Working with industry

Automatic Control and Systems Engineering

Our long-standing and excellent reputation allows us to develop strong links with industry and create partnerships for research collaboration.

You can get involved by becoming a research partner, joining the Industrial Advisory Board (IAB), or volunteering at one of our events.

Industrial Advisory Board

The Industrial Advisory Board provides advice to ensure students are graduating with the latest knowledge and skills needed by employers and advise on where it can help develop research to be used in industry. 

Valuable research contracts

In the last five years we have secured 131 researched grants worth over £19m, which our academic staff, research staff and PhD students have worked with industrial and academic partners to accomplish.

Research knowledge and transfer

We have extensive experience of working with companies of all sizes from micro-SMEs through to large multinationals. In all cases we harness our state-of-the-art expertise, technology, and insight to help you gain the competitive edge. We aim to establish long-term strategic partnerships allowing us to benefit all parts of your business from research and design and manufacturing through to talent acquisition.

We have extensive experience of attracting funding from a broad range of sources including Research Councils UK (RCUK), the European Commission, Innovate UK, and national charities. Alternatively, collaborations can be partly-or wholly-funded by industry.

Student projects and placements

The department runs a year in industry option on all of our undergraduate courses in which students normally spend their penultimate year putting their skills into practice within an industrial context.

We also offer industry placements to our MSc Advanced Control and Systems Engineering students, which means they receive all of the academic advantages of our one-year standard MSc with the added benefit of an industry placement.

These both provide excellent opportunities to access a pool of highly talented and enthusiastic undergraduate and MSc students.

You also have the opportunity to part or fully-fund a PhD student to work on longer-term, innovation challenges based on your company’s needs.

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Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Our teaching is underpinned by our close working relationship with industry. We believe that through gaining experience of real-life engineering problems, our students can become the great engineers of the future.

Benefits for companies

There are many benefits for companies interested in liaising with Electrical and Electronic Engineering, including

• The chance to raise your company profile with a pool of high quality potential graduates, which can give your recruitment drive a boost
• A fresh unconventional look at some of your problems from students who have access to the full resources of the University
• Help with research and development or ‘blue sky’ projects
• An opportunity to find out how our students would approach your problem, taking into account realistic, practical and commercial constraints
• The chance to help students – who could be your future employees – to develop a better understanding of what industry is looking for
• Building a relationship with the department and the chance to get involved with cutting edge research and other potential collaborations

Case study: Vinayak R Kartha

Industry Liaison Committee

To develop and enhance our degree programmes, promote closer academic/industry research collaborations and examine new educational ideas we have a dedicated group of senior engineers (Industrial Advisory Board - IAB) from a wide range of companies in the electrical and electronic engineering. The IAB works closely with our academics to ensure that our degrees reflect current developments and industry skills requirements, making a crucial contribution to the successful development of our students.