International Materials Education Symposium 2025

Call for Abstracts (Talks / Posters) for IMES 2025, April 10th - 11th with preceding workshops on April 9th, 2025 is OPEN

Registrations and submission of abstracts for an oral or a poster presentation are now open (See Important Dates below).

IMES 2025 Tentative Session Themes

The Scientific Committee would like to invite participants to share their ideas and experiences relating to:

• Innovative teaching practices
• Sustainability in the curriculum
• How to develop talents for future industry and employment
• AI/ML/LLM in materials teaching and assessment
• Social responsibility/outreach in communities
• Teaching of novel and emerging materials and what strategies can be used
• Inclusive teaching; how should teaching respond to increasing diversity in how students learn, better understanding of neuro-diversity etc.
• Course design, authentic assessment

Please submit your abstract to:

Abstracts should be no more than 200 - 300 words and ideally contain the following:

• Background and motivation
• What was done? Methods used and why?
• Results, i.e., include some evidence and analysis. What was found?
• Conclusions and significance, including wider application

Important Dates

• 1st October 2024 – Call for abstracts
• 2nd December 2024 – Talk Abstract deadline

• 16th of December 2024 – Speakers notification
• 30th January 2025 – Early Bird Deadline
• 1st February 2025 – Poster Abstract Deadline

Notes on Payments and Discount Codes

• The registration fees for this event vary based on your chosen participation, allowing flexibility to select options such as the insightful 2-day symposium, engaging 1-day workshop, and the delightful symposium dinner, ensuring attendees can tailor their experience to suit their preferences.
• ‘EARLY-BIRD’ code: Early bird registration ends at midnight BST on Thursday, January 30th, 2025.
• ‘EARLY-CAREER’ code: Early-career discount is aiming to encouraging young academics under 35 who are starting to teach in universities to come and share their experiences. To combine with the early-bird discount, please use the code ‘EARLY-CAREER+EARLY-BIRD’, which will end at midnight BST on ’ code: Early bird registration ends at midnight BST on Thursday, January 30th, 2025.
• ‘PhD-S’ code: PhD Symposium discount is aiming to encouraging PhD candidates who are supporting teaching in universities to come, share their experiences and learn from the community.
• ‘PhD-W+S’ code: PhD Workshop+Symposium discount is aiming to encouraging PhD candidates who are supporting teaching in universities to come, join the workshops, share their experiences and learn from the community.

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View a list of eligible nationalities and how to apply

Three workshops will be organized on the day preceeding the conference, April 9th. All workshops have limited capacity and are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Be sure to register early to secure your spot! The following topics will be covered:

1. Teaching Materials with Ansys Granta EduPack™ Level 1 - 16 seats available

Instructors: Kaitlin Tyler & Claes Fredriksson

From space shuttles to hip implants to toothbrushes, every physical product is made from materials. Engineering and design students need to understand how materials compare to one another and how best to choose the right material for the application.

Ansys Granta EduPack™ is a teaching software for materials education. Designed to enhance student learning, Granta EduPack includes a database of materials and process information, materials selection tools and a range of supporting resources.

In this workshop, attendees will learn the basic functions of Granta EduPack, explore materials selection via the Ashby Selection Methodology, and develop their own short activity to implement in their courses right away.

Access to Granta EduPack will be provided in the workshop- no need to bring a personal computer. No previous experience with Granta EduPack is required.

Free assessment and certification are available after completion of this workshop.

2. Teaching Sustainable Product Design with Ansys Tools Level 1 - 8 seats available

Instructors: Wen Zhao & Harriet Parnell

In pursuit of realizing a responsible production (United Nations Sustainable Development Goal No.12) of goods, sustainability considerations are becoming indispensable in an engineer’s decision-making process throughout the product development.

Holistic product design must consider the functional, geometric, and material needs as well as environmental impact. This can be challenging to teach to students, especially when various degree programs often focus on specific portions of the design process more than others. To support this, we have developed a Sustainable Product Design (SPD) Methodology, which combines materials selection (building on the Ashby Selection Methodology), functional and geometric analysis via simulation, and a simplified LCA and trade-off analysis.

In this workshop, attendees will implement the SPD methodology utilizing Ansys Granta EduPack™ (a teaching software for materials education) and Ansys Discovery™ (a 3D product simulation software) and explore how to implement this in their existing courses.

Access to Granta EduPack and Discovery will be provided in the workshop- no need to bring a personal computer. Previous experience with Granta EduPack is recommended, but not required. No previous experience with Discovery is required.

Free assessment and certification are available after completion of this workshop.

3.The social dimension of sustainability with Ansys Granta EduPack™ and the Social Impact Audit Tool - 16 seats available

Instructors: Tatiana Vakhitova, Nicolas Martin, & Piers Ireland

Sustainability is a complex topic to teach, involving many aspects related to the Natural, Human & Social, and Manufacturing capitals. One area that can be overlooked is the social dimension of sustainability.

In this workshop, we will provide tools and knowledge on how to support students being decision-makers with a holistic view on sustainability. The foundation of this workshop is Ashby’s 5-Step Methodology for Sustainability Assessment, a well-established active-learning approach to introducing sustainable thinking in the classroom. Two tools will be used to aid in implementing this methodology. The first is Ansys Granta EduPack™, a teaching software for materials education that is often used in this methodology for fact-finding and decision making. The second is the Social Impact Audit Tool (SIAT), which helps to enhance students’ understanding of social impact along a product’s life cycle. First developed in 2019 as an excel-based tool, a web-based app of the SIAT is scheduled to be released in 2025 and will be the main format used in this workshop. The new app follows UN Social-LCA Guidelines (2009, 2020) and when combined with Granta EduPack saves time on data research, data visualization, and analytics. Details on practical curriculum enhancement recommendations and shared experiences from fellow academics will be included.

To access Granta EduPack and the Social Impact Audit Tool app for the workshop, please bring a personal computer that can run Windows (Mac running Windows via Bootcamp or Parallels will work). Previous experience with Granta EduPack is recommended, but not required.

The Materials Education Symposia philosophy

• To share ideas, innovations, experiences, successes and failures

• To provoke productive discussion around these issues

• To expand the links that form such a key feature of the Materials Community

The symposia foster an atmosphere of community amongst educators involved in teaching undergraduate materials science across disciplines including engineering, design, and science.

IMES 2025 Scientific Committee

• Jess Gwynne, University of Cambridge
• Claes Fredriksson, Ansys Academic Program (Secretary)
• Paloma Fernández Sánchez, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
• Joel Galos, California Polytechnic State University
• Kathryn Jackson, University of Sheffield
• Alison Harvey, University of Manchester

Please feel free to reach out to: if you have any questions. We look forward to seeing you in Cambridge in April 2025.

Host or Publisher Ansys Inc. with University of Cambridge