All 3rd-year Aerospace Engineering students conduct an Individual eXploratory research Project (IXP) of their choice.

In their 4th year, the students carry out a more in-depth piece of research or Final Year Project (FYP) which can be an extension of their IXP.

Industrial partners can propose a research project for inclusion in the project list. The scope of the research is defined through discussion once a student has selected their research topic.

There are many opportunities for industrial partners to work with postgraduate students, from contributing to short-term research projects to collaborating on long-term PhD or EngD projects:

Postgraduate students on the Advanced Composites MSc and Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) PhD programmes undertake a six or nine-month intensive taught course, before embarking on a three-month research project of their own choosing, respectively. The CDT PhD students can choose either to continue their project as a PhD or select a new project.

The postgraduate students have a good level of knowledge and skills relating to composite mechanics and experimentation. Involvement in their research project is an excellent opportunity for the industry to work with high-quality postgraduate students. Examples of current and past research projects can be viewed on the CDT Research Projects webpage.

For industrial partners looking for more industry-led research, the University hosts an Industrial Doctorate Centre (IDC) in Composites Manufacture. EngD students, or EngD Research Engineers, undertake a four-year, industry-led research project, based with the sponsor company addressing the sponsor’s commercial research priorities. Specialist training ensures that EngD Research Engineers bring considerable technical knowledge and capability to their project. 

Bristol Composites Institute is constantly evolving and we have a large group of world-class academic staff, as well as many excellent researchers, postgraduate students and affiliates. If you would like to tap into their expertise in the form of direct consultancy, you can get in touch with them directly or via our general enquiries email.

There are regularly new funding opportunities coming up for collaborative research. Have a look at the summary of funding sources as well as who to contact for further support.

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships offer a fantastic opportunity for industry to host a researcher at their premises for the delivery of a 1-3 year technical project. The benefit for the company is to have a well trained researcher with supervision provided by the academic supervisors and other researchers at the university via a part-funded scheme. More guidance can be found on the UKRI website.

There are multiple Impact Acceleration funding opportunities available to support the collaboration of industry and academia. If you are interested, please get in touch with our Research commercialising team.

The University is keen to promote technology transfer by licensing IP to third parties. We have several technologies which are currently available for licensing.

There are several spin-out companies that started their work based on our research. We are interested to hear about individuals or companies who invest in early-stage companies.