The Alan Turing Institute has secured £3 million from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to set up and host a network as a UK national capability in digital twinning.
It will involve stakeholders from academia, government and industry, and build on the institute’s previous work in the field, such as the recently announced Turing Research and Innovation Cluster in Digital Twins (TRIC-DT).
The new network community has been identified as an urgent need to fill gaps in underpinning research related to digital twins.
The UKRI award covers five years and will support work aimed at developing a new generation of resilient and trusted digital twins.
The network will cover: the exchange of knowledge and cross-disciplinary collaborations and innovations; academic research; thought leadership activities to help set the UK agenda on digital twins; cross-disciplinary research and feasibility studies to stimulate further funding applications; and outreach and skills development work.
Co-investigators for the award are based at Exeter University, the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, Ulster University and the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction.
Exciting possibilities
Professor David Wagg, co-director of TRIC-DT, said: “Digital twins offer exciting new possibilities across a wide range of sectors from health, environment, transport, manufacturing, defence and infrastructure. They are a key technology to help address many of the societal challenges we face.
“Our ambition with this award is to build a broad community of stakeholders to expand digital twin research to address key challenges such as trust, interoperability and the societal aspects of digital twinning. We hope that the NetworkPlus will help to address clear gaps in the current research landscape and will allow us to transform the UK’s capability in digital twinning.”
