About the centre
The prime objective of the EngD Centre is to produce research leaders to tackle the major national and international challenges over the next 15 years in implementing new power plant to generate electricity more efficiently using fossil energy with near zero emissions. These challenges involve the successful demonstration of CO2 capture and technologies to reduce CO2 emissions more generally from coal utilisation, including iron making and smokeless fuel production.
The distinguishing features of an Engineering Doctorate (EngD) are its 4 year duration, higher stipend than normal PhDs, and the requirement that most of the time (about 3 years) is spent conducting research in industry.
Having started 39 Research Engineers in four years, the Centre is firmly on course to meeting its prime objective. Thus, the Centre will make a major contribution to meeting the demand for research engineers that are going to be required in the UK to meet these challenges as carbon capture and storage moves to commercial deployment, coupled with vastly reduced carbon emissions in other sectors, including iron and steel.
2011 start Research Engineers with Prof. Colin Snape
2009 start Research Engineers 2010 start Research Engineers
The number of EPSRC-funded places has increased from 50 to 58 with the supplementary award to enable the Biomass Fossil Fuel Research Alliance (BF2RA) to participate in the Centre and institutional contributions will take the overall total to over 60 places over 5 years.
To ensure that the Research Engineers will be in great demand and part of the new breed required by employers, their training programme has been designed to ensure that the they are not only thoroughly versed in cutting edge energy research but are capable of operating in multi-disciplinary teams.