The University of Sheffield AMRC and Boeing are among the finalists announced in this year’s Bhattacharyya Award – a government-backed prize which celebrates the UK’s most impactful academia-industry collaborations.

Five long-term partnerships have been shortlisted for the finals, set to take place at a special event at the Royal Academy of Engineering in London at the end of September - with the winner receiving a prize of £25,000.

This year’s shortlist illustrates how these symbiotic relationships are mutually beneficial, creating a talent pipeline and access to cutting-edge research for industry partners and bringing much-needed financial investment and new ways of problem-solving to the universities involved. Many of the relationships between these companies and academic institutions have been ongoing for decades.

Professor Sir Martin Sweeting OBE FREng FRS, chair of the judging panel for the Bhattacharyya Award, said this year’s task was a challenging one as each candidate was different in topic and scale.

He added: “This year, we were looking for evidence of sustained industrial collaboration with demonstrated mutual benefit to both academia and industry, alongside a clear contribution to the UK economy. This way of working is fundamental to driving innovation and economic growth in an internationally competitive world.

“Our five finalists were the most compelling candidates delivering this synergy of academic-industrial collaboration.”

The University of Sheffield AMRC and Boeing partnership are up against some tough competition, including:

• The University of Bristol and EDF Energy;
• Cardiff University, Swansea University, the Compound Semiconductor Centre, IQE, CSconnected and SPTS (KLA);
• Cranfield University and Airbus
• The Heriot-Watt University and Renishaw Strategic Alliance.

The collaboration between the University of Sheffield and Boeing established the AMRC, which has catalysed translational research between industry and academia, transforming the regional and national manufacturing innovation landscape and unlocked more than £55m of private sector investment for R&D.

The strategic relationship, now spanning 20-plus years, underpinned the business case for Boeing’s first European manufacturing site, created an ongoing talent pipeline, enabled the development of the University of Sheffield’s Energy Innovation Centre supporting Boeing’s commitment to developing sustainable aviation fuels, and led to the AMRC’s largest collaborative R&D programme, totalling £80m, to solve composites manufacturing challenges for aerospace.  

The UK government announced the now annual award in July 2019 as a tribute to Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya CBE FREng FRS, the Regius Professor of Manufacturing at the University of Warwick and founder of the Warwick Manufacturing Group.