Ansys Helps Bring the Materials Education Community Together

As the challenges the world faces become more complex, the need for highly advanced tools to solve them increases. Aware of these problems, Ansys is rising to the challenge with a rich software portfolio. But with advanced tools comes the need for a highly trained workforce. The Ansys Academic Program looks to support education in a variety of ways, including providing universities with affordable software for use in the classroom or in research. 

Recently, the Ansys Academic Development Team, in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, hosted the 2023 International Materials Education Symposium (IMES). Started in 2009 at University of Cambridge by professor Mike Ashby and Granta Design, the symposium brings educators who are teaching materials across engineering, design, and sustainability together to share ideas. Since the acquisition of Granta Design in 2019, Ansys has proudly continued supporting this event alongside an academic advisory committee.

 The goals of the symposium are to:

1. Provide a place for materials educators to share ideas, innovations, experiences, failures, and successes.
2. Provoke productive discussions among attendees.
3. Expand the links that form such a key feature of the materials community.

This year’s program focused on four topics: innovative teaching, sustainability and energy, design and simulation, and specialist topics and education practices. At the start of the event, Ansys Fellow Dipankar Choudhury welcomed attendees. Talks on gamification; utilizing mainstream media to inspire discussions on metallurgy; supporting student team competitions; including quality management in the classroom; and more were heard over this two-day, single-track event. The program was filled with breaks, allowing for opportunities to talk with peers over coffee and biscuits.

These discussions continued late into the night over dinner in some of University of Cambridge’s dining halls.

IMES 2023 was the 12^th event held in Cambridge and the first since the COVID-19 pandemic. With three Ansys product-focused workshops, 23 talks, 33 posters, and more than 90 attendees, this event firmly brought back the same sense of community started over a decade ago. From the feedback below, it’s clear that attendees felt the same.  

IMES is not the only event in the Materials Education Symposium series. What started in 2009 has expanded to include multiple events both around the world and online. The next event is the 13^th North American Materials Education Symposium (NAMES), to be held August 7-9 at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California. The planning for the next IMES has begun as well, scheduled for April 3-5, 2024, in Cambridge, U.K

Interested in attending one of these engaging educational events? Find out information on the next event nearest you at the symposium website.