It’s that time of year again and campuses are filling up with new students across the UK.

In anticipation of this, twenty academics from far and wide converged on the BLOODHOUND SSC base at the University of the West of England Bristol on Tuesday 15th September for the kick-off of the BLOODHOUND@University Special Interest Group, funded by the Higher Education Academy (http://www.engsc.ac.uk/). Participants from Coventry University, Open University, University of Westminster, Cranfield University, University of Hertfordshire and the MIA Motorsport Educator’s Forum attended, along with a strong BH contingent from UWE, Swansea and Southampton Universities.

John Lanham from UWE launched us off with a great intro to BLOODHOUND@University and what we’re about – using BLOODHOUND SSC to carry on the excitement from schools right through Uni. Ben Evans, our CFD guru from Swansea, then spent almost an hour bringing us right up-to-date on the engineering progress [picture left]. The latest and greatest configuration was unveiled, giving everyone a real insight into the direction of the car design  This stimulated masses of interest, as it always does, and ideas started flying around the room from everybody!

The BH engineering team joined us for lunch and a chance to talk technical with the assembled throng before we all headed down to the RAMP lab to see the awesome full-size mock-up. Some great conversations were had between the academics and BH folks, this was clearly a meeting of great minds. The afternoon was facilitated by Kenji Takeda from Southampton, and was spent shaping the BH@Uni programme, defining what is wanted from everyone: case studies, project data, project briefs, dissemination/communication, and research. Over the next few weeks we’ll be putting together a detailed programme of work to get Uni students and staff closely involved with BLOODHOUND SSC, delving into the detail of the project in a unique way that is simply not possible in other commercial aerospace, automotive and racing endeavours.

Thanks to all for making this a great day! If you are at Uni and want to get involved then please email Dan Johns ([email protected]) and remember the 1K Club is the best way to become part of the adventure!