Our Chancellor, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, KG, KT, visited the Department in June. He was shown our computing facilities and research projects in nanotechnology, speech recognition, motorway bridges and deployable structures. He unveiled a plaque in the Language Unit commemorating the benefactors whose generosity made its founding possible. The Chancellor was keenly interested in all that he saw, and left with a very favourable impression.

The theme of this year's CUEA conference -to be held on 23 September - is Engineering Design for Wealth Creation. Sir Kenneth Corfield will be Chairman for the day and the Rt Hon Michael Heseltine is delivering the keynote speech. Other speakers include the Chairman of the Design Council, council members and visiting professors from the Royal Academy of Engineering, staff and research students from our own Engineering Design Centre and consultants from Caterpillar UK and Rolls-Royce Plc, with whom we have joint design research projects. A report on the conference will be in the next issue of enginuity.

Two building projects will soon he underway. The first will be a new floor on the roof of the north wing of Baker Building. This will house electronics research facilities with special provision for artificial intelligence, neural networks and speech recognition. The second will be an extension to the Whittle Laboratory for staff and research student accommodation to enhance the turbomachinery research programme.

Prof A N Broers