The new code is cell-centred, whereby those values are stored at the centre of the cell and then interpolated out to the faces. This is (in the grand scheme of things) a better way of doing it. The only problem is that all my old meshes and case files are now not compatible!
That brings me into my current work - ICEM-CFD. I have my old geometry file which I can read in as co-ordinate point data to Ansys ICEM-CFD, and now I have to reconstruct the geometry, mesh the faces and volume and see if it works with PULSAR. (which it should - it just needs a lengthy conversion of uns (unstructured ICEM-CFD mesh) -> msh (FLUENT) -> mcv (NEWT) -> pcv (PULSAR) Once that is all done the code needs to be edited to cope with incompressible flows and a velocity inlet.
Hopefully this will all result in some sort of code shoot-off. I have CFX and FLUENT to compare to, and my code (PULSAR) has a couple of options for determining the flow field. I'm thinking of some kind of shoot-out to test the effectiveness of each code by monitoring the residuals and velocity values at some point to see which one converges most quickly, and which gives the most accurate result in comparison to the available MRI data.
Of course, I won't publish the results if my code comes last! Or maybe I will, in true academic spirit. I'm about to send off a journal to (hopefully) be published in which I disseminate what's bad about CFD rather than highlighting what's good - I think that veracity and realising the short-comings of the method is more pertinent in some ways than just cherry-picking the best results and showing them off to the world.
All this rambling makes my stomach hungry . . . lunch time I think. Have a good week wherever you are!
Wednesday, 13 April 2011
End of the Sun
So it's been a glorious week here in the UK, and the weather has decided that it's about time to rain on that parade (quite literally). Cold and miserable! I need to go to the shops but I'm inside with a cup of tea instead.
The conference last week went well - mainly catalysis which is not really my area. (well, not at all) The talks were interesting and I met some people who gave me a good idea of how to focus my work a little more. To top it all off, when travelling to the conference we inadvertently met James May (of Top Gear fame) at Loughborough University when we got lost! Some excellent detective work from the other Chemical Engineers has shown that they were most likely filming an episode of something, and probably not Top Gear itself. He's going a bit grey now, it must be said.
Computing is as interesting as ever. I've tried to give myself a tiny push in the direction of time management by "allowing" myself to read in the morning and work after lunch; at the moment I'm getting through the book "Computational Fluid Dynamics: the Finite Volume Method" by the wonderfully-named W. Malalasekra. Very good book, pitched at this level as an introduction. I'm almost through it; once I am I will shuffle onto the 2-phase stuff which will be more relevant with my work. I want to go through the Blazek text on CFD as well but it looks like I want to read hundreds of books and I don't have hundreds of hours.
I'm just going through the code at the moment, getting used to how algorithms are implemented and trying to unravel the mysterious MPI commands. I'd like to get some simulations running but it's not that simple unfortunately - firstly the code itself is for a compressible gas so I need to do some alterations to get it going for an (incompressible) liquid and secondly the old geometry doesn't read into the new one. I need to go and re-draw and re-mesh the geometry, but the mesh conversion program doesn't work from GAMBIT files (which is what I use). It works from ICEM-CFD, but that doesn't work on my PC at the moment because of the licencing server going bottoms-up each time.
Pretty apt for a PhD really - what should be a fairly linear process ends up horribly truncated and dendritic. I suppose that's why time management just goes out of the window!
The conference last week went well - mainly catalysis which is not really my area. (well, not at all) The talks were interesting and I met some people who gave me a good idea of how to focus my work a little more. To top it all off, when travelling to the conference we inadvertently met James May (of Top Gear fame) at Loughborough University when we got lost! Some excellent detective work from the other Chemical Engineers has shown that they were most likely filming an episode of something, and probably not Top Gear itself. He's going a bit grey now, it must be said.
Computing is as interesting as ever. I've tried to give myself a tiny push in the direction of time management by "allowing" myself to read in the morning and work after lunch; at the moment I'm getting through the book "Computational Fluid Dynamics: the Finite Volume Method" by the wonderfully-named W. Malalasekra. Very good book, pitched at this level as an introduction. I'm almost through it; once I am I will shuffle onto the 2-phase stuff which will be more relevant with my work. I want to go through the Blazek text on CFD as well but it looks like I want to read hundreds of books and I don't have hundreds of hours.
I'm just going through the code at the moment, getting used to how algorithms are implemented and trying to unravel the mysterious MPI commands. I'd like to get some simulations running but it's not that simple unfortunately - firstly the code itself is for a compressible gas so I need to do some alterations to get it going for an (incompressible) liquid and secondly the old geometry doesn't read into the new one. I need to go and re-draw and re-mesh the geometry, but the mesh conversion program doesn't work from GAMBIT files (which is what I use). It works from ICEM-CFD, but that doesn't work on my PC at the moment because of the licencing server going bottoms-up each time.
Pretty apt for a PhD really - what should be a fairly linear process ends up horribly truncated and dendritic. I suppose that's why time management just goes out of the window!
Tuesday, 5 April 2011
Off to conference . . .
