School of Design, Engineering & Computing

Design student's paper accepted for prestigious conference

26 August 2009

Matthew Davis with another project at the annual Festial of Design & Innovation, earlier this year

A Bournemouth University (BU) undergraduate student, who has just completed his BSc (Hons) Design Engineering course, will travel to the USA later this year to present his research findings.

23 year old Matthew Davis from Winchester has had an academic paper accepted for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers annual conference. The ASME 2009 International Design Engineering Technical Conference takes place in San Diego, USA, in September 2009.

Matthew worked with BU’s Smart Technology Research Centre, under the guidance of Dr Venky Dubey, on a paper entitled: ‘Piezoelectric generators as battery chargers in mobile devices’.

The paper investigates applicability of various available technologies that can be harnessed for smart applications. It presents a design idea for an electric charging device designed to sit underneath the keypad of various mobile devices using piezoelectric (material that generates electricity when pressure is applied to it) and similar effect materials, and discusses the benefits of such a device and the current problems associated with developing one.

Matthew said: “I'm thrilled that my paper was accepted as I really enjoyed doing the research. I can’t wait to represent BU and my course at the conference. It is going to be an amazing experience.

“I have recently been offered a contract on QinetiQ’s graduate scheme (the international technology company for the defence and security industries) so hopefully I'll be doing research and development in some really high tech fields in the future!”

Dr Venky Dubey said: “The paper produced by Matthew was developed after he spent a term with me in the ‘Advanced Technology and Innovation’ unit. This was part of a new initiative to get BU undergraduate students motivated in research and develop novel design and innovative ideas. We wish him well.”