UCL signs collaboration and training agreement with Arup

15 July 2009

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instituteforsustainability.co.uk/" target="_self">The Thames Gateway Institute for Sustainability

UCL today signed an agreement with global firm Arup to boost collaboration and training in a number of fields including design, engineering and sustainable development.

The memorandum of understanding (MoU) builds on projects including The Thames Gateway Institute for Sustainability, a research institute to be set in the heart of a new sustainability industries park at Dagenham Dock, as part of the regeneration of the area.

The MoU will encourage researchers from the two organisations to work jointly on projects, exchange personnel, jointly supervise doctoral training programmes and enable students to spend time in each organisation, and share thinking on innovation. It also aims to boost knowledge transfer to businesses. The MoU comes into effect on 15 July 2009 and will run for five years until 2014.

UCL and Arup are world-leading organisations with complementary activities and skills. UCL is a pre-eminent UK university with a broad portfolio of expertise in disciplines ranging from science, engineering, medicine and healthcare to the humanities. Arup is a global consultancy with more than 9,000 staff working in engineering, design, technology and sustainable development.

UCL President and Provost Malcolm Grant said: "This agreement is tremendously important to our future prospects. One way to come through the recession is to invest in key staff and continue to plan for growth. This partnership will ensure our innovations in the laboratory translate to the real world, while our new Institute for Sustainability should act as a magnet to attract industry to the area and business opportunities beyond."

Arup Chairman Phillip Dilley said: "Formalising our relationship with UCL through this agreement, acts as direct recognition of the growing importance of our long-term collaboration. We anticipate that this will increase opportunities for secondments and joint projects, and will help both organisations realise the potential of collaborative research to address the societal and environmental challenges that we face today."

UCL context

Other UCL-Arup projects include 'City History and Multi-Scale Spatial Masterplanning', led by Professor Alan Penn of the UCL Bartlett School of Graduate Studies. This is an international research network that looks at the historical development of Chinese and European cities, and spatial masterplanning at scales ranging from the local place to the whole metropolitan area. The objective is to form collaborative research groups between UK and Chinese academics, as well as researchers from Australia and the USA, and will operate through a programme of workshops and exchange visits.

Professor Nick Tyler of the UCL Centre for Transport Studies at UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering is also leading the 'Sustainable Urban Systems to Transfer Achievable Implementation Network'. This explores the transferability of sustainable systems from one city to another. Through a series of workshops in London, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Melbourne, Australia, researchers are looking at population behaviour patterns and the implementation of infrastructure and services in Dongtan, in order to evaluate the technology and behaviour change conditions necessary to achieve transferable sustainable systems.

UCL signs collaboration and training agreement with Arup

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