Tomorrow is the Johnson Matthey student conference, held in Loughborough. For those who don't know Loughborough, it's fairly close to Cambridge . . . yes, that's about it. Whilst we'd rather go to conferences in Hawaii or other exotic places, I'm sure it will be a great conference, with plenty to learn and lots to see. The idea is to bring together all the JM-sponsored students and see what else is going on in PhD studentships around the country, and to network and make connections with not only your peers, but also industrial contacts.
Since I'm a first year, I shall be presenting a poster there and that's it. I shall also be trying to avoid heckling or asking awkward questions to Oxford PhD students, as we don't want gang warfare on our hands. We even have an ex-Oxford'er on our side now for insider info. Maybe it all just stems down to individual jealousy as I was turned down from Oxford as a bright-eyed 17 year old all those years ago! Although as it turns out, Sheffield was a wonderful choice for an undergrad in Chemical Engineering. I made many good friends, met some brilliant academics and learnt an awful lot which I am subsequently doing my best to forget.
I suppose the next thing to think about is the hotel arrangements. Is it still au-fait to steal the hotel shampoo / shower gel? Having said that I'm feeling princely at the moment as I'm rocking the Radox shower gel - it was on BOGOF in Sainsbury's not too long ago so I stocked up to nuclear-war proportions. If the zombie apocalypse does come, and the zombies are afraid of jojoba oil shower cream (whatever jojoba oil is) then I am laughing. I'm also well stocked-up on Sainsbury's Basics Chocolate Digestive Biscuits, which for 38p (I think!) a pack are the world's greatest foodstock. My teeth might not live until the end of the apocalypse though.
Well anyway I shall spend the rest of my day decoding the new CFD code and writing a user guide for it. It might come in useful someday for someone else, but for now writing a user guide is more for clarifying everything to myself. Implementing two phase flow is going to be "a bitch", if you excuse my French.
Signing off from a somewhat cloudy Cambridge,
Dave
Since I'm a first year, I shall be presenting a poster there and that's it. I shall also be trying to avoid heckling or asking awkward questions to Oxford PhD students, as we don't want gang warfare on our hands. We even have an ex-Oxford'er on our side now for insider info. Maybe it all just stems down to individual jealousy as I was turned down from Oxford as a bright-eyed 17 year old all those years ago! Although as it turns out, Sheffield was a wonderful choice for an undergrad in Chemical Engineering. I made many good friends, met some brilliant academics and learnt an awful lot which I am subsequently doing my best to forget.
I suppose the next thing to think about is the hotel arrangements. Is it still au-fait to steal the hotel shampoo / shower gel? Having said that I'm feeling princely at the moment as I'm rocking the Radox shower gel - it was on BOGOF in Sainsbury's not too long ago so I stocked up to nuclear-war proportions. If the zombie apocalypse does come, and the zombies are afraid of jojoba oil shower cream (whatever jojoba oil is) then I am laughing. I'm also well stocked-up on Sainsbury's Basics Chocolate Digestive Biscuits, which for 38p (I think!) a pack are the world's greatest foodstock. My teeth might not live until the end of the apocalypse though.
Well anyway I shall spend the rest of my day decoding the new CFD code and writing a user guide for it. It might come in useful someday for someone else, but for now writing a user guide is more for clarifying everything to myself. Implementing two phase flow is going to be "a bitch", if you excuse my French.
Signing off from a somewhat cloudy Cambridge,
Dave
Monday, 4 April 2011
First post!
Thought it was about time to join a blog, many years after the inception of them. I hope that one day this can be useful or entertaining to people - I shall try to blog regularly about what is going on here.
Seeing at this is the first post I figure that I should first of all introduce myself! My name is Dave and I am a first year PhD student at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge. I graduated in 2010 with an undergraduate masters (MEng) degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Sheffield. I wanted to pursue further studies, and what better place in the UK (or even the world) than the University of Cambridge?
I was very late in applying for a PhD - around June/July time. I was whisked down to Cambridge for an "informal interview" (which I still wore a suit to - this is Cambridge after all!) and met the (then) Head of Department, (now Pro-Vice Chancellor) Professor Lynn Gladden. I was very interested in what they do down here and she seemed to think that I wasn't quite as daft as a brush (closer to a comb I think) and very generously offered to supervise me and gave me a stipend to carry out my PhD here, entitled Development of CFD Codes to Predict Two-Phase Flows and Reaction in Trickle-Bed Reactors. This involves developing software to predict the way that fluids flow and interact with each other - very challenging and demanding, and just what I need to kick my work up a notch.
At the start of my tenure I met Professor Stewart Cant, who is a world-renowned expert in the field of computational engineering, who is my second supervisor. Stewart has many years of experience in the field of CFD and computational engineering, with his SENGA code for direct numerical simulation of combustion chemistry an international standard. On top of it all, he is a very amiable chap - I think best summed up by a description of him (by a person who shall remain unnamed!) as "the supervisor who makes me smile at difficult problems, and whose office I leave with a sense of purpose and determination instead of dejection and confusion." I meet Stewart every Wednesday, and always feel energised and ready for more hard work afterwards. Probably a useful time in the week to have the meeting too!
