Dr Masha Folk, Professor Robert Miller and Dr John Coull of the University of Cambridge have been awarded the Gas Turbine Award, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) highest annual honour in the field. The research was made possible through a funding collaboration between EPSRC, ATI and Rolls-Royce.
The Gas Turbine Award was established in 1963 to be given in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the literature of combustion gas turbines or gas turbines thermally combined with nuclear or steam power plants.
Dr Masha Folk (Engineering 2014) is only the third woman to have won the award since it was founded in 1963. Two of these three women were from the University of Cambridge’s Whittle Laboratory.
Professor Rob Miller has won the award for the fourth time, also having won it in 2010, 2014 and 2015. Only one other person has ever won the award more times.
He explains:
“This is a great example of how a partnership between the Aerospace Technology Institute, EPSRC, UK industry and UK universities can take on some of the aerospace sector’s most important challenges.”
The research was made possible through a funding collaboration between EPSRC, ATI and Rolls-Royce. EPSRC funded Masha’s PhD through the UK EPSRC Centre of Doctoral Training in Gas Turbine Aerodynamics, now the EPSRC CDT in Future Propulsion and power. The ATI funded the experimental equipment through its iCore project.
You can hear Professor Miller and Dr Folk, who now works at Rolls-Royce, talking about how to achieve zero-carbon flight and land-based power on the video recording of the Global Cambridge lecture 2020.