University of Birmingham

Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Materials Processing: Founded in 1900, UoB was England’s first civic university where students from all religions and backgrounds were accepted equally. With ~30,000 students from nearly 150 different countries, it was UK University of the Year in 2013-14. The School of Metallurgy & Materials has 15 full Professors and 17 other academics. It has ~150 PhDs, 60 postdocs, ~200 undergraduates and 20 master’s students. Research is divided across 4 themes, viz. Functional Materials Processing, Engineering Properties of Materials, Characterisation & Modelling and Alloy Processing. The School hosts the Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Materials Processing and the Centre for Electron Microscopy and has recently undergone a £ 35 M (€ 49,5 M) refurbishment programme. The aim of the ceramics research at UoB is to understand the processing / microstructure / property relationship to the point where materials with the desired properties can be designed in terms of the required microstructure and then manufactured. Work is underway on ultra-high temperature ceramics and composites, nanostructured ceramics and electroceramics and a wide range of processing routes are available for this work. UoB has expertise in both oxide and non-oxide ceramic materials and extremely good industrial links across a wide variety of end-applications.