The University of Sheffield
Automatic Control and Systems Engineering

Research Contracts

Year after year, the successful completion of research projects has given ACSE a reputation second to none. Current and recent contracts have totalled over £15M from more than 50 research grants (from UK research councils, industry and overseas) to fund ACSE research laboratories and to support research programmes.

Below is a list of current and recent research contracts.

Current Contracts
Contracts completed in 2010
Contracts completed in 2009
Contracts completed in 2008
Contracts completed in 2007
Contracts completed in 2006
Contracts completed in 2005
Contracts completed in 2004
Contracts completed in 2003
Contracts completed in 2002

Current Contracts

Awarding body Grant Holder Title Period Amount
EU 7th FWP (Seventh Framework Programme)
 Professor M Balikhin Search for Electro-Magnetic Earthquake Precursors combining satellite and ground-based facilities (SEMEP) 2010-2012  €452,514
STFC Professor M Balikhin Kinetic Theory of waves in space and astrophysical plasmas 2009-2012 £293,792
STFC Professor M Balikhin Venus Express Post Launch Support 2009-2011 £26,792
STFC Professor M Balikhin Venus Express science exploitation 2008-2011 £254,097
BBSRC P Wright, et al including S A Billings Microbial Applications to Tissue Engineering: An Exemplar Network for Synthetic Biology 2008-2011 £135,520
Advanced Investigator Grant of the European Research Council Professor S A Billings Nonlinear Systems Identification and Analysis in the Time, Frequency, and Spatio-Temporal Domains 2009-2014 €1,9M
EPSRC Professor S A Billings, Professor D Coca Spatio-Temporal Systems Estimation, Modelling, and Analysis 2010-2014 £499,542
EPSRC Platform Grant Renewal Professor S A Billings, Professor V Kadirkamanathan, Dr Z Q Lang, Professor D Coca, Professor M Balikhin, Dr H Wei System Identification and Information Processing for Complex Systems 2010-2015 £1,2M
BBSRC McNeil et al including ACSE staff S A Billings, V Kadirkamanathan, D Coca Doctoral Training Grant for ten four-year PhD studentships at the interface between Medicine, the Life Sciences, Engineering and Chemistry' 2009-2013 £763,459
BBSRC D Coca, M Juusola, S A Billings Reverse Engineering Drosophila's Retinal Networks 2010-2013 £532,115
NERC G R Bigg, E Hanna, V Kadirkamanathan, S A Billings A century of variability in Greenland melting and iceberg calving 2011-2014 £311,959
BBSRC Professor D Coca and Professor R Beynon High-Performance FPGA-Based Computational Platform For Quantitative Proteomics 2008-2011 £515,001
EU Framework 6 Dr T J Dodd and Professor D H Owens Novel Q 2008-2011 £26,825
DEFRA Dr T J Dodd GRAIL Food Handling Robot 2009-2011 £300,600
Rolls-Royce Professor Fleming Extension to Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre in Control and Systems Engineering (2011) 2011 £295,002
EU/RAISME Professor Fleming Platform for Rapid Application Development 2010-2012 €145,000
EPSRC, (University of Sheffield component) Professor Fleming White Rose Grid E-Science Centre Platform Grant 2008-2012 £168,604
UKIERI Award Professor Fleming Optimal Vibration Control of Composite Structures 2009-2011 £44,680
EPSRC/Network Rail M Gilbert, C C Smith, R F Harrison Ultimate & permissible limit state behaviour of soil-filled masonry arch bridges 2011-2015 £418,000
Network Rail/TSB H A Thompson, R F Harrison Energy harvesting and wireless sensors for remote condition monitoring of railway infrastructure 2010-2012 £160,000
Network Rail Professor R F Harrison Establishment of a Rail Innovation and Technology Centre 2009-2014 £400,000
Royal Society Collaboration Grant V.Kadirkamanathan, and H.L.Wei Investigation of the control mechanism on co-culture bioethanol producing system 2010-2012  £11,950
EPSRC Dr Z Q Lang, Professor S A Billings, Professor G R Tomlinson New Generation Damping Technologies 2008-2011 £378,519
UK Northern Wind Innovation Program (NWIP) Grant Dr Z Q Lang Novel Integrated Condition Monitoring System for Wind Turbine Components 2010-2011 £80,664
Royal Society Dr Z Q Lang Experimental study of beneficial effect of nonlinear damper on vibration control 2010-2012 £11,190
EPSRC Professor M Mahfouf (PI) Goal-Directed Trajectory Planning of Therapeutic Pathways for Septic Shock Patients Using Fuzzy Granules-Oriented Maps 2009-2012 £319,421
EPSRC IMMPETUS Phase-III Professor M Mahfouf IMMPETUS Phase III. A New framework for Hybrid Through-process Modelling, Process Simulation and Optimisation in the Metals Industry 2008-2012 £4,6M
EPSRC Platform Grant Professor M Mahfouf (ACSE) Modern Metals Processing: Transfer of knowledge and core skills to new and emerging technologies. 2007-2012 £295,000
EPSRC Dr S A Pope Active Metamaterials for Control of Sound and Vibration 2011-2013 £94,000
The British Council (DelPHE scheme) Tokhi MO with Kabul University (Afghanistan) Use of ICT for education and training in higher education sector 2008-2011 £60,000
INSF (Iranian National Science Foundation) Tokhi MO with Gharooni SC, Iran University of Medical Sciences & Health Services, USWR, CLAWAR Asociation Iran Chapter Designing and development of functional electrical stimulation-assisted rowing machine and its efficacy in patients with spinal cord injury 2011-2013 £12,000
EPSRC H L Wei System Identification and Data Modelling of Complex Nonlinear and Nonstationary Processes 2011-2012 £101,004

