Rolls-Royce may not have invented the academic research centre, with a research programme linked very closely to the company’s own technology needs, but in its University Technology Centres (UTCs), the company has certainly been more vigorous than most in forging such links. The latest such venture continues the company’s globalisation of the concept.
Its newest UTC is at Karlsruhe University in Germany. This time the idea is to “research cooling in gas turbine combustors and turbines and related technologies required to improve the fuel efficiency and environmental performance of future aero engines”.
The new UTC joins 28 others set up since 1990, in the US, Norway, Sweden, Italy, and Germany as well as the UK, where the idea got off the ground. Perhaps the most surprising feature of the UTCs is that Rolls-Royce has managed to do deals in such disparate academic regimes.
