The UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council is to invest £2.5 million into the North East of England’s space research.
The funding has been awarded to a consortium of academic, civic and industry partners who together will form the North East Space Communications Accelerator (NESCA), which is one of EPSRC’s place-based impact acceleration accounts (IAAs).
IAAs aim to deliver impact activities to benefit a research and innovation cluster, in collaboration with civic, business, and other local stakeholders.
Over the next four years NESCA will build on recent investment in space skills, research and innovation in the region, creating new opportunities for knowledge exchange that lead to quality impact, including high-skilled jobs and economic growth.
NESCA is a collaboration between Northumbria, Durham, and Newcastle universities, the North East Combined Authority, Space North East England, and the North East Space Leadership Group, as well as 14 industry partners.
It aims to support the UK’s ambition to become a leader in the global space industry by bringing together academic research with business and commercial expertise to contribute directly to the growth of the national space ecosystem.
Newcastle University’s space research spans many schools, with a strong presence in artificial intelligence and spatial data analytics, earth observation, communication, and observational astrophysics.
The university has an EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Geospatial Systems that trains the next generation of PhD graduates and closely works with industrial partners.
Newcastle University’s academic lead on the project is Dr Deepayan Bhowmik, a Senior Lecturer in Data Science at the School of Computing. He said: “With the recent and rapid growth in North East’s space industry, NESCA is a timely investment from EPSRC that will boost the innovation and impact in the region. Resource availability through NESCA will strengthen industry-academic engagements even more and support regional skills development.”
“Leveraging the School of Computing’s strength in applied Data Science & AI, Newcastle University will lead in delivering AI in Space research and skills-related activities within NESCA that nicely complement the other two university partners.”