The KTN supports postgraduate research collaborations through CASE awards allocated by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Each CASE is awarded to a collaborative partnership between a company and a university research group and supports a PhD student to work on a mathematical project of industrial importance. The student is based at the university while maintaining regular contact with the company.

Examples of Impact: Let the air flow replace the air conditioning

This CASE project, that is being carried out by Imran Coomaraswamy under the supervision of Dr Colm Caulfield at the University of Cambridge and Dr Gavin Davies at Arup, examines the use of natural and mixed-mode ventilation for low energy building design.

Typically, ventilation of a building has been achieved by driving flow using either mechanical forcing systems, or naturally, by exploiting pressure differences due to density variations or prevailing winds. Natural ventilation promises to reduce significantly the energy consumption required to maintain comfort. Such reductions are becoming increasingly important on both economic and environmental grounds.

In practice, natural ventilation has proved most successful in temperate climates where temperature variations are not too extreme. However, in many parts of the world the prevailing climate means that natural ventilation alone is unable to maintain interior conditions in a satisfactory range year-round. There has recently been much interest in mixed-mode ventilation systems, harnessing natural forces to work in tandem with mechanical forcing systems to reduce the energy consumption required.

"I have found working with the Maths KTN to be an excellent experience. The application process has the minimum of bureaucracy, and the speed and efficiency with which my application was assessed was exceptional. The KTN really facilitated the whole process of working with our industrial partner, and gave us resources to react nimbly and productively to the opportunity which we had identified. The support of KTN has been very valuable in allowing both parties to address the challenge of transferring fundamental research to actual industrial practice, and also to train a researcher to contribute at the multi-disciplinary interface between applied Mathematics and professional engineering consulting." - Dr Colm Caulfield, University Lecturer in Fluid Flow, University of Cambridge

If you are an industrialist or an academic interested in applying for a CASE award, please contact Dr Melvin Brown.