Major EPSRC Funding

The five-year programme vision is to enable the pharmaceutical, regenerative medicine and biocatalysis industries to realise novel, complex, advanced functional products that are fit for the 21st Century. This will be achieved through the creation of a novel approach that rapidly formulates 3D printable materials into products, with automated selection and dial up of bespoke functional properties. 

The multi-institution, multidisciplinary research team, led by Professor Ricky Wildman from the University of Nottingham is composed of leading researchers from universities of Nottingham, Reading, Cambridge, Strathclyde and Loughborough and leading international researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Delaware, ETH-Zurich and CSIRO.

Discover more at our Programme Grant page

In collaboration with Warwick and Birmingham Universities, as well as with the School of Pharmacy and Physics at Nottingham, the CfAM will continue a deeper exploration the area of multifunctional AM through the recently awarded Programme Grant, Enabling Next Generation Additive Manufacturing.

The programme vision is to establish controlled next generation multifunctional AM and translate this to industry and researchers. Initially focussing on novel electronic and pharmaceutical/healthcare applications, the aim is to move beyond single material AM by exploiting the potential to deposit multiple materials contemporaneously for the delivery of spatially resolved function and structure in three dimensions.

Discover more at our Programme Grant page

The primary objective of the Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) is to produce research leaders in Additive Manufacturing (AM) and 3D printing (3DP).It will provide the people and talent, able to tackle the major scientific and engineering challenges in enabling AM to play a prominent role in manufacturing.

The CDT is led by The University of Nottingham in partnership with Loughborough University, Newcastle University and the University of Liverpool. Part of the Centre for Additive Manufacturing, it brings together the UK's foremost AM research institutions to generate the next leaders of this exciting technology.

View our Centre for Doctoral Training in Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing

It is not enough just to survive an accident or illness. To have a decent quality of life, we need to be able to function effectively; manage our daily lives; gain and retain employment; and participate in social activities. Through the identification and development of new, disruptive technologies for use in rehabilitation, this network will support people in regaining fulfilling, independent lives, post-illness or trauma. Working closely with relevant stakeholders, we will ensure these new technologies can be translated into clinical practice safely and effectively.

The Next Generation Rehabilitation Technologies network will be linked to the new National Rehabilitation Centre at Stanford Hall – a £70m UK investment – which will provide the focus for the innovation developments and integration into national rehabilitation programmes. The development of this new facility, on a shared site with the £300m+ Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre (DMRC), offers a unique and urgent opportunity for the UK engineering and physical sciences research community to help shape the direction of future rehabilitation technologies and programmes, benefit from the facilities and expertise at both centres, and to provide a pipeline of innovations for when it opens to patients in 2024.

Supported by a framework of established academics, clinicians and industry partners already working in rehabilitation technologies, this network aims to bring complementary expertise from other areas, to diversify the rehabilitation community and foster the opportunity for disruptive advancements and new directions of research. In particular, the network will focus on 1) advanced functional materials, 2) patient-specific devices & therapy, and 3) closed loop and autonomous systems, in order to achieve a radical transformation in the effectiveness of rehabilitation programmes and devices for patients affected by a range of healthcare conditions, particularly targeting musculoskeletal, cardiorespiratory, neurological and mental health conditions.

The aim of the platform proposal is to discover, understand and enable industrial implementation of AM solutions to address the issues of productivity and industrial scalability, with the ambition being that this will strengthen the CfAM engagement across the full value chain from discovery to deployment.

This Platform proposal is therefore centred on both addressing subjects of international importance, productivity and industrial scalability, alongside sustaining an international renowned research group. It enables the CfAM to renew its long term research vision, through the exploration and exploitation of new and emerging science, whilst maintaining a focus on overcoming the challenges associated with implementing AM into industry.

Some of the platform strategic development objects are:

• Exploring New Research Challenges
• Development, Bridging and Retention of the Team
• Fostering Collaborations and exchanges
• Delivering Impact

The £3.5M four-year programme aims to remove the barriers to the uptake of 3D printing through the adoption of high throughput formulation, establishing sector specific material libraries and creating a ‘plug and play’ approach to materials selection, thereby securing UK at the forefront of the 3D printing revolution. The aim is to decouple printer/process and material selection; and to develop a methodology that will establish a route to rapid identification of materials, and importantly, combinations of 3D printable materials, and show useful properties for a range of industry sectors, including pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, food, chemicals, and consumer home & care products.

The grant, led by Prof Ricky Wildman at the University of Nottingham, Centre for Additive Manufacturing, is a collaboration between the universities of Nottingham, Birmingham and Reading.

View our Formulation for 3D Printing page