The University of Huddersfield has been awarded £1.5 million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to develop a Material Institute and recruit researchers for a number of projects. As a result, a new cohort of highly qualified experts in materials science and engineering will be trained at the university from October, where they have access to ‘state of the art’ technology and resources.

The Business Secretary, Greg Clark, recently announced that a select group of UK universities will share in £184 million of funding from the EPSRC for the latest round of Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTPs).

The University of Huddersfield’s (www.hud.ac.uk) success in earning previous EPSRC funding — for major projects that include the Future Metrology Hub and the MIAMI ion beam accelerator — means that it has qualified for a boost in the amount it receives under the DTP scheme.

The latest award, which can also be supplemented by funding from other sources (such as industrial partnerships), means that 12 new doctoral studentships can be awarded in 2018 — and 12 more in 2019. They will join 11 doctoral researchers whose DTP projects began in 2016 and 2017.

In addition to established resources, the latest equipment available to researchers includes two metal 3-D printers, a high-resolution XTC scanner, engineering and biological confocal microscopes, and HPC plus data visualisation instruments.

In setting out its DTP strategy to the EPSRC, the University of Huddersfield said that relevant areas would include manufacturing technologies and materials engineering, materials for energy, catalysis, nuclear fission, surface science and biomaterials, plus computational and theoretical chemistry applications.

Liz Towns-Andrews, the university’s director of research and enterprise, said: “Universities such as Huddersfield have a key role in the Government’s Industrial Strategy, and DTPs help to ensure that we will play it to the full.”