Coventry University has a long tradition as a provider of education with roots going as far back as Coventry College of Design in 1843. Founded as an industrial university focused on the skilling of the local community to meet the needs of major multinational companies in Coventry and the Midlands the University now prides itself for its tradition of industry facing research that is developed through close collaboration with companies and meets international excellence standards.

The university faculties range from science, technology, engineering, to health, design, business and education. It has been voted as the top modern university in 2015. The university has also been ranked 15th nationally in the UK in The Guardians rankings which is a testimony to the standard of teaching and research excellence. Coventry University has made significant investments with the injection of £100m into our new research strategy, Excellence with Impact.

Institute for Future Transport and Cities

In CU, we take a fresh approach to the challenges facing society by bringing together world-class experts from art and design, human factors, engineering, computer systems and business studies into one focussed Institute. Our work covers automotive, aerospace, maritime and rail transport modes and allows us to take the lead in cross cutting research developing new forms of transport, new forms of manufacturing and new forms of information provision and security.

We have a unique position in UK universities with over 140 research staff and 120 PhD research students in the Institute capitalising on our links with Coventry City and its status as a European Living Lab for transport and our close collaboration and joint initiatives with major stakeholders such as Unipart, FEV and Horiba MIRA.

We are working in exciting times with major challenges being presented by the move towards increased automation, the increasing age and urbanisation of our population, new materials and manufacturing processes and by the need to move towards sustainable non-polluting transport as quickly as possible. Current hot topics for us include developing new materials for wearable technology, driverless unmanned and vertical take-off vehicles, mobility as a service, systems security and new business models for the future supply chain.

To address these challenges, we have taken three major initiatives in 2017. In May, we opened the new National Transport Design Centre that provides state of the art design tools and studios for developing future vehicles and provides a fantastic opportunity to work directly with commercial companies taking concepts through to real products.

In June, we opened a new joint initiative with Horiba MIRA called the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Automotive Research (CCAAR) that puts us at the forefront of research into the changing nature of highly automated and intelligent vehicles. In November we opened the Centre for Applied Low Carbon Propulsion Systems C-ALPS.

These new developments complement the existing research facilities within the Institute (e.g. driving and aircraft simulators, control engineering laboratories, electric motor test beds, fuel cell thermodynamics) and our real-world environments and vehicles.

The Institute also includes our multi-award winning Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering Institute (AME), otherwise known as the “Faculty on the Faculty Floor”. Partnered with Industry, and set up in 2013, we have a proven track record of 100% employment for our industry-ready manufacturing graduates, and commercialisation of several new technologies for lightweight and low/zero carbon powertrain applications.