Wednesday the 13th of November 2019 was the IET Innovation Awards evening, held at the glamorous Brewery, London.

The Information Technology award was hotly contested, with teams from Yale, Princeton and Cambridge Universities being shortlisted. Heriot-Watt’s Smart System Group was being represented by Dr. Valentin Robu as co-director of the Network Constraints Early Warning System (NCEWS) team, a collaboration with SPEN, also co-directed by Prof. David Flynn. NCEWS was judged to have the most significant contribution and Valentin collected the prize for Information Technology. The NCEWS is a software platform which uses large-scale smart meter/asset data. Machine learning was used to extract information about missing cable assets and voltage excursions, which enables a high degree of predictive accuracy, even if, as often the case, some data is missing.

The Transport award was awarded to Prof. Mercedes Maroto-Valer and her team from Heriot-Watt University, working at the Research Centre for Carbon Solutions. Their award wining innovation allows for the production of low carbon jet fuels, by utilising carbon dioxide and wood pellets from waste biomass and a combination of co-electrolysis to produce a jet fuel that is negative in carbon dioxide emissions compared to conventional jet fuel (A1) pathways.

To complete Heriot-Watt Univeristy’s hat trick Maizura and Valentin picked up the IET Innovation award ceremony’s main prize the E&T Innovation prize for 2019.

A huge congratulations to all who worked so hard to achieve these amazing accomplishments and we’ll surely be hearing more about this in the next E&T issue.