Topic: UK Universities and Industry: Progress over 800 years
(Overseas distinguished experts program of SJTU for Academic Exchange)

Speaker: Kevin KENDALL, Fellow of Royal Society, Professor, University of Birmingham, UK

Time: 2013-9-24,10:00 am

Venue: F310

Inviter: Prof. Sui Sheng

Abstract:
The purpose of this talk is to analyse the evolution of Universities in Britain starting with the earliest colleges in Cambridge in 1208. Originally these were philosophical groups but during the last century engineering and industry have begun to play a major part in their development. Professor Kendall has worked 50% in industry and 50% in Universities and so has a balanced view of this evolution. Because industry is based on products which can disappear, it may only last 100 years, whereas the University depends on research which continues forever and has no limit. However, industry needs educated recruits and can buy inventions from Universities so there is a strengthening attachment between the two. In the UK, the University sector has grown to 4% of GDP whereas manufacturing has shrunk to 10%, so university is replacing industry. In one sense, Universities are the new industries because 100 new companies start on campus each year. The danger is that Universities become unstable and volatile to be bought and sold like engineering companies. The objective of this lecture is to discuss how this compares with the situation in Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

 
Introduction of speaker:
Professor Kevin Kendall FRS has been researching hydrogen and fuel cells over the past 30 years. He was responsible for the first hydrogen filling station in England, to fuel hydrogen vehicles running on the Birmingham campus since March 2008. There are now four stations in the Midlands and there should be eight by 2012, with a prospect of hundreds of hydrogen hybrid vehicles by 2015. Support from many companies and funding agencies have made this possible, especially Microcab, RDM, EPSRC, TSB and AWM. This has been a remarkably successful project for training engineering students in the Doctoral Training Centre funded by EPSRC to create one hundred new PhDs. Prof Kendall is also known for fracture mechanics and research on adhesion. He is the author of Molecular Adhesion and its Applications published by Kluwer in 2001, and recently co-authored Adhesion of Cells, Viruses and Nanoparticles (Springer 2010) dealing with complex biological adhesion processes. 

More infomation
http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/chemical-engineering/people/individual.aspx?ReferenceId=5802&Name=professor-kevin-kendall