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How did you choose your subject?

I have spent most of my life in industry. Having started in the Royal Navy and then through a range of consultancy roles I have been lucky enough to experience a variety of diverse types of engineering and ways of getting things done. This journey has impressed upon me the merits of not only being technically competent, but:

• Having the vision and creativity to establish what needs to be done; and
• The implementation skills, competencies and behaviours to have the best chance of actually achieving the end.

What are you most proud of in your career?

I worked for London Underground in a variety of consultancy roles over several years. On the rare occasions these days that I travel on the London Underground, I have a spark of pride when an S Stock train comes into view having spent 3 years as part of the team that bought it into service.

Derek is the course leader for Design Engineering BEng(Hons), Design Engineering MEng and Design Engineering BEng(Hons) with integrated foundation year. He teaches in a range of areas such as mechanics of materials, mechanical design, computer-aided design/engineering, and digital fabrication.

The way I like to teach

I am a big fan of practical learning, where theory is complemented with practical activities. For example when teaching mechanics of materials, I am keen for students to get hands on to use our materials testing lab to characterise a range of real materials using the theory covered in class. I also try to take a ‘triangulated’ approach to these topics where possible. For example, when comparing real world experimental data with numerical models (e.g. FEA) and then using simplified analytical (i.e. formula based) models. Importantly, we then follow this up with discussions around the benefits, limitations and assumptions made in each of these approaches. 

I’m also a fan of trying to do project-based learning, and to try to make this fun! We run a series of group-based design projects relating to the design and testing of water rockets. Water rockets make for a great project because they can be very easy to make – a soft-drink bottle, some cardboard fins, tape, a cork and a bicycle pump is all you need to get a water rocket in the air. And even with such rudimentary materials the performance of the rocket is quite astounding, going 100+ meters in the air. From there, we can use a range of analysis tools to measure and evaluate the performance of the rocket. We can go into the wind tunnel to measure its aerodynamic behaviour. And of course we can test it in the field, instrument it with low-cost microcontrollers (e.g. Arduino or BBC Micro:bit), and we can use video analysis to take measurements of attitude, velocity and acceleration. It’s great fun, but equally we can do some great, deep engineering analysis on this using a range of advanced tools, so it makes for a great engineering project!