OU research team looking for advisory board members in industry

The Open University

26th October 2022

A research team in the OU is looking for experts (2-3) in industry to join an advisory board for a research project. The project focuses on the use of aperiodic honeycomb tiling to increase strength and reduce weight of manufactured products in engineering applications and medical engineering. They want the research to be relevant to industry, i.e. the product to be something that would be used by industry. Therefore they want industry partners to advise on the development of the product. The aim is to take idea from TRL 2 (invention and research) to perhaps TRL 3/4 (proof of concept/ bench scale research).

 What they would need from the advisory board is to:

(1)         Provide real life case studies based on products they are manufacturing / want to manufacture

(2)         Attend annual steering committee meetings to provide direction and input into the project

Note: they are NOT asking for funding or a contribution in kind.

 The project could contribute to the R&D of the company; long term could lead to an Innovate UK bid.

 Sectors of interest include aerospace, automotive, biomedical. Basically any sector that creates / uses a manufactured product that could be improved by being lighter and stronger. For example, impact resistance, chassis, substructures, dashboards, non-pneumatic tyres, hip replacements. Size of product would be 1ft cubed or smaller. Not really suitable at this stage for huge structures (e.g. plane wing) as would not be cost effective. It would be a challenge to make so could be of interest to additive manufacturers.

 Please contact julia.g.freear@open.ac.uk if you are interested. Thank you.