I'd like to welcome all Aerospace community members to the start of the 2016-17 session which continues under the leadership of David Lindley, Executive Team Chairman and Lee Murton, Young Professionals Group Chairman.
I’m looking forward to the first two events of the session Addressing Ageing Aircraft Sustainment Issues - The Use of New Technology and Techniques seminar in London on 26 October 2016. The TPN have organised some excellent speakers covering the latest technologies and new challenges in this field, so this should be a great event. Following on there is the Winning Concurrent Product Development evening seminar up at Rolls Royce in Derby.
Following on from the excellent event we had on the Rosetta Spacecraft earlier in the summer, we managed to persuade the speakers to share their slides with us and they also agreed to answer questions from those of you who weren’t able to come along to the event. With the recent crashing of Rosetta onto 67P, this represents an opportune moment to post your questions via the above link, which I hope you will pick up.
During the summer I’ve been catching up with the volunteers at the Aerospace committee meeting where we discussed the above activities and also some others that are in initial planning stages at the moment, but I’ll update you on these in future blogs. Together with David Lindley and Ray Smith, the TPN Vice Chairman we also met up with our counterparts in the IMechE and RAeS as part of the Aerospace Partnership to discuss future working and various aligned initiatives for the three Institutions.
Volunteers were also busy in July attending the Royal International Air Tattoo at Fairford to promote the TPN alongside volunteers form the Swindon Network who were showcasing various displays and promoting STEM to young people and their parents. They also attended ADS Futures Day at Farnborough where they had the opportunity to talk to students about a career in Aerospace. Other volunteers participated in the IMechE UAS Challenge as judges.
One of the key areas we are looking to address in the TPN is committee recruitment and we currently looking for volunteers from the airline industry and also the armed forces for our Executive team. The Young Professionals Group is also seeking volunteers from any area of the Aerospace profession/academia. We would particularly welcome volunteers who are able to contribute proactively to our Engineering Community group. If you are interested in joining the Executive Team or YP Group, please contact me.
Finally, don’t forget to read David and Lee’s joint blog and I hope to see you at one of the forthcoming Aerospace events.
Deborah-Claire McKenzie
Community Manager, Aerospace Network