Research funding at the Centre for Additive Manufacturing

The five-year programme vision is to enable the pharmaceutical, regenerative medicine and biocatalysis industries to realise novel, complex, advanced functional products that are fit for the 21st Century. This will be achieved through the creation of a novel approach that rapidly formulates 3D printable materials into products, with automated selection and dial up of bespoke functional properties. 

The multi-institution, multidisciplinary research team, led by Professor Ricky Wildman from the University of Nottingham is composed of leading researchers from universities of Nottingham, Reading, Cambridge, Strathclyde and Loughborough and leading international researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Delaware, ETH-Zurich and CSIRO.

Discover more at our Programme Grant page

It is not enough just to survive an accident or illness. To have a decent quality of life, we need to be able to function effectively; manage our daily lives; gain and retain employment; and participate in social activities. Through the identification and development of new, disruptive technologies for use in rehabilitation, this network will support people in regaining fulfilling, independent lives, post-illness or trauma. Working closely with relevant stakeholders, we will ensure these new technologies can be translated into clinical practice safely and effectively.

The Next Generation Rehabilitation Technologies network will be linked to the new National Rehabilitation Centre at Stanford Hall – a £70m UK investment – which will provide the focus for the innovation developments and integration into national rehabilitation programmes. The development of this new facility, on a shared site with the £300m+ Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre (DMRC), offers a unique and urgent opportunity for the UK engineering and physical sciences research community to help shape the direction of future rehabilitation technologies and programmes, benefit from the facilities and expertise at both centres, and to provide a pipeline of innovations for when it opens to patients in 2024.

Supported by a framework of established academics, clinicians and industry partners already working in rehabilitation technologies, this network aims to bring complementary expertise from other areas, to diversify the rehabilitation community and foster the opportunity for disruptive advancements and new directions of research. In particular, the network will focus on 1) advanced functional materials, 2) patient-specific devices & therapy, and 3) closed loop and autonomous systems, in order to achieve a radical transformation in the effectiveness of rehabilitation programmes and devices for patients affected by a range of healthcare conditions, particularly targeting musculoskeletal, cardiorespiratory, neurological and mental health conditions.

Visit the Next Generation Rehabilitation Techologies

In collaboration with Warwick and Birmingham Universities, as well as with the School of Pharmacy and Physics at Nottingham, the Centre for Additive Manufacturing delved into a deeper exploration the area of multifunctional additive manufacturing (AM) through the Programme Grant Enabling Next Generation Additive Manufacturing.

This Programme Grant focussed on understanding how to control the co-deposition (interfacing) of both functional and structural materials to significantly extend Additive Manufacturing’s(AM)’s reach beyond the well understood geometric freedoms it currently enables. This was done by leveraging the application foci of 3D electronics, pharmaceuticals, healthcare devices and regenerative medicine.

This vision has been achieved through projects developed in line with four main research challenges. In the final years of this Programme Grant, the findings of each research challenge were integrated to deliver the PG’s overall vision.

Learn about the Programme's ouputs and outcomes

The Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) produced research leaders in Additive Manufacturing (AM) and 3D Printing (3DP) and supported the advancement of major scientific and engineering challenges in AM. 

The challenges encompassed a wide range of disciplines from chemistry and physics, to computer science, engineering and biomaterials. The CDT supported talented individuals who worked across these disciplines, making AM and 3DP the enabler for a better economy, environment and society.

The CDT was led by The University of Nottingham in partnership with Loughborough University, Newcastle University and the University of Liverpool. Hosted at the Centre for Additive Manufacturing, it brought together the UK's foremost AM research institutions to generate the next leaders of this exciting technology.

Centre for Doctoral Training in Additive Manufacturing

The aim of the platform funding is to discover, understand and enable industrial implementation of additive manufacturing (AM) solutions to address the issues of productivity and industrial scalability, alongside with strengthening CfAM's engagement across the full value chain from discovery to deployment.

This Platform funding was centred on both addressing subjects of international importance, productivity and industrial scalability, whilst sustaining an international renowned research group. It enabled the Centre for Additive Manufacturing to renew its long term research vision, through the exploration and exploitation of new and emerging science, whilst maintaining a focus on overcoming the challenges associated with implementing AM into industry.

Some of the platform strategic development objects focussed on exploring new research challenges; development, bridging and retention of STEM talents; fostering collaborations and exchange; and, dissemination and impact activities. 

Further funding details

This £3.5M four-year programme aimed to remove the barriers to the uptake of 3D printing through the adoption of high throughput formulation, establishing sector specific material libraries and creating a ‘plug-and-play’ approach to materials selection, thereby securing UK at the forefront of the 3D printing revolution. The programmed aimed to decouple printer/process and material selection; and to develop a methodology that will establish a route to rapid identification of materials, and importantly, combinations of 3D printable materials, and show useful properties for a range of industry sectors, including pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, food, chemicals, and consumer home & care products.

The grant was led by Prof Ricky Wildman from the Centre for Additive Manufacturing at the University of Nottingham, in a collaboration between the universities of Nottingham, Birmingham and Reading.

View our Fomulation for 3D Printing page