Source: www.epsrc.ac.uk

UK Minister of State for Science and Innovation, Lord Drayson, announced a £250million initiative which will create 44 training centres across the UK and generate over 2000 PhD students.  They will tackle some of the biggest problems currently facing Britain such as climate change, energy, our ageing population, and high-tech crime.

EPSRC Centres for Doctoral Training are a new approach to training PhD students, creating communities of researchers working on current and future challenges. Seventeen of the new centres will be industrial training centres that will equip their students with the business skills they need to turn pioneering ideas into products and services, boosting their impact on the UK’s economy. The initiative is widely supported by business and industry.

Arup is a partner on one of the new EPSRC centres which aims to create zero-carbon buildings. It will be based at the University of Reading and will reduce carbon emissions in construction, integrate zero-carbon energy sources, such as solar cells and combined heat and power systems, with demand reduction tools including smart meters and consumption feedback devices.

This approach to training has been extensively piloted by EPSRC through a small number of thriving Engineering Doctorate Centres and Doctoral Training Centres in Complexity Science, Systems Biology and at the Life Sciences Interface. This new investment builds on the success of these and will establish a strong group of centres which will rapidly establish a pre-eminent international reputation for doctoral training.

The multidisciplinary centres bring together diverse areas of expertise to train engineers and scientists with the skills, knowledge and confidence to tackle today’s evolving issues. They also create new working cultures, build relationships between teams in universities and forge lasting links with industry.

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