The Birmingham C.A.S.E. Automotive Research and Education Centre successfully held its second Automotive Webinar and Networking Session at the University of Birmingham on May 11, 2022. The event has received a lot of attention from academia and industry. The attendees of this event include Richard Burden, former member of Parliament of the United Kingdom; Corinna Fletcher, Director of Group Lotus Organization Development; Tony Duan, Fuel cell specialist, CHANGAN UK R&D Centre; George Ye, Managing director, UBIPOS UK Ltd. The event invited Professor Marina Gashinova, Chair in Pervasive Sensing and Professor Emma Kendrick, Chair of Energy Materials to give a presentation. After that, the audience had an in-depth communication and discussion about the topics presented. The webinar was chaired by Professor Hongming Xu, Director of the C.A.S.E. Centre for Automotive Research and Education in Birmingham, and was streamed live online by ZXZC, with over 28,000 viewers following the event online.

At the beginning of the event, Professor Xu started by expressing his cordial greetings and warm welcome to the visiting guests and gave an outlook on the future direction of the C.A.S.E. Automotive Research and Education Centre. After that, Professor Clive Roberts, Head of School of Engineering gave a speech, clarified the strategic position of the C.A.S.E Centre for Automotive Research and Education at the University of Birmingham, then introduced the two key members of the C.A.S.E Centre as invited speakers, and finally expressed his expectations for the success of the event.

The first presentation was given by Professor Marina Gashinova, who gave a fascinating talk on the topic of automotive radar from the viewpoint of relevant research and development trends. She pointed out that University of Birmingham has played a key role in the development of automotive radar by the largest research group in the UK in this field, and further elaborated on the importance and research value of automotive radar technology based on several industrial collaborative projects. Finally, she summarized the existing achievements of the University of Birmingham Radar Research Laboratory in automotive radar and gave an overview of its future development.

The next presentation was given by Dr. Carl Reynolds and Dr. Rob Sommerville, members of the Energy Materials Research Group led by Professor Emma Kendrick. They began with an introduction to the Energy Materials Group, followed by presentations on sustainability in battery manufacturing and parametric battery modeling methods, respectively. Dr. Reynolds gave a comprehensive overview of the processes and equipment used in sustainable battery manufacturing in terms of battery materials, lifetime and performance, and recycling/reuse. Dr. Sommerville then showed detailed videos and images on parametric battery modeling methods to obtain more accurate information on the properties of lithium-ion batteries and next-generation batteries. Based on the research of the Energy Materials Group, Professor Emma Kendrick and her colleagues have established a company in collaboration with Imperial College London to help industry turn physical batteries into digital models for use in automotive industry with manufacturing and next generation battery sectors.

At the end of the event, attendees from academia and industry actively asked questions. They had in-depth communication and interactions with several presenters from different perspectives.

After networking and lunch, the event was completed with success.