Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge

01/10/2026

Start the academic year with brand new resources.

28/09/2026

Alumna Kayla Barron will serve as spacecraft commander and pilot!

This will be Barron’s second flight to the International Space Station.

She achieved a Master's degree in Nuclear Engineering from Cambridge 👍

Meet Crew-14!

NASA astronauts Kayla Barron and Chris Birch, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Makoto Suwa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Arutyun Kiviryan will lift off to the International Space Station no earlier than March 2027, where they will live for several months.

While aboard the space station, they will perform experiments and technology demonstrations to help us learn how to live in space while benefiting life on Earth. https://go.nasa.gov/4AB4W44

28/09/2026

Unpacking the embodied intelligence of – the unsung hero of our planet 🌱 🌍

Researchers in our Bio-Inspired Robotics Laboratory are exploring how soil behaves as an intelligent system. By studying its structure, chemistry and biological network of microbes and fungi, they aim to inspire new in bio-inspired computing, precision and environmental sensing.

Recognising soil as an active, embodied information processor – constantly sensing, filtering and transforming flows of matter (e.g. rainwater) and energy (e.g. sunlight) into plant growth and nutrients, for example – reframes soil not as “just dirt”, but as a living system that senses, remembers and adapts.

Viewed in this way, soil is challenging the traditional view that requires a brain.

Inspired by Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) – a real-time imaging and monitoring that measures the electrical
and impedance of materials – Catherine Merchant (pictured right) and Xiaoxian (Amanda) Xu from the Bio-Inspired Robotics Laboratory set about adopting this technique to observe the inner workings of soil.

Catherine says: "Soil has inherently rich, nonlinear and dynamic electrical properties. This means soil could act not only as a sensing medium but also as a form of natural analogue processor, inspiring advancements in bio-inspired computing, environmental monitoring and precision agriculture."

👉 Bio-inspired computing – encouraging the design of algorithms and soft that use the material properties of their own bodies, their flexibility, shape etc., to interact with the environment (like the information processing role of soil’s physical body).

👉 Precision agriculture – soil can be viewed as the farmer's 'smart' companion, becoming “both co-processor and collaborator, enabling a form of agriculture where technology and ecology are integrated into a single system of care”.

👉 Environmental sensing – where soil acts as an early warning system. This is where EIT is most effective, say the researchers, in revealing soil’s hidden dynamics by using imaging to make soil’s internal state ‘visible’, and flagging drought, contamination or decline in soil health in good time.

📍For more info and to watch the video, click the link in the comments 🔗 🎬 👇

25/09/2026

Join us at this year's Black History Month Leadership Lunch event on 13 October, one of our flagship equity, diversity and inclusion events to celebrate and recognise Black engineers.

This year's theme, ‘Honouring our communities', resonates with our goals for the engineering profession. Without communities, there is no impact and behind every engineering achievement are the people and networks that make it possible. To build an engineering community fit for the future, we need to work together to create strong, inclusive communities where everyone can flourish.

This event will be a rich, people-centred discussion with our guest panel speakers Dr Nike Folayan MBE HonFREng from Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers (AFBE-UK) and Donna Otchere from SiSTEM UK, who have both successfully built strong communities that have allowed Black engineers to thrive.

Attendees will get to create new connections, share fresh perspectives and hear ideas on how to create workplaces where Black engineers can contribute their full potential.

Register now: https://raeng.org.uk/events/2026/october/black-history-month-leadership-lunch-2026/

21/09/2026

PhD student Chris Toavs has turned her own personal experience living with type 1 into motivation for advocating for others and tackling single-use waste in diabetes care.

By focusing on and principles, Chris is researching how devices and products used to manage diabetes can be reused, refurbished or recycled.

Chris (Christ's College, Cambridge) is based at the Resource Efficiency Collective, part of the Engineering Design Centre, under the supervision of Professor Jonathan Cullen and Dr James Smith.

Chris explains that there are a plethora of devices and products used to manage diabetes – and the lifespans of these products vary drastically. In her opinion, a circular economy to reduce single-use plastic waste can only work if this debate is held at the design and productions stages – with the aim being to extend product longevity and incorporate better disposal and practices.

Such items – including, for example, disposable pens, continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), test strips, lancets and associated packaging – generate significant lifecycle pathways of plastic waste within the system.

Her aim is to create a more sustainable field without compromising patient health, a conversation that, she says, has been initiated in the healthcare field but has yet to reach care.

Find out more through the link in the comments 🔗 👇

cc. T1International

21/09/2026

18/09/2026

We’re proud to have ranked top for 16 subject areas in The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2027 – more than any other UK university 🎉

Bioengineering and biomedical engineering
Biological sciences
Chemistry
Civil engineering
Electrical and electronic engineering
General engineering
Geology
Italian
Land and property management
Law
Linguistics
Materials technology
Music
Natural sciences
Russian and eastern European languages
Sociology

14/09/2026

Contrail avoidance could drastically reduce the global climate impact of aviation, at minimal cost to passengers and companies, Operation Blue Skies is a big step forward in this process, as it will test the ability of the UK to reduce contrail coverage at an airspace-wide scale and in a real-world setting. It’s an exciting step in building a more sustainable aviation industry.

Backed by the UK Government, 'Operation Blue Skies' brings together partners, including the University of Cambridge, to evaluate AI-driven flight path adjustments across North Atlantic airspace.

09/09/2026

This month, 25 years since they enrolled, we will be celebrating the Gates Cambridge Originals - the Class of 2001, beginning with Okansa Ruzak [now Trushkevych].

Oksana describes herself as both a physicist and an engineer and as someone who is motivated by a desire to have a positive impact and to make a difference. Her research work has focused on photonics, materials and ultrasonics.

Over the last 25 years, she has moved from Engineering to Physics and back again, recently achieving Chartered Engineer status. She has worked both in industry and academia as well as doing outreach work that opens up Engineering to a broader range of students.

Being from Ukraine, she has also been dedicated to supporting her fellow Ukrainians through activism, fundraising and other ways of giving back.
Oksana’s PhD looked at the dynamic holography of liquid crystals, how, if you add dyes and nanostructured carbon materials, it makes liquid crystals more sensitive to light. She says: “Being able to do holography with low light powers is useful for things like medical imaging. The ultimate aim is to form 3D images of things in real time with low power consumption which brings savings in production costs. This can be used to build up an image on a special screen so doctors can make better judgements. Visualisation is very important.”

Read the full profile here - https://www.gatescambridge.org/about/news/gates-cambridge-originals-oksana-ruzak/



University of Cambridge Gates Foundation

09/09/2026

Do you know someone making an exceptional impact in engineering?

🏆 Nominations are now open for the first round of our 2027 prizes and medals.

From engineers who have dedicated their careers to advancing the profession, to individuals and teams connecting the public with engineering, our awards recognise those making a real difference.

Nominate an outstanding individual for:

- The Rooke Award, recognising an individual or team promoting engineering to the public.
- The Princess Royal Silver Medal, celebrating an early to mid-career engineer’s work that has resulted in market exploitation.
- The Sir Frank Whittle Medal, Honouring lifetime achievement in engineering.

Nominations close on 27 October.

🔗 Find out more and submit a nomination: https://raeng.org.uk/programmes-and-prizes/prizes/