Department of Engineering

Welcome to the Department of Engineering
The Department of Engineering submitted 46 members of staff, comprising 45.6 Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) staff, to the REF Engineering UoA. The submission included seven Early Career Researchers.
Highlighting importance of soil health
Soil is a vital, and often overlooked, natural resource, helping to reduce flooding and mitigate climate change.
About Us
Context
The strength in the department arises from the “General Engineering” ethos, where we pursue research and generate impact that spans traditional engineering disciplines and beyond into policy and industry.
Departmental strategy, goals and future plans
The Department is now in the early stages of a ten-year period of strategic growth, which is seeking to increase our academic staff numbers to 80 FTE by 2024, including taking positive action to make a step-change in our gender balance. The key strategic aims over this REF period have been: globally, to increase our impact on society; and locally, to improve the research culture within the Department.
Staff body
Within the sector, we are a small department, with an academic staff headcount of 30 per cent of the average for Russell Group Engineering Departments for the majority of the REF assessment period. The Department has 47 academic staff (45.25 FTE), including 17 Professors, 13 Associate Professors and 17 Assistant Professors. Reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the department and activity, the academic staff have a broad range of expertise covering the traditional Engineering disciplines as well as Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics, and they come from diverse backgrounds, e.g. with just over 40 per cent of Category A staff identifying as Black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups .
Research environment
The Department has invested in excess of £11 million which has supported our well-resourced laboratories and provided a vibrant working environment, where all staff have engaged with our research culture of “quality rather than quantity” in publishing. Research in the Department is focused around three Grand Challenges and these facilitate an environment that encourages interdisciplinary research conversations to take place. These involve academic staff from different engineering and many other disciplines on common research themes, often including academic colleagues, policymakers and industrialists who are visiting us from across the globe.
Impact and engagement activities of department
To help guide development of our future research and impact strategies the Department formed a Strategic Advisory Board which acts as a critical friend to help guide us going forward. The Chair is Professor Brent Cheshire CBE, the founder of Ørsted’s UK operations and their Country Chairman and Managing Director up until his retirement in 2017.
Engineering REF Impact Case Studies
Engineering submitted four impact case studies demonstrating a wide range of impact.
Click below to read more about our case studies
Radio Propagation for 5G Wireless Networks
Rail support systems: Structural Integrity of Concrete Sleepers and Crossing Bearers
Soil Health
Assessing Real On-Road Vehicle Aeroacoustics and Aerodynamics
Research Themes
The Department’s research covers a wide range of topics, which are divided into three Challenge Areas: Future Energy Systems, Advanced Materials Electronics and Communications, and Sustainable Infrastructure.
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Our Research Challenges are important because they encourage interdisciplinary research within the Department and national and international cooperation. The scope of the Department's research is expanded even further through participation in cross-faculty Research Institutes.