Creating a transdisciplinarity index: the route to self-assesment
Linda Newnes
University of Bath, Great Britain
The rise in environmental awareness seen in the 1990s’ brought with it an increased interest in transdisciplinary research. More recently, the use of transdisciplinary approaches within engineering have started to emerge. But what is transdisciplinary engineering and what does it mean to conduct transdisciplinary engineering research? Once we know this – we measure our level of transdisciplinarity.
During this informative talk, Professor Linda Newnes, from the University of Bath, will provide a background into the origins of transdisciplinarity, and share insights from a £1.8M research project, within the TRansdisciplinary ENgineering Design (TREND) group. The project is funded by the UKRI Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in partnership with the University of Bristol, University of Surrey, Airbus Operations Ltd, Cubik Innovation Ltd and Renishaw PLC.
Linda will introduce the work undertaken within the TREND group to characterise transdisciplinary engineering, describe the work-streams of the EPSRC project and the vision to create a Transdisciplinary Index to enable self-assessment. During the presentation members of the TREND group/partners will provide their insights into Transdisciplinary Engineering using real-life examples. Her talk will end with a call for the TE community to share their personal perceptions of transdisciplinary engineering and why it might be necessary in the context of Intelligent Factories and Industry 4.0., meeting societal needs and what they believe should be included in an index.
BIO
Professor Linda Newnes, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Bath, UK.
Professor Newnes undertakes research in cost modelling, information management, data analytics, manufacturing and design. Her research spans the manufacturing lifecycle for products and systems i.e. from genesis design through to re-use/re-cycle. She has traditionally focused on cradle-to-cradle manufacturing, addressing challenges within small electronic devices, through to large complex aircraft systems. Her core expertise is knowledge, information and management modelling to enable cost effective and informed decision making throughout the lifecycle to assess e.g. value, cost, productivity, enabling lean manufacturing. Her research is industry facing, and she has worked across sectors, identifying e.g. 63% cost savings for medical device design and manufacture and a 47% increase in productivity for design services for aircraft repair during in-service. She has been an investigator on four innovative manufacturing research centres (design & manufacturing and electronic manufacturing), has undertaken numerous Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and been an investigator on over 20 research projects, published well over 100-refereed research papers and supervised PhDs since 1991. She is the principle investigator on a £1.8M research grant entitled “Designing the Future: Resilient Transdisciplinary Design Engineers, investigating the idea of Transdisciplinary research and its outputs. This grant has resulted in an adaptation of the work of Jantsch, which she will describe in her key note.