University of Nottingham Innovation Park
The University of Nottingham has been awarded £5m by the D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership as part of a Growth Deal expansion, to help create a major new 8000m2 centre for manufacturing at the University of Nottingham Innovation Park.
A UK leader for manufacturing research, the university is already home to three national centres for Manufacturing in Composites, Food and Additive Manufacturing.
The new centre will be home to the University’s Institute for Advanced Manufacturing (IfAM), giving the university a platform to work with manufacturers whether multi-national corporates or local SMBs.
The University already has a growing list of key partnerships including Airbus, BAE Systems, Cummins, IBM, HP, Jaguar Land Rover, Laing O’Rourke, Rolls Royce and Siemens some of which are already revolutionising their manufacturing processes through advanced manufacturing methods such as AM.
The University of Sheffield recently backed a similar initiative supporting the development of the UK's first Innovation District, a hub for the region's research institutions, firms and business incubators working with advanced manufacturing.
Nottingham's centre will help to address the need of the UK’s manufacturing businesses by training young people with the right skills and knowledge through a number of undergraduate and MSc manufacturing courses and a range of placement opportunities for students.
The new building will bring together research from the Advanced Manufacturing, 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing and Polymer Composites research groups comprising over 200 academics, researchers and PhD students.
Professor Andrew Long, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at The University of Nottingham, said: “This is fantastic news for The University and for Nottingham. It means that we can strengthen and expand our partnerships with many of the world’s biggest manufacturers, leading to the development of new products, production processes and other services which have the potential to bring growth to the UK. The centre will also help us attract the next generation of manufacturing students to meet the increasing demand for highly skilled graduate manufacturing engineers."
In addition to the £174m of funding committed by the Government in July this year, the D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership, which covers Derbyshire, Derby, Nottinghamshire and Nottingham received funding of £22.2m through the latest Growth Deal expansion. The Local Enterprise Partnership estimates that the centre could result in up to 22,000 new jobs being created and £550m in public and private investment.
