Durham Institute of Research, Development, and Invention (DIRDI) – January 2023 Newsletter

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The Durham Institute of Research, Development, and Invention (DIRDI) latest newsletter – January 2023.

We would like to thank the Vice Chancellor and Durham University Senate for the formation of DIRDI. In partnership with Durham University, DIRDI aims to encourage “Newtonian Discovery” of the fundamental physical laws of the universe, for the benefit of humankind. Alongside this, DIRDI supports “Edisonian Commercialisation” through applied research into acoustics, electromagnetism, and information engineering. We eagerly support and encourage any invention related to Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, the Biosciences, Computer Science, and Mathematics. We hope to identify and support “England’s next Newton” and create a 20-year academic environment in which the UK’s “intellectual gold dust” can become British Nobel Prize Winners of Science.

Based in Country Durham and co-located with the Centre for Advanced Instrumentation (CfAI), DIRDI also strives to become a “gateway into academic research” for normal inventive people across the Northeast of England, so that they may bring their ideas to us, turn them into inventions, and inspire a new way of developing national prosperity by matching academic research excellence to the will to invent.

We are looking for passionate Durham Academic staff to join our network and to help us achieve these goals.

If you would like to become a member, a fellow, or enquire further about DIRDI please email [email protected] and we will be delighted to send more information and details.

DIRDI’s January 2023 Newsletter – Click to Read

Forward – DIRDI’s Director General

“For 10 years, we have had the great privilege of leading our Undergraduate Rolling Internship Programmes, giving undergraduates the opportunity to work with us in paid part-time and full-time Summer Internships, some of whom worked with us for 2 years at Durham and are with us today as permanent Staff in our Research, Development, Design & Ergonomics Department.

These undergraduate internships were inspired by the Team Projects initially led by the exceptional Professor Paula Chadwick and Professor Douglas Halliday at the Department of Physics both of whom, are Advisory Board Members of DIRDI and who have done so much for me, and my family, for which I am so very grateful.

In those days we ran a selection process that involved volunteer students in 7 hours of written tests and 2 hours of interviews. From these we learned something that all academic staff must know themselves, that, if one looks, one will find the “intellectual gold dust” at Durham.

3 years ago we had an idea to match the spirit of invention to the majesty of world-class research at Durham University. Without the support of the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Karen O’Brien and her predecessor, Professor Stuart Corbridge, Professor Colin Bain, the Pro-Vice Chancellor of Research, Professor Jacqui Ramagge, the Executive Vice-Dean of Science and the Senate, to whom I am more grateful than I can say, we would never have launched the Durham Institute of Research, Development, and Invention in partnership with Durham University, and at Hatfield College, my old College, under the fine leadership of its Master, Professor Ann MacLarnon, and which is the Institute’s spiritual home.

Thank you to all our Founding and Visiting Fellows, and a very special note of great gratitude to our Head of DIRDI, and Senior Physicist at Coltraco Ultrasonics, Mr Daniel Dobrowolski. This year is one of growth across all departments in the Faculty of Science. I hope that you will enjoy this newsletter, and wish you all a very Happy New Year.”

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