06 May 2026
Engineering researchers amongst STEM for Britain 2026 Finalists
Research presented to MPs and members of the House of Lords at the Houses of Parliament in March
Photo: John Deehan Photography and the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee.
STEM for BRITAIN is a scientific poster competition and exhibition held annually in Parliament since 1997, organised by the Parliamentary & Scientific Committee. Its aim is to give members of both Houses of Parliament an insight into the outstanding research work being undertaken in UK universities by early-career researchers. Prizes are awarded for the posters presented in each discipline which best communicated high level science, engineering or mathematics to a lay audience.
Senior Research Associate Dr Xiao Gu presented the poster ‘Sensing Cardiac Health Across Devices and Scenarios: A Foundation Model Bridging Clinics and Wearables’. Heart disease is the leading cause of death, yet many people lack access to consistent monitoring. Xiao Gu and colleagues developed a new kind of artificial intelligence, a foundation model for heart health, similar to how language models like ChatGPT learn from text. This one learns from 1.7 million heart signals, including data from hospital machines (like ECGs) and wearables (like smartwatches). It understands core patterns across devices, settings, and patient groups, helping doctors detect heart problems earlier and more fairly.
The model was evaluated on a broad range of clinical tasks: identifying various heart diseases, estimating patient traits like age or blood pressure from signals, predicting outcomes, and even answering diagnostic questions based on an ECG strip. In all cases, the foundation model matched or outperformed specialized models that were each trained on just one task. This breakthrough could bring reliable heart monitoring to more people, including those in remote or under-served communities. Dr Gu is a Senior Research Associate at the Computational Health Informatics (CHI) Lab led by Professor David Clifton.
DPhil Student Eleanor Warrington presented her poster, ‘Real time gas detection using optical fibre the width of a human hair’, at the 2026 event, based on collaborative research between the Department of Engineering Science and the Department of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Oxford.
The research shows how a very thin optical fibre - about 0.02cm - can be used to detect gases quickly and accurately. The team modified a hollow-core fibre by adding tiny holes along its length, allowing gas to enter and spread through the fibre much faster. A laser is then sent through the fibre, and the gas is identified by how it absorbs specific wavelengths of light (a technique called spectroscopy). In less than 5 seconds they were able to detect small amounts of acetylene gas with high sensitivity. The work demonstrates a compact, fast, and precise way to monitor gases, with potential uses in areas like environmental monitoring and combustion analysis. Eleanor is supervised by Dr Julian Fells and Professor Martin Booth in the Department of Engineering Science and Professor Grant Ritchie in the Department of Chemistry.
Dr Chenying Liu, Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church and Associate member of Faculty at the Department, also presented her poster ‘Physical Intelligence Beyond Algorithms: Designing Origami Structures for Smarter Robot Bodies’. Traditional robots are typically built from rigid components powered by multiple motors, where intelligence is driven by a central “brain” using complex algorithms to coordinate sensing and actuation. In contrast, soft-bodied systems can exhibit intelligence through the interaction between their bodies and the environment, enabling safer and more adaptable behaviours similar to those in living organisms. Chenying’s work leverages origami, the art of paper folding, to design soft robotic structures with tailored mechanical properties that simplify control, sensing, and decision-making. By embedding intelligence directly into the body, this approach complements algorithmic control. The work represents a new design paradigm for robotics, with potential applications in areas such as agriculture, search-and-rescue, and biomedical devices. The research was conducted as part of Chenying’s doctoral work in the Special Structures Group led by Professor Zhong You and Soft Robotics Lab led by Professor Perla Maiolino.
