The aim of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Future Infrastructure and Built Environment is to develop the infrastructure professionals of the future, equipped with a versatile and cross-disciplinary skill set to meet the most complex emerging challenges and contribute effectively to better infrastructure decision-making in the UK.

This programme comprises an initial MRes (taken half-time over two years), followed by a PhD phase (which lasts five years if part-time study is continued, or three years if the student switches to full-time). Continuation on to the PhD is conditional on satisfactory performance in the MRes programme. Full funding is available for eligible applicants. This cross-disciplinary programme aims to address the major threats to infrastructure and turn them into opportunities. These include infrastructure resilience against technological opportunities and environmental causes; infrastructure resilience in a world of economic, social, political and cultural change; and infrastructure resilience to support urbanisation and demographic change.

The objectives of the course are to:

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• deliver a coherent approach to postgraduate research training in resilient infrastructure, balancing the conflicting objectives of specialisation and generalism, consistent with the Department of Engineering’s general engineering undergraduate education approach;
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• equip the graduates of the MRes course with the research skills and training to enable them to make a seamless transfer and an accelerated start to the PhD programme;
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• develop and equip the MRes postgraduate students with relevant research skills rooted in a contextual framework that includes wider engineering, social, scientific and business-related disciplines linked to professional practice by producing graduates who combine a breadth of knowledge with the depth of specialist knowledge;
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• expose students to the wide range of industry-relevant research contexts, opportunities and challenges;
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• develop students’ personal, professional practice and commercial skills, including entrepreneurship;
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• expose the students to a range of complex, multi-sector, cross-disciplinary problems that face future infrastructure and built environment via the mini-projects; and
• train the students in transferable communications, business and research skills.