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Contracts completed in 2010

Awarding body Grant Holder Title Period Amount
EPSRC Platform Grant Professor S A Billings, Professor V Kadirkamanathan, Dr Z Q Lang, Dr D Coca
Professor M Balikhin		 System identification and Signal Processing for Complex Systems 2005-2010 £422,571
The Leverhulme Trust Professor U Nehmzow and Professor S A Billings System Identification for Rapid Generation of Transparent, Analysable Control Code for Autonomous Mobile Robots 2007-2010 £129,887
MRC Fellowship Professor D Coca Stem Cell Dynamics: Exploration of the Stem Cell Attractor Landscape 2009-2010 £109,000
EPSRC Q Zhong, A Zolotas, D Dr Coca, K Li and S Evangelou New-ACE: A Network for New Academics in Control Engineering 2007-2010 £87,800
Rolls-Royce Professor P J Fleming Extension to Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre in Control and Systems Engineering 2008-2010 £976,221
European Framework 6 (12 Partners) Professor M Mahfouf
Professor J Yates
Dr C Pinna		 Compact Project on 'Fatigue Systems Modelling for Al Alloys' 2006-2010 €140,000
BSI Dr M O Tokhi Safety standard for "Robots in personal care" 2007–2010 £8,116
UoSh (Knowledge Transfer Rapid Response Fund) Tokhi M O with Tsuchiya A (ScHARR and Economics), Maheswaran R (ScHARR), Piling R (Sheffield Renewables) Effect of wind turbines on health & wellbeing 2009-2010 £4,536

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Contracts completed in 2009

Awarding body Grant Holder Title Period Amount
PPARC Professor M Balikhin Nonlinear Waves in Hot Plasma 2006-2009 £173,640
EPSRC Professor S A Billings Identification and Analysis of Nonlinear Systems in the Time and the Frequency Domain 2005-2009 £256,875
EPSRC Professor S A Billings, Dr Y Zheng, Mr J Martindale, Dr D Coca, Professor J E W Mayhew System Identification and Signal Processing for Neuro-Imaging data Aalysis 2006-2009 £264,277
EPSRC Professor S A Billings, Dr D Coca System Identification and Model validation for Spatio-Temporal Dynamical Systems 2006-2009 £295,373
BBSRC Dr D Coca, Professor R Beynon Hardware Accelerated Data Processing Pipeline For Proteomics 2008-2009 £98,559
ALSTOM Power Service Professor S Daley Optimal Data-Mining Methodologies for Power Plant Anomaly Detection 2006-2009 £53,000
EU Framework 6 Dr T J Dodd, Professor D H Owens RobotCub 2008-2009 £198,759
EPSRC/GSK Joint Grant V.Gillet, P.Willett and Professor V.Kadirkamanathan Array design for lead optimization in pharmaceutical research 2006-2009 £235,682
MOET-EU led by Airbus (France) Professor H A Thompson Sheffield working on simulation of primary and secondary power systems under databus control for future More Electric Aircraft 2006-2009 €350,000
DTI and Industry Professor H A Thompson
Rolls-Royce
Jaguar Cars
Goodrich Aerospace
York University		 Modelling Simulation and Incremental Certification - MOSAIC 2006-2009 £1.25M
(£250,000 Sheffield)
EPSRC (Bridging the Gaps) Tokhi M O with Zinober A and Triantafyllapoulos K Uncertainty analysis for set-point tracking and vibration control of flexible manoeuvring systems 2009 £21,368

