Connecting graduates across the UK

University of Brighton KTP Associates Billiejoe Charlton, Tim Gardhouse and Solomon Adebayo recently attended the KTP Associates Conference in Coventry where they met some of the 100+ KTP Associates from across the UK who presented papers and posters on a wide variety of KTP projects.  This annual event was set up by the University of Brighton around 8 years ago, but is now shared by the KTP community so that the event can move around the UK, giving more Associates the opportunity to attend.

Solomon, Billiejoe and Tim at the KTP Associates Conference 2016 in Coventry

Solomon, Billiejoe and Tim at the KTP Associates Conference in May 2016, in Coventry.

Solomon, Billiejoe and Tim at the KTP Associates Conference 2016 in Coventry

The celebrations started on the Wednesday evening with a pre-Conference delegates social then it was an early start on the Thursday for coffees and networking before two Keynote speakers took the stage. Associates heard from Dr Lorna Everall who’s KTP helped create a product for monitoring stress in buildings, bridges and wind turbines and Dr Ignacio Tudela an expert in the automotive, power generation, marine and industrial sectors.

32 poster presenters then took a deep breath for each of their 1-minute elevator pitches to drum up interest and questions for the poster session which followed. The afternoon sessions comprised 22 presentations of Associates papers and the prize giving for Best Papers and Best Posters.

Billiejoe said “the conference was a great opportunity to meet other Associates – I didn’t realise KTPs were so diverse!  I also met someone at the social who works in a similar field to me, so we had loads to talk about. We’ll stay in touch to find out how each other’s projects are going and hopefully meet again at next years Conference in Birmingham.”

Details of the 2017 Conference will be posted on the KTP website as soon as they’re available.

Following the Conference, Tim was asked to be the Keynote speaker at The UK Thermal Energy Storage Workshop in June 2016 presenting on ‘Using a cold thermal store to improve the efficiency of liquid air energy storage’.

Find out more about KTP here or contact the KTP centre at ktp@brighton.ac.uk with any questions.