Northumbria University is teaming up with educational charity MOBIE to drive innovation in designing homes for the future.MOBIE was founded by North East born TV presenter and architect George Clarke. The organisation strives to promote innovation in the design and delivery of homes. To achieve this, MOBIE is spearheading an education pathway with clear progression through school, college and university, including under and postgraduate level.
This collaboration with Northumbria University will focus on making R&D accessible to every organisation, embedding innovation into homebuilding. The centre will offer a range of subsidised, flexible PhD options that give organisations the resource to step back from the day to day and think about how they can improve operations and create new offerings that will make them more competitive now and in the future. The flexibility of the programme means organisations can put existing members of staff through a PhD or get access to fresh new talent in the market. Either way, this will help create an upskilled workforce while also ensuring direct returns from R&D – without breaking the bank.
Focusing on ‘Homes for the Future’ the initiative will investigate new methods of construction, design, offsite manufacture, digital competencies, new materials, and environmental and sustainable technologies with the aim to transform house building into a clean, efficient and precision-engineered process with greater levels of quality control. The centre is also interested in addressing challenges created by that changes in society, such as ageing; and city living etc.
Participating organisations will work with Northumbria University to identify areas of opportunity, and benefit from boosting productivity with new products, services or processes arising from the research project over the duration of the PhD. The university will jointly fund the studentships, meaning organisations will invest between £3k and £11k per year, depending on what route they take.
More information is available via the partner page for organisations or student page for PhD candidates.
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