EngD Centre

The Engineering Doctorate (EngD) is a four-year research degree, academically equivalent to a PhD but placing emphasis on research within an industrial context. Known as Research Engineers (REs), students combine a research project with accredited technical and business training. It is designed to appeal to ambitious and able graduates who aspire to managerial positions in industry.

EngD is delivered by the Institute, itself a partnership of the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Heriot-Watt and Strathclyde, and the programme is administered through the University of Glasgow.

A number of UK institutions offer EngD, including Heriot-Watt University where the EngD Centre offers specialisms in optics and photonics technologies. ISLI and HWU are committed to sharing best practice and working in partnership to support their REs by working towards offering selected joint access to training and research resources.

Awards & Industry Recognition

Several ISLI EngD REs have won academic and industry prizes, including:

Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Industrial Fellowship 2009

Awarded to Matthew Robbetts, Research Engineer with Wolfson Microelectronics, Edinburgh.

The scheme encourages profitable innovation and creativity in British industry to the mutual benefit of the Fellow and their sponsoring company. Only ~8 Industrial Fellowships are available each year, awarded to exceptional students with the potential to make an outstanding contribution to industry for a programme of research. Four UK EngD REs received Industrial Fellowships in 2009.

The project focuses on the investigation and implementation of adaptive noise suppression techniques for portable applications, finding practical solutions to reducing noise in voice communication devices such as mobile phones, Bluetooth headsets. Matthew is supervised by Dr Stephan Weiss of the University of Glasgow and Dr Anthony Magrath of Wolfson Microelectronics. The Secretary of the Royal Commission, Malcolm Shirley, visited the Institute to present Matthew with his award.

Elektra Student Engineer of the Year

This industry-recognised award is aimed at outstanding students in electronics and software who demonstrate a combination of both technical knowledge and practical application of their skills. ISLI EngD REs have won this award in three consecutive years.

2009: Simon Brown, Teledyne Defence Ltd. and University of Strathclyde

The project involves the development of a radar threat warning receiver with Teledyne Defence Ltd. This is seen as a ground-breaking product for both the company and the industry in that it is an order of magnitude smaller, lighter and less power hungry than any other system on the market. Simon has also been working with the MoD Defence Scientific and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) on a new emitter identification algorithm. The student is now performing field trials in conjunction with DSTL to verify the overall system performance, and to build a deployable operational support tool to generate library information for the system.

2008: Nazish Aslam, Spiral Gateway Ltd. and University of Edinburgh

The project focused on the design of a new, state-of-the-art dynamically reconfigurable platform to replace ASICs in many cost-sensitive mobile multimedia products. The RE worked on
program memory compression and decompression for the new processing platforms, and ported applications to the reconfigurable architecture to gain the highest performance. During this process she was involved in generating ideas on useful features for the reconfigurable
architecture, and associated supporting tool flow, that could be incorporated to ease the porting
process for future applications.

2007: Carol Marsh, Algotronix Ltd, and University of Strathclyde

The research focused on the electronic tagging of integrated circuits, IP cores and FPGA designs, and the RE’s designs detected fraudulent activity and provided reliable product and version identification. Carol also helped develop Algotronix’ DesignTagTM product, a very small, low power IP core which functions as an 'active' tag for a larger design, and communicates through the chip package with an external 'reader' using small changes in chip temperature as a signaling mechanism.

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EngD Centre
iSLI (Institute for System Level Integration)
Heriot-Watt University Research Park
Research Avenue North
Edinburgh EH14 4AP

Email: engd@sli-institute.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 131 510 0670
Fax: +44 (0) 131 449 3141

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