Prizes awarded for best 4th year project presentations, 2018

Each year at the Maurice Lubbock Memorial Lecture since 2001, 4th year Engineering Science undergraduate students have presented their final year projects to Alumni and visitors. Their posters are judged by Alumni representatives now working in industry, with prizes going to winners in 8 categories, and an overall winner is chosen by the Oxford Engineering Alumni (OEA) group.

In 2018 the industry judging panel comprised Alumni Chris Needham, Product Manager for Advanced Analytics at Shell, Alexander Brant, Sub-System Design Integrator at Rolls Royce and Dr Victoria Sanchez Zini, Oxford University Innovation.

The overall winner of the best project presentation, sponsored by OEA, was Ana Roomans Ledo for her project entitled Automated Quantification of OCT Images for Assessing Stargardt Diease.

Over 2 million people suffer from sight loss in the UK. Inherited Retinal Diseases such as Stargardt disease account for 2 out of the 4 leading causes for blindness, but diagnosis of the disease is complex. Clinicians make use of imaging technologies such as Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) to inform their diagnoses. Quantifying OCT images could aid diagnosis in detecting the presence of Stargardt disease, classifying the scans according to the pathology they present, and assessing the progression of the disease. Tests on a cohort of 103 healthy subjects and 649 Stargardt sufferers showed over 99% accuracy.

Ana returned as an alumna to give a short talk on her project at the Alumni Weekend in September.

The category winners of the project poster competition for 2018 were:

(THERMOFLUIDS) Rolls-Royce: The Rolls-Royce prize for best thermo-fluids and turbo-machinery exhibit–

Winner: Andrew Hyslop

Project title: Free Flight of the Reaction Engine Skylon Configuration

(CIVIL) Osborne: The Osborne prize for best civil engineering exhibit

Winner: Mary Hintze

Project title: 3D Finite Element Analysis of Submarine Pipelines

(BIOMEDICAL) GSK: The GlaxoSmithKline prize for best biomedical engineering exhibit

Winner: Ana Roomans Ledo

Project title: Automated Quantification of OCT Images for Assessing Stargardt Diease

(MECHANICAL) IBEX: Industrial Brushes - The IBEX Industrial Brushes prize for best mechanical engineering exhibit

Winner: Helen Bridgman

Project title: Smart Mouthguard

(ELECTRICAL) Sony: The Sony prize for best electrical and electronic engineering exhibit–

Winner: Matthew Woolley

Project title: Adaptive Laser Fabrication of Novel Optical Fibre Sensors

(INFORMATION) Ecrin Investments: The Ecrin Investments prize for best information and control engineering exhibit

Winner: Edward Hall

Project title: Modelling and Error Correction for Racetrack Memory

(CHEMICAL) BP: The BP prize for best chemical and process engineering exhibit

Winner: James Hendrik Lunshof

Project title: Continuous Polyhydroxyalkanoate Production within Ralstonia Eutropha by Short Chain Fatty Acids

(ENERGY) Jaguar Land Rover: The Jaguar Land Rover prize for best electrical and electronic engineering exhibit – ENERGY

Winner: Sam Collier

Project title: Quantifying and Classifying the Need for Energy Storage

Helen Bridgman also won the Communications prize for outstanding communications skills.