We found participating in the ITT to be an unique and engaging environment for exchanging ideas and it was also good fun. Above all it produced some truly innovative thinking. Despite the subsequent financial challenges facing the airline industry, we have continued a fruitful engagement with Bath and SAMBa. The learning and insight we have gained about novel approaches which can be used to find solutions to our problems has already proved valuable and we look forward to learning more, and developing long-term partnerships, as the collaboration continues.
Dr Rory Clarkson (MBE, FIMechE), Associate Fellow – Engine Environmental Protection Rolls-Royce Civil Aerospace
Following a presentation at an EPSRC networking event, Rolls-Royce approached SAMBa with the goal of joining an ITT. Initially the met with academics across the department, and participated in some SAMBa events, such as the summer conference, to get a sense of the breadth of research and opportunities.
Rolls-Royce participated in ITT12 in September 2020. This was a fully online experience due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Challenges brought included mapping complete aviation routes, and using data collected from long flights to understand engine performance changes. This encompassed physical difficulties such as ice crystal build up on engines, and dust and ash contamination into the machinery.
Building on the ITT interaction, a SAMBa Interdisciplinary Research Project (IRP) exploring the modelling of ice crystal build up ran during the academic year 2020/21. IRPs bring together a small number of SAMBa first years, working in collaboration with academics and external partners to develop early stage research ideas. The IRP led to a PhD project for Timothy Peters, one of the SAMBa PhD students involved, co-supervised by an academic in Mechanical Engineering. A reading course, which involved SAMBa PhDs from across all years as well as academic staff, also took place. This delved into the detail of managing flight paths through ash clouds and has led to an ongoing collaboration with Rolls-Royce and branching out into the areas of aerosols, which involves the Physics department at Bath.
We were pleased to welcome Rolls-Royce back to an in-person ITT in June 2024 and look forward to collaborating with them to develop the work done during the week.
“Alongside the specific potential benefits to applied flood and coastal risk management, I have seen first-hand that the SAMBa CDT produces high calibre doctoral graduates with excellent skills in problem formulation and collaborative problem solving...”
“We have a great track record of successful collaboration with SAMBa, as we share a common aim – applying the latest thinking in mathematics and statistics to solve real-world problems."
"We are working with SAMBa to develop new tools for managing risk by combining deterministic and probabilistic methods."
"For a small company like ours, this research is vital in delivering our vision to create digital technologies that change what’s possible for clinicians and patients."
"Working with SAMBa students to relay how our industry understands the daily challenges in aerospace design and manufacture and for them to translate them into statistical/mathematical models and methods was a refreshing and rewarding concept."
"The students at SAMBa were engaging and motivated, above all interested in solving real world problems with their skills. As a result of SAMBa we have taken huge strides forward in a new technique in the assessment of arthritis related to psoriasis and the effect of treatment.
"The collaboration between SAMBa, UNAM and CIMAT has strengthened us in tools and techniques to visualize new perspectives of development and collaboration with a focus on generating value for other institutions."
There were a couple of ongoing personal research collaborations with Novartis in the Department of Mathematical Sciences that were brought together to develop a set of challenges for Novartis’s participation in ITT12. These consisted of questions exploring modelling and data integration in pharmacokinetics models, and finding effective routes to drug development for liver disease.
