Industrial Cooperative Awards in Science & Engineering (ICASE) provide funding for doctoral studentships where businesses and related organisations take the lead in arranging projects with an academic partner of their choice. These academic partners must hold Doctoral Training Partnership funding from EPSRC.
The aim of these awards is to provide doctoral students with a first-rate, challenging research training experience, within the context of a mutually beneficial research collaboration between academic and partner organisations, for example industry or policymaking bodies. Our priorities are:
- to provide a potentially better student experience (via the student being part of a larger cohort of individuals working in leading research teams for example).
- to facilitate the strategic use of all EPSRC’s students via EPSRC working with a smaller group of companies and research organisations, so we can better target training at areas of particular strategic importance.
Once the arrangements for the project have been agreed and the grants have been awarded, the collaborating partners may recruit students. Industrial CASE awards may support doctoral training in any areas of engineering and the physical sciences with relevance to the EPSRC remit. There is no route for prospective students to apply to EPSRC for a studentship. The business and their academic partner manage the advertisement of opportunities and recruitment to studentships funded through the Industrial CASE.
In 2024, EPSRC’s ICASE awards will evolve as doctoral landscape awards under the UK Research and Innovation Doctoral Training Investment Framework.
Experiences of doctoral students
Hear about the benefits of the Industrial CASE scheme from the doctoral students themselves in these blog posts:
- High-strength aluminium alloys – ICASE student to industry expert by Chrysoula Tzileroglou
- Sloshing in next generation aircraft fuel tanks by Stuart Colville
- Delving into AI for autonomous systems by Abanoub Ghobrial
- Supporting the green energy transition by Mengjiang Lin