Mon, 11 December, 2023
Over 100 representatives from TWI Industrial Member companies attended the second annual Core Research Programme (CRP) Symposium at our headquarters near Cambridge.
The exclusive, wide-ranging, in-person event took place on 7 December 2023, offering attendees the opportunity to meet other Industrial Members and gain valuable insights into current CRP projects in fields including digitalisation and data, net zero, smart manufacturing, and new materials and the circular economy.
Attendees were also able to help steer the future direction of TWI research and development activities and gain a comprehensive overview of our newly-launched short-term projects that have been hand-picked by CRP directors through the new Rapid Proposal Call (RPC). These short term projects require a smaller funding level to reach higher technology readiness levels, ensuring that industry can reap the benefits of the research sooner.
PhD students from the National Structural Integrity Research Centre (NSIRC) who are funded by the CRP were also on hand to discuss the cutting edge research projects that they are currently involved in, and there was also a poster presentation of CRP projects by the students. National Structural Integrity Research Centre PhD student at the University of Birmingham, Alice Appleby was awarded the Best CRP Student Poster Award on the day.
We also welcomed a number of esteemed keynote speakers at the event, both from within and outside of TWI, including:
- Richard March, Global Process Lead for Welding and Joining at Rolls-Royce
- Dr Tanya Sabin, Senior Materials Engineer at Thales UK
- Professor Tat-Hean Gan, Director of Membership, Innovation, and Global Operations at TWI
- Dr Jon Blackburn, the Group Manager – Strategic Programmes for Growth at TWI
- Simon Webster, Chair of the TWI Research Board
About the TWI Core Research Programme (CRP)
The TWI Core Research Programme is designed to meet the needs of our Industrial Members by selecting projects to address significant challenges faced by industry. These projects focus on specific technology areas and industry sectors that are of critical interest to the future operations of our Members.
Each of the projects has a duration of between one and three years, with a focus on engineering, materials or manufacturing technologies. The outcomes of the projects are made exclusively available to Industrial Member companies, allowing them to benefit from innovative thinking and approaches to developing new skills, products and services, systems and processes, leading to reduced costs, and improved quality, safety and reliability.
We would like to thank everybody who attended and contributed to the Core Research Programme Symposium and you can find more about the CRP at TWI, here.