Industrial Doctorate Centre: Molecular Modelling & Materials Science

伦敦大学学院（UCL）的分子建模和材料科学工业博士中心（M3S）培养材料科学和工业重要应用模拟方面的研究人员。由于分子水平上的结构和物理化学过程在很大程度上决定了任何材料的宏观性质，因此对这种纳米尺度行为的定量研究对于复杂功能材料的设计和工程至关重要。M3S国际数据中心是一个高度多学科的四年工程博士课程，与大量工业赞助商合作开展各种项目，从催化到薄膜技术，电子，软件工程和生物物理研究。中心的四个主要研究主题是：1)能源材料和催化；2)信息技术与软件工程；3)智能材料纳米工程；4)制药与生物医学工程。这些研究领域与EPSRC的任务计划：能源、数字经济和纳米科学从工程到应用完美地结合在一起。此外，根据定义，工业博士中心对EPSRC的优先领域至关重要，即确保未来的人口供应和更好地利用。M3S国际数据中心的学生将学习量身定制的专业技术课程，以及专业认证的项目管理课程和可转移技能培训，确保无论他们的第一学位是什么，完成学业后，所有学生都将获得全面的技术和管理教育以及博士学位。工程博士的研究以行业为主导，与更成熟的博士研究学位相比，具有相当的高质量和创新性。然而，由于工程博士学生大约有70%的时间与工业赞助商在一起，他们也获得了一个成功的、竞争激烈的行业要求苛刻的研究环境的第一手经验。工业合作伙伴在工程博士项目的第一阶段就抓住了这个机会，在他们的研发团队中增加了一名工程博士研究员，包括庄信Matthey、皮尔金顿玻璃、埃克森美孚、Silicon Graphics、Accelrys和STS，而每年都有新的公司加入到赞助商的行列中。伦敦大学学院的材料研究尤其发达，拥有蓬勃发展的材料研究中心和新成立的材料化学中心。此外，布卢姆斯伯里校区可能是英国（如果不是世界上）计算材料科学家最集中的地方。虽然隶属于不同的UCL部门，但所有计算材料研究人员都是UCL材料模拟实验室的成员，该实验室积极推动通用计算方法的发展，并鼓励成员之间的合作研究。因此，伦敦大学学院拥有一支由100多名研究活跃的学术人员组成的庞大团队，可以监督研究项目，确保所有工业合作伙伴都能够与相关研究领域的学者合作，组成监督团队，与工程博士学生一起工作。现有的M3S工业博士中心的成功，以及将其研究范围和工业合作伙伴关系扩大到新的、热门的材料科学领域的明显潜力，是EPSRC近期战略资助重点的核心，这导致了从2009年开始在该中心的新阶段资助5个每年10名工程博士学生的提议。

The Industrial Doctorate Centre in Molecular Modelling and Materials Science (M3S) at University College London (UCL) trains researchers in materials science and simulation of industrially important applications. As structural and physico-chemical processes at the molecular level largely determine the macroscopic properties of any material, quantitative research into this nano-scale behaviour is crucially important to the design and engineering of complex functional materials. The M3S IDC is a highly multi-disciplinary 4-year EngD programme, which works in partnership with a large base of industrial sponsors on a variety of projects ranging from catalysis to thin film technology, electronics, software engineering and bio-physics research. The four main research themes within the Centre are 1) Energy Materials and Catalysis; 2) Information Technology and Software Engineering; 3) Nano-engineering for Smart Materials; and 4) Pharmaceuticals and Bio-medical Engineering. These areas of research align perfectly with EPSRC's mission programmes: Energy, the Digital Economy, and Nanoscience through Engineering to Application. In addition, per definition an industrial doctorate centre is important to EPSRC's priority areas of Securing the Future Supply of People and Towards Better Exploitation. Students at the M3S IDC follow a tailor-made taught programme of specialist technical courses, as well as professionally accredited project management courses and transferable skills training, which ensures that whatever their first degree, on completion all students will have obtained thorough technical and managerial schooling as well as a doctoral research degree. The EngD research is industry-led and of comparable high quality and innovation as the more established PhD research degree. However, as the EngD students spend approximately 70% of their time on site with the industrial sponsor, they also gain first hand experience of the demanding research environment of a successful, competitive industry. Industrial partners who have taken up the opportunity during the first phase of the EngD programme to add an EngD researcher to their R&D teams include Johnson Matthey, Pilkington Glass, Exxon Mobil, Silicon Graphics, Accelrys and STS, while new companies are added to the pool of sponsors each year. Materials research in UCL is particularly well developed, with a thriving Centre for Materials Research and a newly established Materials Chemistry Centre. In addition, the Bloomsbury campus has perhaps the largest concentration of computational materials scientists in the UK, if not the world. Although affiliated to different UCL departments, all computational materials researchers are members of the UCL Materials Simulation Laboratory, which is active in advancing the development of common computational methodologies and encouraging collaborative research between the members. As such, UCL has a large team of well over a hundred research-active academic staff available to supervise research projects, ensuring that all industrial partners will be able to team up with an academic in a relevant research field to form the supervisory team to work with the EngD student. The success of the existing M3S Industrial Doctorate Centre and the obvious potential to widen its research remit and industrial partnerships into new, topical materials science areas, which are at the heart of EPSRC's strategic funding priorities for the near future, has led to this proposal for the funding of 5 annual cohorts of ten EngD students in the new phase of the Centre from 2009.