Team members from right across the Henry Royce Institute’s UK-wide Partnership joined forces in October London to showcase the Institute’s capability at the biannual Materials Research Exchange (MRE) under the theme Collaborate to Innovate.
Organised by the Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Network, MRE was full of new insights about what materials research and innovations are taking place to help the UK recover, become more resilient and grow.
As headline sponsor for the MRE the Royce Manchester Hub and its 10 Partners formed a “Royce Village”, manned by a 45 strong team from around the UK, demonstrating both the Research Areas and Technology Platforms embraced by the Institute.
Stand activity ranged from sustainable manufacturing techniques being developed at the University of Sheffield through to research into materials for the commercial realisation of Nuclear Fusion at Royce Partner UKAEA. There was a strong focus on inviting academia and industry to collaborate with Royce and trial new ideas to design a more sustainable society.
MRE saw over 160 speakers, 30 seminar sessions, and 73 exhibitors and over 1400 registered delegates. It included a mixture of industry representatives, investors, academics, students and international delegates.
Royce’s challenge-driven research is developing solutions in response to key strategic drivers such as the “Transition to Zero Carbon” and a “Circular Economy” and is ultimately aimed at accelerating the commercialisation of materials research and delivering positive impact for the UK and globally.
Royce ran and organised the Academic Conference on the afternoon of the first day, to set out some of this important research and the key developments that provide solutions to these challenges. It was very well-attended with some 150 delegates, many of whom stayed for the entire 5 hour conference.
There were keynote speeches by Zaffie Cox, Senior Portfolio Manager at EPSRC and Royce CEO, Professor David Knowles, who kicked-off the Royce-run Conference with an overview of Royce’s key priorities, he said:
“MRE provided a fantastic opportunity for knowledge sharing, problem- solving and deeper, collaboration with the advanced materials community. We wanted to highlight how Royce is accelerating the invention and take-up of new materials systems that will meet global challenges, which in turn boost our industrial productivity and competitiveness through clean growth and greater efficiencies.
“Our society faces many challenges, from energy generation to combating plastics pollution and we are working closely with both academia and industry to trial new ideas, to test new products and above all, to design a more sustainable society.”
David Knowles also addressed the need for a national vision to further develop the sector and set out the Royce Technology Platforms, which highlight the cutting-edge facilities and expertise available to both academia and industry.
The afternoon session covered a wide-range of ground-breaking research underway, including materials for End-to-End Hydrogen, materials challenges for a power-producing fusion-reactor, Materials 4.0 and digital transformation, cultivating sustainable relationships with plastics, electrochemical materials for batteries, digital discovery of chemical materials and advanced materials for Healthcare
