As a member of the University of Bath’s bid team, I was delighted when the EPSRC awarded the University £5m funding to create a new Centre for Doctoral Training in Advanced Automotive Propulsion Systems. The vision for the CDT is to produce graduates who will bring together the many technical disciplines and skills to ensure propulsion systems transition to a more sustainable future.
The bid team was made up of academic representatives from across the University who each bought insights from their field of expertise to create a fully rounded curriculum for students joining the new CDT. Our vision was to provide a post graduate education programme that reflects the needs of industry – creating T-shaped graduates who are both experts in their specific technical field, whilst also having broad propulsion system knowledge transecting all relevant technical, scientific and specialist disciplines. The CDT is also designed to help students hone a range of core personal skills including leadership, business practices, innovation and IP, impact and translation and cross-disciplinary working. As a bid team, we consulted with our key industry partners to understand what skills they were looking for in the engineers of today and in the future. These insights enabled us to craft the CDT as truly multi-disciplinary in its approach, open to graduates from a range of first degrees including engineering, sciences, management and social sciences.
Students will study an integrated PhD over 4 years, consisting of a 1-year MRes and then a 3-year PhD. Delivery of the PhD will take a spiral approach to learning, offering breadth and depth simultaneously. Teamworking and mentoring will be central to our students’ training, as will industry involvement on guest lectures and placements. Our students will have the opportunity to work with global industry partners, creating a richly immersive and collaborative environment for them to align their skills development with those required by industry.
One of the really exciting elements of the CDT will be the opportunity for students to benefit from the transformational research taking place within the University’s new £70m automotive propulsion research facility – IAAPS. Our new purpose-built research and innovation institute will house state-of-the-art testing facilities to enable precise experimentation into future automotive propulsion systems, supporting the automotive industry on the Road to Zero.
It’s a truly exciting time to be part of the automotive propulsion team here at Bath, drawing on years of expertise in delivering research with impact, with the expansion into new facilities and new educational opportunities. We’d love to hear from you if you’re interested in finding out more.
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