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The team

• Michael Auinger (Project Lead), Associate Professor, WMG
• Yongmann ChungLink opens in a new window, Associate Professor, Engineering
• Tom SykesLink opens in a new window, Assistant Professor, Engineering
• Peter ThomasLink opens in a new window, Professor, Engineering

The project

The activity was holding a workshop of the Midlands Fluid community at the university campus and open the event up to other non-engineering related disciplines, given that fluid flow is a multidisciplinary topic, covering a wide range of research aspects including engineering, mathematics as well as economics, arts and even social sciences.

Project outcomes

We were able to host 54 members of the academic community from universities across the UK Midlands plus attended from places a bit farther away such as the University of Oxford and Swansea. Whilst we had a focus on attendees from engineering and mathematics, we were able to open up the event to attended from the º£½ÇÉçÇø business school as well as were happy to also report a good number of students who attended throughout the day and participated in the talks / poster sessions.

There were 25 oral presentations and 26 poster presentations. This includes academic (faculty members) as well as students with a balanced mix of talks given by students.

Enhancing interdisciplinarity

We gave a presentation on the interdisciplinary nature of fluid flow at the beginning of the event and floated the idea to develop this into a networking grant to complement the more technical scope of the UK Fluids Network. We encouraged attendees to think, reflect and comment about this initiative and reach out if there is a particular interest. On the day of the event, we have received interest from three universities (Oxford, Leicester and Loughborough) and whilst all bit one are with a technical focus, they have offered to spread the word amongst their colleagues, particularly from the business schools.

The event was a great success – the net organisers were taking us as a role model for conducting the event and applauded the interdisciplinary nature of it. It will need a while before the community evolves from an engineering/mathematician-dominated domain into a truly interdisciplinary event but the seed for it has been planted and the community as a whole appreciates the growth of more interdisciplinary activities.