Industrial Doctorate Centre: Molecular Modelling & Materials Science

伦敦大学学院(UCL)分子建模和材料科学(M3S)工业博士中心培训材料科学和重要工业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复杂功能材料的设计和工程至关重要。M3S IDC是一个高度跨学科、为期4年的EngD项目，它与一大批工业赞助商合作，开展从催化到薄膜技术、电子、软件工程和生物物理研究等各种项目。该中心的四个主要研究主题是：1)能源材料和催化；2)信息技术和软件工程；3)智能材料的纳米工程；4)制药和生物医学工程。这些研究领域与EPSRC的任务计划完美地结合在一起：能源、数字经济和从工程到应用的纳米科学。此外，根据定义，工业博士中心对于EPSRC确保未来人口供应和更好地开发的优先领域非常重要。M3S国际数据中心的学生遵循量身定做的专业技术课程授课计划，以及经专业认证的项目管理课程和可转让技能培训，这确保了无论他们的第一个学位是什么，在完成学业后，所有学生都将获得全面的技术和管理教育以及博士研究学位。EngD研究是行业领先的，具有与更成熟的博士学位相媲美的高质量和创新性。然而，由于EngD学生将大约70%的时间花在行业赞助商的现场，他们也获得了一个成功、竞争激烈的行业要求苛刻的研究环境的第一手经验。在EngD计划第一阶段抓住机会向其研发团队增加一名EngD研究员的行业合作伙伴包括强生马泰、皮尔金顿玻璃、埃克森美孚、Silicon Graphics、Accelrys和STS，而每年都会有新的公司加入赞助商队伍。伦敦大学学院的材料研究特别发达，有一个蓬勃发展的材料研究中心和一个新成立的材料化学中心。此外，布卢姆斯伯里校区的计算材料科学家可能是英国(如果不是世界上)最集中的。尽管隶属于伦敦大学学院不同的部门，但所有计算材料研究人员都是伦敦大学学院材料模拟实验室的成员，该实验室积极推动共同计算方法的发展，并鼓励成员之间的协作研究。因此，伦敦大学学院拥有一支由100多名积极从事研究的学术人员组成的庞大团队，可以监督研究项目，确保所有行业合作伙伴能够与相关研究领域的学者合作，组成监督团队，与EngD学生合作。现有的M3S工业博士中心的成功，以及将其研究范围和产业伙伴关系扩大到新的、专题材料科学领域的明显潜力，这些领域是EPSRC近期战略资金优先事项的核心，导致了从2009年起为中心新阶段的5个年度队列的10名EngD学生提供资金的建议。

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.