A partnership between the University of Bristol and EDF aimed at securing safe, clean, affordable energy for the UK has been shortlisted for this year’s Bhattacharyya Award.
This decades-long collaboration has had major impacts on the UK’s energy sector, directly benefitting the public. It has enabled EDF to transition towards net zero and the University of Bristol to train the next generation of energy researchers in line with the evolving needs of industry.
Bristol’s Professor Jeremy Phillips said: “This is all about leaving the ivory tower and working with people on the front line.”
The award relates to research that spans a number of research groups including the Earthquake and Geotechnical Engineering group (led by Adam Crewe), Solid Mechanics group (Chris Truman et al), Jeremy Phillips and his team in Earth Sciences (Volcanology) and the Interface Analysis Centre (Tom Scott, Tomas Martin, Peter Martin et al).
This collaboration has contributed to many aspects of EDF’s business. Bristol has provided reliable scientific evidence, methods and models which contributed to the validity of EDF’s safety cases to the Office of Nuclear Regulation, extending the lifetime of the UK’s nuclear fleet and helping to keep the lights on in the UK.
Five shortlisted academia-industry partnerships including the world’s first compound semiconductor cluster, are among the finalists for this year’s Bhattacharyya Award. Other collaborations include joint ventures that resulted in a transatlantic fight using sustainable aviation fuel. The £25,000 prize is given to the team which demonstrates exceptional collaborations between academia and industry.
This year’s shortlist illustrates how these symbiotic relationships are mutually beneficial as they create a talent pipeline and access to cutting-edge research for industry partners and attract much-needed financial investment and new ways of problem-solving to the universities involved.
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting OBE FREng FRS, Chair of the judging panel for the Bhattacharyya Award, said: “Our task this year was challenging as each candidate was different in topic and scale.
“We were looking for evidence of sustained industrial collaboration with demonstrated mutual benefit to both academia and industry, alongside a clear contribution to the UK economy. This way of working is fundamental to driving innovation and economic growth in an internationally competitive world.
“Our five finalists were the most compelling candidates delivering this synergy of academic-industrial collaboration.”
The Bhattacharyya Award is an annual award to celebrate collaboration between academia and industry. The UK government announced the award in July 2019 as a tribute to Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya KT CBE FREng FRS, the Regius Professor of Manufacturing at the University of Warwick and founder of the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG).