Members of LoCM lead on £1.8M EPSRC Platform Grant

Members of the LoCM team have been awarded £1.8m by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to establish a world-leading research group aimed at designing the engineers of the future.

Led by Professor Linda Newnes, of the University of Bath, the platform brings together academics and researchers from the Universities of Bath, Bristol, and The West of England, and four industrial partners: Airbus Group Ltd, Moog Controls Ltd, Renishaw PLC and Cubik Innovation. The aim of the group is to undertake research to create a pipe-line of “transdisciplinary” design engineers i.e. engineers of the future. This builds upon years of prior work here at the University of Bath in the mechanical engineering, design and manufacturing research group.

A total of 20 academics/researchers will be contributing to the core of the five year platform grant. Future funding will be targeted to sustain the research and early career researchers after 2022, hence a key output for success of the grant is ensuring the development and career progression for each member of the team. Each researcher will be expanding upon their individual career management plan and specific funding is being provided throughout the term of the grant for career advancement activity, training and international secondments.

If you are interested in working with us we currently have an opportunity for a 2-year fixed term research position as well as a funded PhD position (starting October 2018). For further detail of the positions available, or if you would like to become involved with the research, please contact Professor Newnes, L.B.Newnes@bath.ac.uk.

Congratulations to Dr. Gopsill on the EPSRC Researcher in Residence Award

Dr. Gopsill has been awarded an  EPSRC Researcher in Residence Award to continue his Knowledge Management work with the National Composite Centre. The project is entitled ‘Valuing Digital Knowledge Assets within the High-Value Manufacturing Catapult’ and will be running over the next 2 years.

Project Summary

The High-Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVMC) Centres are technology intensive organisations whose activities produce innovations and knowledge on a daily basis. Central to these activities is the need to utilise the unique and valuable knowledge that is stored within the digital assets that reside in the IT infrastructure of the centres. Maximising the value of these Digital Knowledge Assets (DKAs) is crucial in ensuring Catapult centres remain at the forefront of innovation and knowledge.

With scoping studies revealing that a large proportion of the National Composite Centre (NCC) DKAs having not been accessed in the past two years, it is contended that unexploited Knowledge Management (KM) opportunities exist in increasing the value of DKAs to support the centres’ activities. Opportunities that could come in the form of developments to the data and information management processes, IT infrastructure and/or knowledge sharing activities. To be able to recognise the added value that these opportunities may bring, a method of assessing the value of DKAs is required.

A method that this proposal will develop by taking the novel approach of monitoring the DKAs’ metadata activity. This step-change in capability will provide actionable information to an organisations’ KM strategy that is both automatic and real-time. The method will also be embedded into the piloting process for developments to KM strategy to assess the potential value they may bring to the organisation.

By understanding and developing a means to assess the value of DKAs, HVMC centres will be able to better leverage the value of their increasing digital footprint as well as ensuring value is added through their KM strategy.


The project starts in April 2018 and you can keep track of his progress on the projects website here.