eFutures 2.0: Addressing Future Challenges

过去十年来电子技术的发展已经通过智能手机的发展得到了证明，智能手机改变了我们与彼此和基础设施的互动方式。凭借Arm和Imagination Technologies，英国一直处于这一创新的中心，一些发展直接来自大学部门。随着我们面临将创新传感器技术和嵌入式解决方案应用于更广泛应用的挑战，类似的革命也在意料之中。要实现这一目标，需要采用本文提出的多学科方法，以便电子发展能够与制药、化学和农业应用带来的挑战性环境问题相匹配。 电子系统行业为英国经济贡献了1000亿英镑，占英国劳动力总数的3%。许多这类活动处于价值链的高端，突出了对先进设计技能和创新制造工艺的需求。因此，显然需要为这一行业提供可靠的高质量、研究生资格的工作人员，因为这一活动的大部分是专业的，要么是以初创公司的形式，如黄金标准模拟（GSS）有限公司，或现有的主要行业，如ARM，IQE等。英国有一个国际公认的，但相对较小的，电子系统的学术基础，以支持这一活动。 在过去的三年里，eFutures网络在团结这一学术基础和与英国工业接触方面发挥了关键作用。截至2018年，该网络拥有450名会员，并组织了一系列令人兴奋和成功的网络活动。它已采取行动，加强与电子行业的联系，增加电子产品报告的数量，并与电子产品和服务中心合作。然而，随着我们开始探索电子产品的潜在更广泛应用，显然需要开展新的和经修订的网络活动，以应对新的挑战。随着电子产品在食品、生物技术、传感器等行业中的使用日益多样化，需要创造新型技术和创新的电子系统。为了解决这个问题，需要共同努力，消除障碍，鼓励电子系统界与这些学科的研究人员进行接触和合作，反之亦然。由于本提案中的活动，我们设想，由于我们的努力，这些活动将是12个新的主要合作。 除了探索新的途径外，加强和发展现有网络也很重要。虽然ECR参与度的提高可以被视为eFutures的成功，但学术管理挑战的考验和众多公司的可能性可能会导致ECR的损失。这将不仅对英国的研究基础，而且对未来合格的工程专业学生的教育产生非常不利的影响。此外，至关重要的是，有一个全国性的社区来支持他们，并支持MCRs的持续发展及其与研究人员，行业和资助机构的互动。 该提案的目的是通过创建一个名为eFutures 2的新网络活动来解决所有这些关键问题。该网络将采用多种会议形式并利用多学科范围界定工作，使规模扩大一倍，并创建一些直接归因于电子期货的重大跨学科合作2。为了实现这一令人兴奋的议程，我们汇集了一个更年轻，更强大，更多样化的调查团队，反映了更大的年龄，性别和种族平衡。该网络成功的真正衡量标准将是电子系统活跃研究人员数量的增加以及多学科EPSRC，商业和欧盟赠款数量的增加。

The technological developments in electronics over the last decade has been demonstrated by the evolution in the smartphone which has transformed how we interact with each other and the infrastructure. With Arm and Imagination Technologies, the UK has been at the centre of this innovation with some developments emerging directly from the university sector. A similar revolution is now expected as we face the challenge of applying innovative sensor technology and embedded solutions to a wider range of applications. For this to happen, a multidisciplinary approach as proposed here, is required such that electronic developments match the challenging environment issues that pharmaceutical, chemical, agriculture applications bring. The electronics systems industry is worth £100B for the UK economy and represents 3% of the total UK workforce. A lot of this activity is at the high end of the value chain, highlighting the need for advanced design skills and innovative manufacturing processes. Thus, there is a clear need to supply a dependable number of high-quality, postgraduate-qualified staff for this industry as much of this activity is specialist either in the form of start-up companies such as Gold Standard Simulations (GSS) Ltd., or existing major industries such as ARM, IQE etc.. The UK has had a internationally-recognised but relatively small, electronics systems academic base which acts to support this activity. For the past three years, the eFutures network has played a critical role in uniting this academic base and engaging with UK industry. As of 2018, the network had a healthy membership of 450 and had organised an exciting and successful range of networking events. It has acted to strengthen links with the electronics industry, increase the number of ECRs and engage with EPSRC. However, there is a clear need to have a new and revised networking activity to address new challenges as we start to explore the potential wider applications of electronics. With the increasing diversity of use of electronics in industries such as food, biotechnology, sensors, etc.., new types of technologies and innovative electronic systems need to be created. To address this, there needs to be a concerted effort to bring down barriers and encourage the electronic systems community to engage and collaborate with researchers from these disciplines and vice-versa. As a result of the activities in this proposal, we would like to envisage that they would be 12 new major collaborations that exist due to our efforts. In addition to exploring new avenues, it is important to both strengthen and grow the current network. Whilst the improvement in ECR engagement can be viewed as an eFutures success, the trials of academic administrative challenges and the numerous company possibilities can result in loss of ECRs. This will have a highly detrimental impact on not only the UK's research base but on the education of future suitably-qualified, engineering students. Moreover, it is vital that there is a national community to support them and indeed to support MCRs in their continued development and their interaction with researchers, industry and funding bodies. The purpose of this proposal is to address all of these key concerns by creating a new networking activity called eFutures2. Using a number of meeting formats and use of multidisciplinary scoping exercises, The network will act to double in size and create a number of major interdisciplinary collaborations directly attributable to eFutures2. To achieve this exciting agenda, we have brought together a younger, stronger and more diverse team of investigators which reflects greater age, gender and ethnicity balance. The true measures of success of the network will be an increase in the volume of active researchers in electronic systems and an increase in the number of multidisciplinary EPSRC, commercial and EU grants.