EngD in Systems (Doctorate)

The Industrial Doctorate Centre in Systems is a flagship programme within the Systems Centre at Bristol. It is an EPSRC-funded, industry-sponsored collaboration between Bristol and Bath universities, offers a four-year postgraduate research programme with a taught component.

The EngD is intended for the UK's most able research engineers who will be tomorrow's industry leaders. An alternative to the PhD, the EngD is vocationally oriented to suit industry's needs. EngD students (Research Engineers) spend about 75% of their time working in a company on collaborative research projects.

This degree has been accredited by IET, ICE and IMechE under licence from the UK regulator, the Engineering Council. Accreditation is a mark of assurance that the degree meets the standards set by the Engineering Council in the UK Standard for Professional Engineering Competence (UK-SPEC). An accredited degree will provide you with some or all of the underpinning knowledge, understanding and skills for eventual registration as Chartered Engineer (CEng). Some employers recruit preferentially from accredited degrees, and an accredited degree is likely to be recognised by other countries that are signatories to international accords.

Core units

• Systems Engineering
• Problem Structuring and Research Methods
• Mathematics for Systems
• Commercialisation of New Technology (University of Bath)

• Socio-technical Systems
• Complex Systems Design
• Technology, Strategy and Organisation (University of Bath)
• Integrating Engineering and Management Systems

One elective unit is to be taken in the first two years, selected from a wide range of options.

Research project

Your research topic must be suitable for application of Systems models (conceptual, mathematical, computational) in any area of the research activities covered by Bristol's Faculty of Engineering, Bath's School of Management or Bath's Faculty of Engineering. The focus of the EngD in Systems is on creating and managing systems for enhanced performance. This is a 'holistic' approach to engineering, based on systems thinking, which overlaps with other research topics and which can be applied to social, environmental, business or manufactured systems.

More than 80 Systems EngD projects have been established as part of the programme in the last six years, sponsored by 45 companies in the UK. Up to 40 per cent of EngD in Systems projects are focused on product and technology design and complex systems design, an area of modern design, based on advanced computational and mathematical modelling to enable to shorten time to market of new products. Examples of such projects include:

• developing new metrology tools for aerospace industry;
• state-of-the-art technologies for helicopter design;
• advanced security systems;
• space weather forecast models;
• computer-aided design software tools for electric motors and generators;
• design of new tools for motion control systems;
• software tools for plastic components design and manufacturing.

Some projects deal with optimisation of the engineering design process itself, based on integrated approaches to computational modelling. Additionally, the projects address the industry need for advanced measurement and control systems in manufacturing processes, which will ultimately reduce waste and costs in modern manufacturing processes.

• problems of aging infrastructure;
• creating a framework for policy-making decisions for smart cities of the future;
• studying demand and use of energy in built environments;
• creating new business models for infrastructure projects;
• developing bespoke sustainability tools for decision-making;
• implementing new technologies into real-world applications for infrastructure measurement;
• developing understanding of sustainable buildings for the future;
• innovating transport systems.

Staff profiles

Dr David Barton, Mathematical engineering related modelling; non-linear systems and their dynamics; numerical methods for dynamical systems; stochastic (noisy) systems.

Professor Dave Cliff, Ultra-large-scale, complex, software-intensive socio-technical systems, particularly large-scale, complex IT systems (LSCITS); complex adaptive systems.

Professor John Davis, Civil engineering systems; asset management; performance management; strategy and risk; field monitoring; fluid mechanics.

Professor Patrick Godfrey , Systems engineering; strategy and risk; utilities and facility management; highways; airports; offshore engineering; water engineering; civil engineering.

Dr Anders Johansson , Transport and crowd modelling; complex systems; social simulation; game theory; agent-based modelling; socio-physics; pattern recognition; large-scale data processing; mass gatherings health; complex networks.

Dr Theo Tryfonas, Systems engineering; security and forensics; safety.

Dr Mike Yearworth , Development and application of systems-based methods for working with complex organisational and socio-technical problems; sustainable systems; open architectures and resilience; research programme management; project management.

Professor Eddie Wilson, Intelligent transport systems.