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Atkins (United Kingdom)

Atkins (United Kingdom)

58 Projects, page 1 of 12
  • Funder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: EP/S023305/1
    Funder Contribution: 6,140,640 GBP

    We will train a cohort of 65 PhD students to tackle the challenge of Data Creativity for the 21st century digital economy. In partnership with over 40 industry and academic partners, our students will establish the technologies and methods to enable producers and consumers to co-create smarter products in smarter ways and so establish trust in the use of personal data. Data is widely recognised by industry as being the 'fuel' that powers the economy. However, the highly personal nature of much data has raised concerns about privacy and ownership that threaten to undermine consumers' trust. Unlocking the economic potential of personal data while tackling societal concerns demands a new approach that balances the ability to innovate new products with building trust and ensuring compliance with a complex regulatory framework. This requires PhD students with a deep appreciation of the capabilities of emerging technology, the ability to innovate new products, but also an understanding of how this can be done in a responsible way. Our approach to this challenge is one of Data Creativity - enabling people to take control of their data and exercise greater agency by becoming creative consumers who actively co-create more trusted products. Driven by the needs of industry, public sector and third sector partners who have so far committed £1.6M of direct and £2.8M of in kind funding, we will explore multiple sectors including Fast Moving Consumer Goods and Food; Creative Industries; Health and Wellbeing; Personal Finance; and Smart Mobility and how it can unlock synergies between these. Our partners also represent interests in enabling technologies and the cross cutting concerns of privacy and security. Each student will work with industry, public, third sector or international partners to ensure that their research is grounded in real user needs, maximising its impact while also enhancing their future employability. External partners will be involved in PhD co-design, supervision, training, providing resources, hosting placements, setting industry-led challenge projects and steering. Addressing the challenges of Data Creativity demands a multi-disciplinary approach that combines expertise in technology development and human-centred methods with domain expertise across key sectors of the economy. Our students will be situated within Horizon, a leading centre for Digital Economy research and a vibrant environment that draws together a national research Hub, CDT and a network of over 100 industry, academic and international partners. We currently provide access to a network of >80 potential supervisors, ranging from leading Professors to talented early career researchers. This extends to academic partners at other Universities who will be involved in co-hosting and supervising our students, including the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University. We run an integrated four-year training programme that features: a bespoke core covering key topics in Future Products, Enabling Technologies, Innovation and Responsibility; optional advanced specialist modules; internship and international exchanges; industry-led challenge projects; training in research methods and professional skills; modules dedicated to the PhD proposal, planning and write up; and many opportunities for cross-cohort collaboration including our annual industry conference, retreat and summer schools. Our Impact Fund supports students in deepening the impact of their research. Horizon has EDI considerations embedded throughout, from consideration of equal opportunities in recruitment to ensuring that we deliver an inclusive environment which supports diversity of needs and backgrounds in the student experience.

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  • Funder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: EP/S023801/1
    Funder Contribution: 6,732,970 GBP

    This proposal is for a new EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Wind and Marine Energy Systems and Structures (CDT-WAMSS) which joins together two successful EPSRC CDTs, their industrial partners and strong track records of training more than 130 researchers to date in offshore renewable energy (ORE). The new CDT will create a comprehensive, world-leading centre covering all aspects of wind and marine renewable energy, both above and below the water. It will produce highly skilled industry-ready engineers with multidisciplinary expertise, deep specialist knowledge and a broad understanding of pertinent whole-energy systems. Our graduates will be future leaders in industry and academia world-wide, driving development of the ORE sector, helping to deliver the Government's carbon reduction targets for 2050 and ensuring that the UK remains at the forefront of this vitally important sector. In order to prepare students for the sector in which they will work, CDT-WAMSS will look to the future and focus on areas that will be relevant from 2023 onwards, which are not necessarily the issues of the past and present. For this reason, the scope of CDT-WAMSS will, in addition to in-stilling a solid understanding of wind and marine energy technologies and engineering, have a particular emphasis on: safety and safe systems, emerging advanced power and control technologies, floating substructures, novel foundation and anchoring systems, materials and structural integrity, remote monitoring and inspection including autonomous intervention, all within a cost competitive and environmentally sensitive context. The proposed new EPSRC CDT in Wind and Marine Energy Systems and Structures will provide an unrivalled Offshore Renewable Energy training environment supporting 70 students over five cohorts on a four-year doctorate, with a critical mass of over 100 academic supervisors of internationally recognised research excellence in ORE. The distinct and flexible cohort approach to training, with professional engineering peer-to-peer learning both within and across cohorts, will provide students with opportunities to benefit from such support throughout their doctorate, not just in the first year. An exceptionally strong industrial participation through funding a large number of studentships and provision of advice and contributions to the training programme will ensure that the training and research is relevant and will have a direct impact on the delivery of the UK's carbon reduction targets, allowing the country to retain its world-leading position in this enormously exciting and important sector.

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  • Funder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: NE/N01295X/1
    Funder Contribution: 148,257 GBP

    As a first stage in the analysis of storm surge risks to UK port infrastructure and supply chain operation, this project aims to improve the resilience of the port of Immingham and its critical biomass/coal transport link to power stations. The project includes the following three activities: WF1: To refine and operationalize an innovative artificial neural network (ANN) extreme sea-level prediction model (NE/M008150/1) for application at Immingham (with potential application for other UK ports, especially within estuaries). WF2: To translate predicted surge height and duration to risks to infrastructure (equipment, facilities) and operations (i.e. impacts on biomass/coal flows) through stakeholder engagement. WF3: Incorporate railway infrastructure and freight train movements to UCL's MARS model (used in NE/M008150/1) to predict the cascading impacts on the power sector.

