The Cornish Award 2024 was awarded to Professor Ahmed Kovacevic and Dr William Milligan

The Cornish Award 2024 was awarded to Professor Ahmed Kovacevic, FREng from City, University of London and Dr William Milligan from Howden Compressors in recognition of the success of the excellent cooperation across the teams that they lead over many years, which has resulted in significant advancement in the field through better simulation and measurement and its application to creating new and better compressor technology, resulting in significant benefits for the company and for UK industry.

Cornish Award by the Institute of Measurements and Control (InstMC) sponsored by the Worshipful Company of Scientific Instrument Makers (WCSIM) is given to an individual, group or company that has exceeded in some dimension of scientific instrument making with industry, academia, national or international laboratories.

This partnership with industry was recognised by the UK funding bodies which granted several co-funded projects from Scottish Enterprise and the Royal Academy of Engineering as well as numerous prizes and awards.

Prof Kovacevic said: “We are thankful to the Institute of Measurements and Control and the Worshipful Company of Scientific Instrument makers for recognising our efforts to integrate Howden’s Digital Data Advantage that look into the digital features of rotating machinery with the advanced fibre optics sensors based on Fibre Bragg Grating from the Research Centre for Photonics and Instrumentation and the advanced screw compressor technology from the Centre for Compressor Technology at City, University of London. Within the project SECRET (Smart Efficient Compression: Reliability and Energy Targets) funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering and Howden, this integration has enabled us to move technology of oil free screw compressors forward which lead to reduction of leakage losses by 20% and improved reliability of these machines. This has advanced not only Howden’s offerings of compressors in hydrogen economy and industrial heat pumps,  but also wider UK economy towards challenging Net0 targets.”