• Undergraduate and Postgraduate Links
• Consultancy
• Collaborative Research Projects
• Education, Training and Continuous Professional Development

Please get in contact with us to discuss possible collaborations.

Undergraduate and Postgraduate Links

Industry and the School of Engineering at Swansea collaborate on the level of undergraduate and postgraduate students in several ways:

• Curriculum Development - At the heart our curriculum development is the industrial liaison committee (ILC), made up of representatives from industry and from aerospace engineering at Swansea. The task of the ILC is to provide valuable support and guidance on matters of curriculum development, industrial trends and funding/sponsorship opportunities.
• External Lecturers - External lecturers from industry support the education of students by providing industrially relevant lectures ranging from short lecturers as part of a module to delivering a full module including assessment.
• Visiting Professors - Visiting Professors are senior people from industry, who become honorary members of staff in Aerospace Engineering at the School of Engineering for a fixed time period. They  contribute to the strategic development of the courses, foster extensive, collaborative industrial links and deliver prestige lectures.
• Postgraduate Student Projects - These are research projects based in the School or in the companies undertaken by Masters students (duration 3 or  8 months) or Doctoral students (duration 3 or 4 years) in close collaboration with companies working on projects, which are industrially inspired, having real engineering objectives, constraints and timescales. There is funding available for these projects.
• Final Year Projects - These projects are extensive projects carried out by individual students as part of their degree, which counts towards their degree classification. The projects can range from experimental to theoretical.
• Group Design Projects -Here, the students typically work in groups of 5 or more with the task to solve a specific design problem, including technical solution of the problem, costing, manufacture and sustainability.
• Year in Industry - All our courses offer the option of “With a Year in Industry”. Following the first two years at the university the students work for close to 12 months in companies to gain relevant industrial experience.
• Summer Placements - Summer placements are undertaken by students in the summer gap between two academic years in order to gain valuable industrial experience.
• Site Visits - Site visits are an important aspect of our engineering education bringing students into direct contact with industry.
  

Consultancy

The various Research Groups and Research Centres associated with the School of Engineering are able to undertake consultancy work via the University wholly owned company “UWS Ventures” in many areas, with considerable resources of expertise and equipment.

Collaborative Research

Swansea Aerospace Engineering has a proud history of collaborating with industry on EU, UK government, TSB, Regional Development Agency, Welsh Assembly Government or otherwise funded projects. Examples are:

• EPSRC supported projects:
  • Collaborative research grants
  • LINK Programmes
  • Faraday Partnerships
  • Postgraduate Training
  • Partnerships
  • Industrial Fellowships
  • CASE Awards – Cooperating bodies are required to provide for students to work in their establishments for at least three months of a three-year award, pay a student’s travelling and out of pocket expenses while working in their establishments and make a minimum contribution of £3,000 a year towards the income of the student. Companies make a contribution in cash and kind to the academic department for the support of the project. The minimum cash contribution required is £1,400 a year.
• Academic Expertise for Business (A4B) - This is a six year programme  of support funded by the Welsh Assembly Government and European Structural Funds aimed at providing a simplified, integrated package of support for knowledge transfer from academia to business. Supported Projects include:
  • Collaborative Industrial Research Projects (CIRPs) - CIRPs  aim to encourage and enable groups of companies and academic institutions to carry out collaborative industrial R & D projects in order to:
    • Increase the level of business investment in R & D in Wales
    • Develop the research base in Wales by working on important industrial/business problems
    • More fully exploit the research base in Wales by creating new or improved products, processes and services.  Ultimately, this will translate into an increase in high value employment.
    • Stimulate the formation of long-term collaborative relationships between academia and industry to enable the process to become sustainable
  • Knowledge Transfer Centres (KTCs) - KTCs promote and demonstrate the benefits of new technology and specialist services to industry and business.  They provide facilities which companies could not otherwise readily access.  In this way, KTCs assist businesses to overcome the barriers of cost or lack of awareness which often preclude businesses from experimenting with key technologies or new research ideas.
    The first KTC awarded to Swansea is in the Welsh Composites Centre (WCC).
    

Education, Training and Continuous Professional Development

• Further learning to meet the requirements for the registration as Chartered Engineer via modular learning units.
• Public events, such as prestige lectures or technology days
• Tailored workshops, training and education for particular companies in the area of aerospace engineering.