In 2019, NSIRC hosted its largest conference to date, with around 200 delegates attending including TWI Industrial Members and representatives from companies including BAE Systems, Boeing and BP, as well as NSIRC’s academic partners from the UK’s top universities, researchers from TWI and fellow students.
Plans for this year’s NSIRC conference were well underway when the impact of COVID-19 began to take effect in the UK, following which all of NSIRC’s 100+ students, together with TWI staff worldwide, started working from home to ensure their safety and well being. Since then, the students have been hard at work on their PhD and MSc studies remotely, keeping in close contact with their academic supervisors and TWI colleagues, and making the most of electronic communication methods and Zoom meetings.
In order to continue to be able to share the outstanding research work of the NSIRC students, TWI is delighted to announce that the NSIRC annual conference has been adapted to the current times and will now be brought to audiences in a new format via on online platform.
NSIRC2020 Live will be broadcast on Thursday 23 July as a full, one-day conference. Over 30 students will present their research, and host live Q&As, on topics centred on additive manufacturing, joining technologies, inspection and monitoring, composites and polymers, materials, structural integrity, and standards and maintenance methodologies.
Three keynote speakers will share their insights on the current industry and research and development landscapes:
- Professor Andrew Curran, Chief Scientific Adviser, Director of Research and Head of GSE Profession at HSE Science and Research Centre
- Dr Jeremy Silver, Chief Executive Officer, Digital Catapult
- Professor Mark Gillan, Chief Technology Officer, Innovate UK
The conference will also include a virtual sponsors’ showcase, the usual student poster competition which all attendees are invited to cast their vote on and a digital conference brochure containing abstracts of all the students’ PhDs and MScs.
NSIRC2020 Live is free to attend – simply register online to secure your place.
Tat-Hean Gan, TWI’s Director of Innovation and Skills, who will also be presenting at the conference said “We are delighted to be able to bring you the NSIRC annual conference again this year and we hope that audiences will enjoy our new online format.” “As well as highlighting the commitment and engineering excellence of our students, the conference enables industry to find out at an in-depth level about the blue sky R&D currently being undertaken and how it will impact positively on industry.”
NSIRC is an international, postgraduate education and research centre for structural integrity established in 2012 to train over 500 postgraduate qualified engineers and employ 61 professionals in its first ten years. It is exceeding its targets and is on track to recruit around 530 PhD and MSc students by 2022.