Birmingham, 14/10/2018

Hello,

I'm delighted to announce that we have established The Optical Diagnostics in Combustion (ODAC) Lab at the University of Birmingham. This is my first Principal Investigator role and I am well aware that I have to work hard to make this lab produce success. On this long and twisted journey, it's always good to know that I will not walk alone. The esteemed members of Mechanical Engineering Department at The Univesity of Birmingham – including my faculty co-workers, research fellows, graduate students and also undergraduate students – will partake in the efforts to make this lab operational, productive and a leader in our field.

In this kick-off announcement, I want to give some insights about the name and logo of our lab. For us, there are two key research areas: optics and combustion, which I describe as a bewitched tool and a fueling passion, respectively. In the most compact and simple way, we mentioned our key research areas in our name without too much wordiness: The Optical Diagnostics in Combustion (ODAC) Lab. ODAC (ˈəʊdæk) means "focus" in Turkish, a key terminology in the field of optics. In a satirical fashion, the "O" (optical) in our logo is de-focused. This reminds us everyday that we have to be sharp and careful to produce excellent research on our way to be one of the leading labs.

Our research will not be limited to diagnostics in combustion sciences. In the years to come, we are hoping to expand our research into optical diagnostics in process engineering, battery and fuelcell production, catalytic conversion, biomedical sciences and materials processing.

We hope you find our group website useful.

Best regards,

Dr. Emre Cenker