Our primary vision has two elements:

First: to produce outstanding, internationally competitive research engineers who will change the world. These engineers will flourish because of: (i) the quality of training experience offered; (ii) the compelling and inspiring context of the subject area; and (iii) the influences brought about by working closely with industrial partners and a community of aligned but cross-disciplinary researchers.

Second (but equally important): we will inspire, design and execute research projects bringing significant, positive changes in UK industry in terms of international competitiveness, profitability, skill uplift of personnel, sustainability and resilience. 

Climate change, disease, terrorism, environmental disasters, economic chaos, food and fuel security, aging infrastructure and a growing and aging population present major challenges to our civilisation. History shows us that there are no guarantees that societies will survive: similar threats have destroyed previous cultures.

In an effort to tackle the issue, the UK Government has introduced a range of new initiatives, including legislation covering sustainability and resilience. The environmental, regulatory and economic need for increased energy-efficiency, low-carbon technology and eco-friendly buildings, has inspired and fuelled a drive in many sectors, to combat the challenges and engineer sustainable solutions.

The evolution of  our cities presents a challenge to health, social cohesion and economic stability that
demands a strong, inter-disciplinary, problem-solving approach. Research portfolios combining engineering, system design, environmental science, psychology, medical science, economics, logistics, law and social science must underpin technological solutions. We are building a community of research engineers, industrial partnerships and academics to combat these challenges. Join us!

Pressure on urban spaces is increasing year on year. At the start of the nineteenth century 3% of the world’s population lived in cities, after 2007 more than 50% will do so [‘The World goes to Town’, The Economist, May 2007]. The dramatic rise in UK population by economic migration places particular emphasis on this problem for Britain. The trend presents us with a number of difficult challenges resulting from climate change, population growth, disease and terrorism that, if not met, forebode dreadful consequences for health, social cohesion and economic stability

The programme focuses upon two key themes: sustainability and resilience. Sustainability addresses the maintenance of an ecological system (atmosphere, water, the food chain and so on) whilst at the same time enabling human development of the urban environment and the surrounding hinterland. Resilience is a newer concept dealing with the issue of how to mitigate the effects of environmental disasters and terrorism, incorporating seismic and volcanic hazard (earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides), flood risk, the spread and control of disease (water, air and animal borne), security and situational awareness. This includes four key ideas: rapidity (how rapidly a response can be coordinated and put into effect), resourcefulness (the importance of having multiple ways of tackling a problem), redundancy (to better absorb the effect of disasters, engineering appropriate to protect against failure of system components) and robustness (simple robust engineering: building stuff that stands up irrespective of what is thrown at it).

An EngD project consists of a four years of work divided into a research project and a programme of taught components pursued by the research engineer to support the study. The project is designed by the industrial and academic supervisory team.

The Industrial Advisory Committee consists of a mixture of top representatives from industry, NGOs, government and the professional institutes. 

The Committee members help to shape the future of the Centre; ensuring that graduating students have the skills required to become future leaders within industry; that the types of projects funded are ones that will help UK industry to gain competitive advantage; and that the funding mechanisms are tailored to match industry requirements. 

Our terms of reference can be found here.