nCATS student wins prestigious Materials Literature Review Prize
nCATS student Martin Evans has won the prestigious Materials Literature Review Prize & Masterclass 2011, competing in the final against five other finalists from Oxford University, Cambridge University, Imperial College London and Southampton University. The Materials Literature Review Prize is an annual competition run by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3), with sponsorship from the UK Centre for Materials Education (UKCME), and carries an honorarium for the winner of £1,000.
The Prize aims to encourage definitive, succinct and critical reviews of literature as an essential part of study for a higher degree, and make the best of these available to a wider readership. In addition, the Prize requires that the review is written by the finalist alone, with minimal participation by supervisors. After an initial submission to the Prize by participants last October, Martin Evans was short listed as a finalist and was consequently invited to produce a 7000 word review paper draft for submission in February. Finalists attended a Masterclass in March hosted by the Institute in London, where six associate editors witnessed each finalist's presentation of their review topic, and subsequently feedback was given to each finalists' review paper draft. The final review paper submission was made in May, and was judged by a panel appointed by the Editorial Board of the Institute's journal Materials Science and Technology (MST), chaired by the Editor Professor John Knott OBE FRS FREng.
Martin comments: "The competition pushes you far further in the writing of a definitive and succinct review than you would normally be prepared to go. The hardest element was keeping to the 7000 word count, but at the same time keeping it a self contained review that covers all areas of your topic with sufficient depth. The whole process has really helped me get my head around theories and formation mechanisms discussed in literature, but most importantly it has enabled identification of the knowledge gaps, which is integral to my testing programme and PhD as a whole."
After a reviewing process, Martin will be the sole author of a review paper entitled ‘Butterflies and white etching cracks (WEC) causing white structure flaking (WSF) in wind turbine gearbox bearings' and will be published in one of the Institute's leading journals. Further details on the Prize and how to enter this autumn for next years can be found at http://www.maney.co.uk/index.php/materials-lrp .