Here’s a batch of fresh news and announcements from across Imperial.

From a flight through the tail of a comet, to a £1.3 million project to develop new algorithms to improve supply chains, here is some quick-read news from across the College.

Crossing a comet’s tail

For the second time in its mission so far, the Solar Orbiter spacecraft has flown through the tail of a comet – Comet Leonard.

As a comet moves through space, it tends to drape the Sun’s magnetic field around it. This magnetic field is being carried by the solar wind, and the draping creates discontinuities where the polarity of the magnetic field changes sharply from north to south and vice versa.

Data from the magnetometer instrument (MAG), built at Imperial, suggests the presence of such draped magnetic field structures but there is more analysis to be done to be absolutely sure.

Dr Lorenzo Matteini, a co-investigator on MAG from Imperial, said: “We are in the process of investigating some smaller scale magnetic perturbations seen in our data and combining them with measurements from Solar Orbiter’s particle sensors to understand their possible cometary origin.”

Read more on the European Space Agency news site.

Innovator Under 35 winner

An Imperial postdoctoral research associate has been named as one of MIT Technology Review Arabia’s Innovators Under 35 for 2021. Mohamed Abdelaziz, Postdoctoral Research Associate at Imperial’s Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery, was recognised for his work on a versatile, robotic platform that can help to assist physicians treating patients with cardiovascular diseases.

The platform aims to minimise radiation exposure and improve the precision and safety of endovascular interventions, while also paving the way for endovascular interventions under a radiation-free imaging modality (i.e. magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI).

Mr Abdelaziz said: “Being selected by Majarra and MIT Technology Review Arabia as one of the winners of this year’s top innovators under 35 is a humbling honour and recognition from a prestigious scientific and technical community. 

“The award has given me greater credibility and the opportunity to share my research and my passion with a wider audience, which is important in scientific research.”

Read more from the full list of Innovators Under 35 winners.

MSc Maths Finance Ranking

The Risk Quant Finance Master’s Guide is a major world ranking for MSc Programmes in Quantitative Finance. Its 2022 iteration ranks the MSc in Mathematics and Finance from the Department of Mathematics fifth in the world, its highest position since this ranking started.

Programme directors Dr Jack Jacquier and Dr Eyal Neumann said: “Our programme, which recently celebrated its 20-year anniversary, has gone through a complete facelift over the past few years, with a focus on stochastic and numerical tools combined with data-oriented and Machine Learning techniques, as well as cutting-edge topics such as Signature methods and Quantum Computing.

“This ranking also acknowledges a strong community around the MSc, including students, a powerful alumni network in the finance industry, a growing teaching staff with both leading academics in the field and world-renown practitioners, and the very tight connections we have been building with the finance industry.” 

Supply chain challenge

A new Imperial project, “Advancing optimisation technologies through international collaboration” (ADOPT), has received £1.3 million to develop new algorithms to improve decision-making across process industries.

Led by Imperial’s Professor Benoit Chachuat, with partners at UCL and RWTH Aachen University in Germany, the project brings together leading research groups to develop new, sophisticated algorithms that build on global optimisation and machine learning to find the best possible designs and strategies in industrial processes and their supply chains.

The EPSRC funding will facilitate use by decision-makers across the process industries to balance economic performance, safety, environmental impacts and handling uncertainty.

Professor Chachuat, of Imperial’s Department of Chemical Engineering, said: “ADOPT creates added value through the combined strength of scientific expertise and the exceptional potential to establish a long-term partnership. It will lead to scientific advances that can be tested on practical problems quickly, ensuring maximum impact from the research.”

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