Last year, the Government identified a number of priority areas of innovation for the UK, including health-care, robotics, clean energy, driverless vehicles, materials of the future, and space technologies.

The Royal Academy of Engineering (www.raeng.org.uk) has now announced long-term support for 10 engineering “global research visionaries” to develop areas of emerging technology that have the potential to bring “significant economic and societal benefits to the UK”.

Each programme will get £1.3 million of funding, and the “visionaries” — will be referred to as Chairs in Emerging Technologies.

They include: Ana Cavalcanti at the University of York (software engineering for robotics — modelling, validation, simulation and testing); Alessio Lomuscio at Imperial College London (trusted learning-based autonomous and robotic systems); Jonathan Rossiter at the University of Bristol (smart materials and mechanisms for ‘ubiquitous soft robotics’); Paul Shearing at UCL (emerging battery technologies for next energy storage); and Sriram Subramanian at the University of Sussex (interactive technologies using metamaterials — materials engineered to have a property that is not found in nature).

Dame Ann Dowling (pictured), president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said: “Emerging technologies offer enormous opportunities for the UK, both economically and socially, but their potential may not be widely recognised until it is championed by a visionary individual.

“The 10 researchers who have been appointed are global leaders in their fields, seeking to transform their pioneering ideas into fully commercialised technologies with important and widespread applications.”