eFutures 2.0: Addressing Future Challenges

The technological developments in electronics over the last decade has been demonstrated by the evolution in the smartphone which has transformed how we interact with each other and the infrastructure. With Arm and Imagination Technologies, the UK has been at the centre of this innovation with some developments emerging directly from the university sector. A similar revolution is now expected as we face the challenge of applying innovative sensor technology and embedded solutions to a wider range of applications. For this to happen, a multidisciplinary approach as proposed here, is required such that electronic developments match the challenging environment issues that pharmaceutical, chemical, agriculture applications bring.

The electronics systems industry is worth £100B for the UK economy and represents 3% of the total UK workforce. A lot of this activity is at the high end of the value chain, highlighting the need for advanced design skills and innovative manufacturing processes. Thus, there is a clear need to supply a dependable number of high-quality, postgraduate-qualified staff for this industry as much of this activity is specialist either in the form of start-up companies such as Gold Standard Simulations (GSS) Ltd., or existing major industries such as ARM, IQE etc.. The UK has had a internationally-recognised but relatively small, electronics systems academic base which acts to support this activity.

For the past three years, the eFutures network has played a critical role in uniting this academic base and engaging with UK industry. As of 2018, the network had a healthy membership of 450 and had organised an exciting and successful range of networking events. It has acted to strengthen links with the electronics industry, increase the number of ECRs and engage with EPSRC. However, there is a clear need to have a new and revised networking activity to address new challenges as we start to explore the potential wider applications of electronics. With the increasing diversity of use of electronics in industries such as food, biotechnology, sensors, etc.., new types of technologies and innovative electronic systems need to be created. To address this, there needs to be a concerted effort to bring down barriers and encourage the electronic systems community to engage and collaborate with researchers from these disciplines and vice-versa. As a result of the activities in this proposal, we would like to envisage that they would be 12 new major collaborations that exist due to our efforts.

In addition to exploring new avenues, it is important to both strengthen and grow the current network. Whilst the improvement in ECR engagement can be viewed as an eFutures success, the trials of academic administrative challenges and the numerous company possibilities can result in loss of ECRs. This will have a highly detrimental impact on not only the UK's research base but on the education of future suitably-qualified, engineering students. Moreover, it is vital that there is a national community to support them and indeed to support MCRs in their continued development and their interaction with researchers, industry and funding bodies.

The purpose of this proposal is to address all of these key concerns by creating a new networking activity called eFutures2. Using a number of meeting formats and use of multidisciplinary scoping exercises, The network will act to double in size and create a number of major interdisciplinary collaborations directly attributable to eFutures2. To achieve this exciting agenda, we have brought together a younger, stronger and more diverse team of investigators which reflects greater age, gender and ethnicity balance. The true measures of success of the network will be an increase in the volume of active researchers in electronic systems and an increase in the number of multidisciplinary EPSRC, commercial and EU grants.

The electronic systems market is valued at $1.49 trillion and currently, 3% of the total UK workforce is employed in over 53,000 electronic systems businesses. In 2017, the direct economic contribution of electronic systems to the UK was £100 billion. However, this only represents the core market and the potential for electronics systems is much larger as it underpins a lot of technology used in our society in markets such as healthcare, security and digital communications, etc... Thus, it is vital that the UK maintains a steady research presence in such a key technology and this represents the key, underlying aim of this proposal.

Currently, apart from a few core centres such as Universities of Glasgow, Newcastle, Southampton York and Manchester, Imperial College London, Queen's University Belfast, the electronic systems research activity is typically distributed in smaller groups across a wide range of universities in the UK such as many of those members listed on the eFutures website. Thus, the eFutures network activity to date has been a vital activity in creating a vibrant community and acting as a focal point and support network for many of these smaller groups. In order to stay well positioned in this core electronic systems market, it is essential that the academic activity continues to be well organised and looks to interact with a wider range of complementary industries. Critically, the ability to apply electronics to a new or unexpected domains has the potential to create important new products for existing areas or even create new markets.

There has been a number of examples of solid company/academic collaboration such as, Glasgow/GSS Ltd., Manchester/Cambridge/ARM. There have also been a number of major successes in terms of spin out activity from UK universities such as Maxeler Technologies from Imperial College London, GSS Ltd. from the University of Glasgow, Analytics Engines Ltd from Queens University, etc... The increased engagement with industry and the focus on impact activities within the planned ECR and MCR events will only act to increase the amount of impact activity in commercialisation of research. The ECR and newly proposed MCR events will act to introduce researchers to the main proponents of those companies and allow attendees to gain insights from their shared experiences from many of the founders of these companies.

The possible engagement with other disciplines has the potential for much greater impact than the electronic systems industry highlighted above. The proposed activities and feasibility studies will encourage direct engagement with a range of industries important to the UK such as the pharmaceutical industry, life sciences and agri-food industry. These industries have a UK market sizes of £35 billion, £38 billion and £113 billion respectively and many of the companies have a strong research presence in the UK which would look to get actively involved in any possible collaborations. These represent just a few of the potential cross disciplinary industry areas that we would aim to target and so the potential impact goes well beyond that of the considerable electronic systems market.