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  • Funder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: EP/P02081X/1
    Funder Contribution: 4,851,940 GBP

    The vision of RM4L is that, by 2022 we will have achieved a transformation in construction materials, using the biomimetic approach first adopted in M4L, to create materials that will adapt to their environment, develop immunity to harmful actions, self-diagnose the on-set of deterioration and self-heal when damaged. This innovative research into smart materials will engender a step-change in the value placed on infrastructure materials and provide a much higher level of confidence and reliability in the performance of our infrastructure systems. The ambitious programme of inter-related work is divided into four Research Themes (RTs); RT1: Self-healing of cracks at multiple scales, RT2: Self-healing of time-dependent and cyclic loading damage, RT3: Self-diagnosis and immunisation against physical damage, and RT4: Self-diagnosis and healing of chemical damage. These bring together the four complementary technology areas of self-diagnosis (SD); self-immunisation and self-healing (SH); modelling and tailoring; and scaling up to address a diverse range of applications such as cast in-situ, precast, repair systems, overlays and geotechnical systems. Each application will have a nominated 'champion' to ensure viable solutions are developed. There are multiple inter-relationships between the Themes. The nature of the proposed research will be highly varied and encompass, amongst other things, fundamental physico-chemical actions of healing systems, flaws in potentially viable SH systems; embryonic and high-risk ideas for SH and SD; and underpinning mathematical models and optimisation studies for combined self-diagnosing/self-healing/self-immunisation systems. Industry, including our industrial partners throughout the construction supply chain and those responsible for the provision, management and maintenance of the world's built environment infrastructure will be the main beneficiaries of this project. We will realise our vision by addressing applications that are directly informed by these industrial partners. By working with them across the supply chain and engaging with complementary initiatives such as UKCRIC, we will develop a suite of real life demonstration projects. We will create a network for Early Career Researchers (ECRs) in this field which will further enhance the diversity and reach of our existing UK Virtual Centre of Excellence for intelligent, self-healing construction materials. We will further exploit established relationships with the international community to maximise impact and thereby generate new initiatives in a wide range of related research areas, e.g. bioscience (bacteria); chemistry (SH agents); electrochemical science (prophylactics); computational mechanics (tailoring and modelling); material science and engineering (nano-structures, polymer composites); sensors and instrumentation and advanced manufacturing. Our intention is to exploit the momentum in outreach achieved during the M4L project and advocate our work and the wider benefits of EPRSC-funded research through events targeted at the general public and private industry. The academic impact of this research will be facilitated through open-access publications in high-impact journals and by engagement with the wider research community through interdisciplinary networks, conferences, seminars and workshops.

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  • Funder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: EP/N022947/1
    Funder Contribution: 453,076 GBP

    Historic rock-mounted lighthouses play a vital role in the safe navigation around perilous reefs. However their longevity is threatened by the battering of waves which may be set to increase with climate change. Virtual navigational aids such as GPS are fallible, and reliance on them can be disastrous. Mariners will therefore continue to need the physical visual aids of these strategic structures. The loss of any reef lighthouse will be incalculable in terms of safety, trade and heritage. Plymouth University has trialled the use of recording instruments to capture limited information on the loading and response of Eddystone Lighthouse, with the support of the General Lighthouse Authorities (GLAs) having legal responsibility to safeguard aids to marine navigation around the British Isles. The study evaluated the extreme logistical constraints of lighthouse operations and the feasibility of using instrumentation to understand the response of the lighthouse to wave loads, with results strongly encouraging a comprehensive study of the load and response environment. Hence a full-scale project is proposed whereby field, laboratory and mathematical/computer modelling methods, novel both individually and collectively, will be used to assess six of the most vulnerable rock lighthouses in the UK and Ireland. Depending on the findings the investigation will then focus on extended full-scale evaluation of one lighthouse for the following two winters. The field instrumentation run by University of Exeter, and which will include modal testing and long term instrumentation will require novel procedures and technologies to be created to deal with the challenging environmental and logistical constraints e.g. of access, timing power. The modal test data will be used to guide the creation, by UCL, of sophisticated multi-scale numerical simulations of lighthouses that can be used with the data to diagnose observed performance in the long-term monitoring. The numerical structural model will also be linked with advanced physical modelling at Plymouth University's COAST Laboratory, and numerical (computational fluid dynamic) simulations. Finally, based on the structural and wave loading models, the long term monitoring will be used to characterize the wave loading in-situ at full scale. Outcomes of the project will be used to inform the comprehensive structural health monitoring of other lighthouses both in the British Isles and further afield through the International Association of Lighthouse Authorities. This will lead to the identification of structural distress and reduction in the risk of failure through preventative measures. Methods developed will also be of relevance to other masonry structures under wave loads so the project team includes a number of industrial partners: AECOM, Atkins, HR Wallingford and the Environment Agency who have interests in this area. As the UK has a large number of ageing coastal defences whose vulnerability to wave load was demonstrated in the winter 2013/14 storms, the applicability of the STORMLAMP findings to these structures is an important additional benefit of the project.

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