Research students win tribology awards

Two research students from the School of Mechanical Engineering have won first and third prize in a poster competition at the TriboUK 2014 conference.

Two research students from the School of Mechanical Engineering have won first and third prize in a poster competition at the TriboUK 2014 conference.

Farnaz Salehi won first prize for her outstanding poster entitled ‘Variable Displacement Vane Pump: A Tribological Study’, and Doris Khaemba won third prize for her poster ‘Application of micro-Raman spectroscopy in analysis of MoDTC tribofilms’.

Poster winner Farnaz said “Winning the first prize was an extremely enjoyable experience and a great motivation for my research going forward. Besides, attending this conference was certainly a great opportunity to meet other researchers who work in this field and received feedback and suggestions on my work.”

Third place Doris was also full of praise for the conference “Besides receiving the poster award, my main highlights for the conference were the presentations by two of the keynote speakers on ‘the life of the academic researcher’ and ‘making money from your research’. Overall I enjoyed attending the student conference because it was a great opportunity to interact with all the students and get to know the research they were conducting.”

The TriboUK conference is an annual student networking event, based mainly in the UK but still open to internationally-based research students.

This student-led conference provides an opportunity for researchers in the field of tribology to meet and develop a base for academic and industrial networking. Leeds played host to the very first TriboUK conference, with this event taking place at the University of Sheffield.

Tribology research at Leeds takes place in the Institutes of Functional Surfaces and Thermofluids.