Doctoral Training Partnerships: a range of postgraduate training is funded by the Research Councils. For information on current funding routes, see the common terminology at https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-fund-studentships/. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.

Doctoral Training Partnerships: a range of postgraduate training is funded by the Research Councils. For information on current funding routes, see the common terminology at https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-fund-studentships/. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.

The proposed EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Sensor Technologies in an Uncertain World (Sensor CDT) will educate leaders who can effectively address the challenges of an increasingly uncertain, complex, and interconnected world. In recent years, society has faced a global pandemic, an energy crisis, and the consequences of war and the climate crisis. Sensor technologies play a vital role in addressing these challenges. They are essential tools for detecting changes in the world, protecting livelihoods, and improving well-being. Accurate sensory data are crucial for informing the public and enabling governments and policymakers to make evidence-based decisions. The new Sensor CDT is designed to train and inspire future sensor leaders with interdisciplinary and agile thinking skills to meet these challenges. Our students will learn to collaborate within and across cohorts, and co-create solutions with key stakeholders, including other scientists, industry partners, the third sector, and the public. The fully integrated 4-year Master + PhD program will be co-delivered by over 80 leading academics, over 25 industrial partners, and national research and policy agencies, and will cover the entire sensor value chain, from development over deployment and maintenance to end-of-life including middleware, and big data. Within the broader theme of uncertainty, we have identified three Focus Areas: I) Uncertainty in Sensory Data. According to the environmental sensor report published by UKRI in 2022, "data quality remains a major concern that hinders the widespread adoption of low-cost sensor technology". Through bespoke training in measurement science, statistical methods and AI, our students will learn to determine data quality and interpret imperfect, uncertain and constantly changing data. By acquiring hands-on design and prototyping skills and familiarising themselves with ubiquitous open technology platforms, they will learn how to construct more accurate and reliable sensors. II) Sensors in an Uncertain World. Environmental, economic and social uncertainties disproportionately impact low- and mid-income countries. Through collaboration with academic partners and policy agencies, the students will explore the impact of these interconnected uncertainties and pathways through which they can be mitigated by deploying low-cost sensor technologies. III) Uncertainty in Industry. UK industries deal with uncertainties in supply chains, variable process conditions and feedstocks, and they are subject to changing regulatory guidelines. Sensor data are critical to minimise the effect of such uncertainties on the quality of products and services. Through the provision of training in technical skills, systems thinking, leadership, and project management, our students will learn to innovate on rapidly changing timelines, and to work increasingly in collaboration and synergy with stakeholders in commerce and the public. Whilst prevention of future disasters is important, we recognise an increasing need to create resilience in a world facing rapid, often irreversible, change. Solutions must be co-created with society. The CDT will equip students with the confidence to collaborate across a range of fields, including arts and social sciences, skills that cannot be acquired in traditional, single student / single discipline PhD programmes. Finally, our programme will address a skills gap identified by UK industry and academia, who report a growing problem in recruiting suitably qualified candidates with the skills, disciplinary breadth and leadership qualities needed to drive innovation in the sensor field. In the UK alone, the sensor market contributes to ~£6bn in exports, underpins ~70,000 jobs, and connects to a global market estimated to reach £500bn in 2032 (Sensors KTN). Providing the skilled talent for the UK to succeed in this rapidly growing and competitive sector is a crucial goal of our programme.

Maintaining sustainable productivity of pharmaceutical research and development is one of the most significant challenges faced by this major UK industry. Pre-clinical models for testing drug safety and efficacy are poorly predictive of human response, making our ability to translate new scientific discovery to impactful therapy extremely costly and time consuming. Organ-chips are small, bioengineered devices which replicate important aspects of human health and disease, and thus provide the predictivity of human response required to transform therapeutic delivery. The organ-chip industry is one of the fastest growing worldwide, as the transformative potential of organ-chip technology is realised. For the UK to ensure ongoing growth and productivity of the pharmaceutical industry, it is imperative we deliver a workforce able to advance this technology and bring it into use, to drive successful healthcare innovation. COaCT sets a transformative vision to bring together the full stakeholder community in organ-chip technology, to collectively develop and deliver a training programme designed to equip graduates with the skills and knowledge required to be the next generation of leaders in organ-chip technology and advance the technology into regulatory use. We focus on three core areas: 1. delivering the technical skills required to design, manufacture and advance organ-chip models: Organ-chip models are microfluidic devices, in which the physics of managing organ growth and drug delivery are different to those in standard cell cultures. We provide training to ensure students understand how to work with a wide range of commercial organ-chip systems and build their own devices, appreciating the specific biosensing, nano-patterning, mechanobiology, microfluidics and microfabrication requirement of organ-chip systems, and the rationale and decision making associated with selecting different approaches, so they are fully prepared to work across the sector in future roles. 2. ensuring students are equipped with the broader understanding of the societal implications of the technology, and the regulatory and policy changes which will be necessary to ensure impactful delivery. There is clear potential for organ-chip approaches to revolutionise therapeutic discovery, but for the technology to achieve its potential, it is imperative that the field fully considers and responds to the societal and regulatory environment as it evolves and develops, thus our future leaders must be fully trained in this area. 3. providing a focus on transferable skills training, to help students develop into effective future leaders in this field: The rapid growth of organ-chip technology offers exciting future opportunities for researchers shaping the field. To be effective in driving the field, it is important graduates possess the transferable skills to lead teams and companies designing or implementing organ-chip technology, and are able to communicate effectively with the broad range of stakeholders involved. Our stakeholder community brings together the pharmaceutical and organ-chip industries, varied medicine-related regulatory bodies, policy groups, and charities, all with a strong commitment to deliver organ-chip technology. The COaCT investigator team have been leading the efforts of this stakeholder community to coordinate and drive organ-chip research for the last 5 years, though leadership of the UK organ-on-a-chip technologies network. Indeed, the ideas for the CDT scope and training remit have been developed collectively through those discussion panels and workshops.

Digital twins are a fusion of digital technologies considered by many leading advocates to be revolutionary in nature. Digital twins offer exciting new possibilities across a wide range of sectors from health, environment, transport, manufacturing, defence, and infrastructure. By connecting the virtual and physical worlds (e.g. cyber-physcial), digital twins are able to better support decisions, extend operational lives, and introduce multiple other efficiencies and benefits. As a result, digital twins have been identified by government, professional bodies and industry, as a key technology to help address many of the societal challenges we face. To date, digital twin (DT) innovation has been strongly driven by industry practitioners and commercial innovators. As would be expected with any early-adoption approach, projects have been bespoke & often isolated, and so there is a need for research to increase access, lower entry costs and develop interconnectivity. Furthermore, there are several major gaps in underpinning academic research relating to DT. The academic push has been significantly lagging behind the industry pull. As a result, there is an urgent need for a network that will fill gaps in the underpinning research for topics such as; uncertainty, interoperability, scaling, governance & societal effects. In terms of existing networking activities, there are several industry-led user groups and domain-specific consortia. However, there has never been a dedicated academic-led DT network that brings together academic research teams across the entire remit of UKRI with user-led groups. DTNet+ will address this gap with a consortium which has both sufficient breadth and depth to deliver transformative change.