Climate, health, data, and equality: how UCLB’s engineering technologies are changing the world

The four themes of UCL’s Festival of Engineering are exemplified in UCLB’s innovative projects, says UCLB’s Associate Director, Engineering & Physical Sciences, Marina Santilli.  

From 15-20 July 2024, UCL is showcasing the crucial role of engineers in tackling some of the biggest challenges facing humanity by thinking differently about the world around them.  

Four key themes underlie this year’s event, all of which are central to UCLB’s efforts in providing real world impact by working with UCL engineers with a passion for entrepreneurship. 

Health and wellbeing 

Improving living conditions and saving lives is an overarching goal of everything UCLB does. Endomag has proven how world-class engineering is pivotal to this. This UCLB spinout has brought to market a magnet-based sensor technology that has helped diagnosis and staging of breast cancer in over 500,000 women, reducing invasive surgeries and avoiding the need for nuclear medicine so can be carried out in remote locations. 

Climate change 

Solving the climate crisis necessitates greener energy production at source and cuts in carbon across supply chains. UCLB’s spinouts are tackling these challenges by drawing on UCL academics’ engineering expertise.  

Bramble Energy is a cleantech and hydrogen fuel cell tech specialist. It recently completed its £1.8m SuRV project, aimed at accelerating the transition to an electrified automotive industry in the UK. Bramble also secured funding to provide first-of-its-kind fuel cell technology for a new hydrogen-powered double-deck bus.  

CarbonRe, meanwhile, is commercialising an AI platform that can plug in to existing high-energy industrial processes such as cement-making, identify energy wastage and reduce consumption by double-digit percentages, saving gigatonnes of carbon and reducing costs. 

Data empowered society  

Smart use of data can deliver varied improvements to people’s everyday lives. 

UCLB spinout Stanhope AI recently attracted £2.3m in seed funding to put it at the forefront of the new generation of AI technology known as ‘agentic’ AI. CEO Prof Rosalyn Moran and her team are applying decades of neuroscience and AI research with the aim of creating machines that are able for the first time to make human-like decisions autonomously in the real world, in real time, harnessing what’s been dubbed “the most all-encompassing idea since natural selection”. 

Meanwhile, Senceive’s 15+ year journey has seen its FlatMesh wireless-enabled remote condition monitoring solutions find widespread application across the geotechnical and railway industries and led to the company’s acquisition in 2021. Senceive, which was spun out from the Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering at UCL, provides wireless condition monitoring systems which reduce customers’ costs by up to 80%.  

Equality and diversity 

Engineering can provide practical solutions towards a fairer world. Aspire, a project from UCLB Social Ventures, provides an inspiring example of this synergy.  

Cassava is a staple in many parts of Africa. Much of its value is derived from its starch content – a key consideration for local cassava farmers who rely on their crops for much-needed income. This prompted UCL Research Fellow in the Optical Networks Group, Dr Temitope Odedeyi and Professor Izzat Darwazeh, the founding Director of UCL’s Institute of Communications and Connected Systems (ICCS), to create a cassava starch measurement tool to help local farmers in Nigeria to maximise the productivity of their cassava crop.   

These technologies represent a tiny sample of UCLB’s engineering portfolio. To find out more, come and visit us at the Festival of Engineering on stand 39 and 40 in the Drama Studio for Thursday 18 July Industry Showcase, or email UCLB’s Associate Director, Engineering & Physical Sciences, Marina Santilli m.santilli@uclb.com.