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Scientific meeting

Material efficiency: providing material services with less material production

  • 30 - 31 January 2012, 09:00 - 17:00
Add to Calendar 01/30/12 09:00 AM 01/31/12 05:00 PM United Kingdom (GMT) Material efficiency: providing material services with less material production The Royal Society, London, SW1Y 5AG
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Overview Organisers Programme

Overview

Organised by Dr Julian Allwood, Professor Mike Ashby FRS, Professor Timothy Gutowski and Dr Ernst Worrell

One third of the World’s energy is used to make and shape materials. Economic development correlates with material consumption, but in a climate and resource constrained future, this cannot continue. Material Efficiency – delivering material services with less material production – was part of our history, and the need to pursue it in future raises scientific, technical, economic, sociological and political challenges.

Download the programme here (PDF). Biographies and audio recordings are available below.

Organisers

Professor Timothy Gutowski, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

Professor Timothy Gutowski, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

Timothy G. Gutowski is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA. He was the Director of MIT’s Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity (1994-2004), and the Associate Department Head for Mechanical Engineering (2001-2005). From 1999 to 2001 he was the chairman of the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy panel on Environmentally Benign Manufacturing. He has over 150 technical publications, two books and seven patents and patent applications. His books are: Thermodynamics and the Destruction of Resources Cambridge University Press 2011 (with Bhavik R. Bakshi and Dusan P. Sekulic) and Advanced Composites Manufacturing, John Wiley, 1997. His research interests focus on the relationship between manufacturing and sustainability at various scales.  

Dr Julian Allwood, University of Cambridge, UK

Dr Julian Allwood, University of Cambridge, UK

Julian Allwood leads the Low Carbon and Materials Processing research group in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. The first 10 years of his career were funded by contracts with the Alcoa Technical Centre in Pittsburgh. In 1996 he was appointed as a lecturer in mechanical engineering at Imperial College, and moved to Cambridge in 2000. His research group, currently 15 people, focuses on the technologies and systems of energy, material and resource efficiency, largely related to metals. Current projects include exploration of material efficiency in metals, development of novel metal forming processes, technologies for toner print removal to allow paper-reuse, identification and evaluation of options for future carbon emissions reductions in consumer goods, and development of an online tool for visualising future global and regional resource scenarios. He is a vice Chairman of the International Academy of Production Engineering (CIRP), and since 2007 has been joint editor-in-chief of the Journal of Materials Processing Technology. He has been appointed as a Lead Author for the chapter on mitigation in industry in the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report, to be published in 2014. In 2008 he was awarded a 5-year £1.4m EPSRC Leadership Fellowship to lead a major project on the global carbon emissions targets for steel and aluminium in collaboration with a consortium of 20 global companies spanning the metals supply chain. This has led to the book “Sustainable Materials: with both eyes open” co-authored with Jonathan Cullen, published by UIT press in 2011.  

Professor Michael Ashby FRS, University of Cambridge

Professor Michael Ashby FRS, University of Cambridge

Mike Ashby is now Emeritus Professor in the Engineering Department at Cambridge University, having previously been a Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Cambridge, and a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Art in London. He is the author of a number of books on materials. Among the more recent are “Cellular Solids” (1988, 2nd edition 1997), “Materials Selection in Mechanical Design” (4th edition 2011), “Metal Foams – a Design Guide” (2000), “Materials and Design – the Art and Science of Materials Selection in Product Design” 2nd edition (2010) and “Materials and the Environment”, 2nd edition (2012). His interests are in Design, and in the role Materials play in it. He is a founder and Director of Granta Design, Cambridge, a small company specialising in materials informatics.  

Professor Ernst Worrell, Copernicus Institute, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Professor Ernst Worrell, Copernicus Institute, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Ernst Worrell (Ph.D.) is professor ‘Energy, Resources & Technological Change’ at Utrecht University in the Copernicus Institute. He has led the industrial energy assessment work at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory until 2008 and was Director Energy Use & Efficiency at the sustainable energy consulting company Ecofys between 2004 and 2010. He was a visiting scientist at the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Princeton University, and visiting professor at the Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil. His research includes research and evaluation projects in industrial energy and material efficiency improvement, as well as waste management and processing. He is author of four IPCC reports. He is (co-) author of over 250 publications. He is Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed journal Resources, Conservation and Recycling, one of the leading journals in the field of resources efficiency, associate editor of Energy, the International Journal and of Energy Efficiency, and editorial board member of Waste Management.  

Schedule