MAPP Lecture Series Inaugural talk - Professor Richard Leach

Richard Leach, Professor of Metrology at the University of Nottingham, will give the inaugural talk in the MAPP Lecture Series.

Title: 'Enriching additive manufacturing metrology'.

Prof Leach spent 25 years at the National Physical Laboratory before moving to the University of Nottingham. He obtained a PhD in Surface Metrology from the University of Warwick in 2000 and a DSc from Warwick in 2014. The talk addresses a new approach to metrology which can help to solve some of the outstanding issues in additive (and more generally, digital) manufacturing. 

Abstract

Additive manufacturing allows us to manufacture highly complex geometries – a bonus for designers but a headache for metrologists. Prof Leach’s research is dominated by what he calls "information-rich metrology (IRM)": the enhancement of manufacturing metrology through the use of a priori information, often utilising concepts from artificial intelligence.

IRM refers to a philosophy of thought, where the conventional paradigm of measurement (measurement information gathered solely through the physical interaction of the instrument with the measured object) is transcended, thanks to the introduction and active role of multiple novel sources of information.

Biography

Prof Leach is on the Council of the European Society of Precision Engineering and Nanotechnology, the International Committee on Measurements and Instrumentation and several international standards committees. He is the European Editor-in-Chief for Precision Engineering. He has over 350 publications including five textbooks. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, the Institution of Engineering & Technology, the International Society of Nanomanufacturing and a Sustained Member of the American Society of Precision Engineering. He is a visiting professor at Loughborough University and the Harbin Institute of Technology.