WFH Profile: Nikhil Pillai

Remote working is certainly an interesting concept when operating within the rail industry. In our series of Working From Home (WFH) Profiles, our YRP members describe how they are embracing this concept and adapting their collaborative methods to ensure that they deliver to their respective roles. This week, our WFH Profile has been submitted by Nikhil Pillai.

Nikhil Pillai - PhD student, Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education group

YRP: Regional Chair, West Midlands

Earlier this year, I was a part of a delegation from Young Rail Tours who visited Japan to get to know more about the railways and the local culture there. We had a fantastic time travelling across four major Japanese cities, Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima and Kyoto. By the time we got back, the situation in the UK had become serious and witnessed the beginning of the social distancing period in the UK.

I am a PhD student at the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education group at the University of Birmingham. We are one of Europe’s biggest Railway research organisations, with around 140 researchers and the current situation has brought some interesting changes to the way we work.

The University of Birmingham are the lead partner of the UK Rail Research and Innovation Network (UKRRIN) consortium and we were to move into our new home, the newly constructed Digital Systems Innovation Centre in the middle of the year. This has now been postponed, with all of us working from the comfort of our homes for now. Video conferencing applications such as Zoom and Skype have helped us keep in touch with our respective teams and continue collaborating for the research work that we’re doing.

What has this meant for my research and how has it been affected?

My research looks at using numerical simulation to predict different faults in railway Switches and Crossings (S&Cs). It is mainly simulation based and utilises applications requiring high performance computing. The University have responded very well to this situation by making Remote desktop available to all its researchers, which includes our computer cluster/supercomputer. So, I have been able to work on my simulations from the comfort of my home, remotely through the desktop based at my workplace or through the university’s supercomputer without compensating on computational power!

Given the interruptions to their research, this has been an excellent opportunities for researchers to reflect on their research, work on publishing their findings and for PhD students to begin writing up their thesis. 

At Birmingham University’s Graduate School, Doctoral Researchers look forward to two major events, the Research Poster conference and Three Minute thesis presentation competition. An average PhD thesis would take nine hours to present, those of us who took part in the competition had three! This is less than the threshold of 5 minutes, which is the number used to determine our trains being on time. The competition consisted of 25 entries who to compete in the heats and I was delighted to be one of the top 10 presenters who have graduated on to the finals after the heats, given that this year’s competition would go down as being unique since it is being done over our video conferencing application.

Since the end of last year, I have been the Team Principal/Student Lead for the University of Birmingham’s IMechE Railway Challenge team. Traditionally, we have been one of the most innovative teams to take part in the Railway challenge. The Birmingham team in the past introduced the UK’s first Hydrogen powered locomotive, the miniature Hydrogen Hero, which was the manifestation of our research. This year we are working on a new prototype and trialling a new concept using digital technologies, which will again be first of its kind to be trialled at the Railway challenge.

As a part of the competition, we even won a grant from the IMechE, which was to contribute towards the development of our locomotive. The live event has been cancelled for this year, but this hasn’t stopped our team’s passion for the concept and we have continued having our weekly meetings over video conferencing, further developing our prototype to put on a good show next year!

As newly elected Regional Chair of YRP West Midlands, along with my team of passionate young railway professionals, I manage YRP’s operations in the West Midlands region. We have seen a difference in the way we host events, our first regional event of the year is going to be a webinar on Railway Signalling systems which aims at informing professionals about the history and the future of one of the most important elements of our railway network. Our events, which have traditionally been attended by YRP members from our local area, can be now accessed by our members across the country, delivering a rich learning experience for all!

I am proud to be a part of two organisations involved in knowledge creation and transfer to the next generation of professionals. This has been a challenging time for all of us and after this situation, we would come out stronger having experienced a different way of conducting our professional lives and hopefully continue keeping sustainability at the core of conducting business.