In the first half of this year I have been getting to grips with the CFD code NEWT, which is an in-house code used at the Department of Engineering. I've been using it to compute some single-phase flows (i.e. just liquid flowing through a column) and have achieved some good results with it. I've got a hold of some MRI data from the Chem. Eng connections and compared it, finding remarkably good agreement in the region of 2-9% accuracy. I'm coming to the end of drafting an academic manuscript on the work and hope to submit it soon.
Doing a PhD, in my very brief experience, feels very much like climbing a lighthouse where the stairs are all huge. You start at the bottom and slowly work your way up the winding stairs, and inevitably you run into problems. These are both external (waiting for someone else to do something that you need) and internal, and perhaps it is the latter of these that defines the difference between a postgrad programme and a PhD one. If I encounter some problem here it is really up to me to sort it out, whether it is software-related, maths-related or science-related. Of course there is help, but no-one can just spoon-feed you the information any more; you've got to kick up to a higher gear in order to manage to jump to the next step. Unfortunately though there are hundreds of steps left to go!
The support that you have is key, and Cambridge is a wonderful place in this regard. Whether the support is from fellow PhD students, supervisors or other academics working in your department, I've always received very insightful and positive criticism from whomever I've spoken to. Without wishing to present my old University as the opposite, I've always felt at Sheffield that the faculty was somewhat split by "factions" and that it wouldn't have been the best place to pursue a PhD. Here in Cambridge everyone is at the top of their games, and there's a lot of collaboration - you can really see why the University of Cambridge continues to be a world-leader today.
I've gone on too long here so I shall sign off now on an increasingly-cloudy April day - hopefully it will rain a little later on as the Robinson College gardens smell incredibly good after a blanket of rain. The squirrels don't like the wet weather too much though!
Dave
Seeing at this is the first post I figure that I should first of all introduce myself! My name is Dave and I am a first year PhD student at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge. I graduated in 2010 with an undergraduate masters (MEng) degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Sheffield. I wanted to pursue further studies, and what better place in the UK (or even the world) than the University of Cambridge?
I was very late in applying for a PhD - around June/July time. I was whisked down to Cambridge for an "informal interview" (which I still wore a suit to - this is Cambridge after all!) and met the (then) Head of Department, (now Pro-Vice Chancellor) Professor Lynn Gladden. I was very interested in what they do down here and she seemed to think that I wasn't quite as daft as a brush (closer to a comb I think) and very generously offered to supervise me and gave me a stipend to carry out my PhD here, entitled Development of CFD Codes to Predict Two-Phase Flows and Reaction in Trickle-Bed Reactors. This involves developing software to predict the way that fluids flow and interact with each other - very challenging and demanding, and just what I need to kick my work up a notch.
At the start of my tenure I met Professor Stewart Cant, who is a world-renowned expert in the field of computational engineering, who is my second supervisor. Stewart has many years of experience in the field of CFD and computational engineering, with his SENGA code for direct numerical simulation of combustion chemistry an international standard. On top of it all, he is a very amiable chap - I think best summed up by a description of him (by a person who shall remain unnamed!) as "the supervisor who makes me smile at difficult problems, and whose office I leave with a sense of purpose and determination instead of dejection and confusion." I meet Stewart every Wednesday, and always feel energised and ready for more hard work afterwards. Probably a useful time in the week to have the meeting too!
In the first half of this year I have been getting to grips with the CFD code NEWT, which is an in-house code used at the Department of Engineering. I've been using it to compute some single-phase flows (i.e. just liquid flowing through a column) and have achieved some good results with it. I've got a hold of some MRI data from the Chem. Eng connections and compared it, finding remarkably good agreement in the region of 2-9% accuracy. I'm coming to the end of drafting an academic manuscript on the work and hope to submit it soon.
Doing a PhD, in my very brief experience, feels very much like climbing a lighthouse where the stairs are all huge. You start at the bottom and slowly work your way up the winding stairs, and inevitably you run into problems. These are both external (waiting for someone else to do something that you need) and internal, and perhaps it is the latter of these that defines the difference between a postgrad programme and a PhD one. If I encounter some problem here it is really up to me to sort it out, whether it is software-related, maths-related or science-related. Of course there is help, but no-one can just spoon-feed you the information any more; you've got to kick up to a higher gear in order to manage to jump to the next step. Unfortunately though there are hundreds of steps left to go!
The support that you have is key, and Cambridge is a wonderful place in this regard. Whether the support is from fellow PhD students, supervisors or other academics working in your department, I've always received very insightful and positive criticism from whomever I've spoken to. Without wishing to present my old University as the opposite, I've always felt at Sheffield that the faculty was somewhat split by "factions" and that it wouldn't have been the best place to pursue a PhD. Here in Cambridge everyone is at the top of their games, and there's a lot of collaboration - you can really see why the University of Cambridge continues to be a world-leader today.
I've gone on too long here so I shall sign off now on an increasingly-cloudy April day - hopefully it will rain a little later on as the Robinson College gardens smell incredibly good after a blanket of rain. The squirrels don't like the wet weather too much though!
Dave
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