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Contracts completed in 2008

Awarding Body Grant Holder Title Period Amount
PPARC Dr H Alleyne Dynamical Processes and Wave Turbulence at the Boundaries of the Magnetosphere 2004-2008 £164,825
PPARC Dr H Alleyne Post Launch Support for Cluster II Digital Wave Processor (DWP) Operations and Data Handling 2000-2008 £1.5M
ESA Dr H Alleyne Technical Assistance for DWP Instrument in support of the CLUSTER Active Archive 2005-2008 €289,428
PPARC Professor M Balikhin, Dr H Alleyne Dynamical Processes and Plasma Wave Turbulence and the Boundaries of Magnetosphere 2004-2008 £164,825
The University of Sheffield Dr D. Coca, Professor R. Beynon, S. Smith, V. Hughes Proof Of Concept Fund Award. Hardware acceleration of data processing in proteomics. 2007-2008 £10,000
EPSRC  T J Dodd, R F Harrison, N D Lawrence Mathematics for Data Modelling 2007-2008 £36,000
The University of Sheffield N Spooner, T J Dodd, S Maddock, N Allinson Business Research Fellow in Security and Crime Detection 2007-2008 £75,000
EPSRC Professor P J Fleming with University of Leeds (lead) and University of York The White Rose Grid e-Science Centre 2006-2008 £272,083
OMEGA Award Professor P J Fleming Control Strategies For A Cleaner Exhaust 2008 £60,000
Unilever Research Grant Professor V.Kadirkamanathan Nonlinear and nonstationary signal processing 2007-2008 £101,000
EU FP6 Co-ordination Action project Professor D A Linkens Nature-inspired Smart Information Systems (NiSIS) 2005-2008 €140,000
EPSRC Professor M Mahfouf, Professor Hockey   2003-2008 £9,258
EPSRC Professor M Mahfouf, G H Mills Fuzzy Granular Decision Support for Ventilator Optimisation in Critically Ill Patients using Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) 2005-2008 £224,214
EU INTAS Professor H A Thompson Innovation grant to develop previous health monitoring work into commercial product 2006-2008 €25,000

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Contracts completed in 2007

Awarding body Grant Holder Title Period Amount
BBSRC Professor R. Beynon
Dr D. Coca		 Application of Field Programmable Gate Arrays to Eliminate Bottlenecks in Near-instrument Proteomics 2004-2007 £230,130
EPSRC Dr D. Coca Adaptive Control of Infinite Dimensional Systems using Reconfigurable Computers 2004-2007 £132,014
ALSTOM Power Service Professor S Daley Application of non-linear signal processing tools 2004-2007 £39,000
The University of Sheffield Proof of Concept Fund T J Dodd Quadrotor mini Uninhabited Air Vehicle 2007 £10,000
Rolls-Royce Professor P Fleming Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre in Control and Systems Engineering 2004-2007 £764,430
DTI Award Professor P J Fleming, Professor V Kadirkamanathan, Professor H A Thompson BROADEN - Business Resource Optimisation for Aftermarket and Design on Engineering Networks 2005-2007 £201,756
EPSRC Professor M Mahfouf
Dr J J Ross		 Development of an Adaptive Fuzzy Advisory System for Drug Delivery to Patients Undergoing Cardio-ByPass Surgery 2004-2007 £174,429
EPSRC Professor M Mahfouf
Professor G R J Hockey		 Adaptive control of Automation in Human-Machine Systems through Operator Functional State Monitoring 2004-2007 £364,724
EPSRC IMMPETUS Phase II Professor M Mahfouf, Professor D A Linkens, Professor J H Beynon, Professor C M Sellars, Professor I C Howard, Professor W M Rainforth, Dr C Pinna, Dr E J Palmiere Thermomechanical Processing: Metallurgy, Mechanics and Modelling 2002-2007 £3.91M
Consortium of UK Industry, Government and regional bodies Professor H A Thompson ASTRAEA Programme - Intelligent Agent Engine Management for UAVs 2006-2007 £167,000
(Part of a £32M project led by BAe Systems)

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Contracts completed in 2006

Awarding body Grant Holder Title Period Amount
EPSRC Professor D J Allerton Real-time Simulation of the Effects of Wake Vortices on Civil Transport Aircraft 2003-2006 £290,921
PPARC Dr H Alleyne Post Launch Support for the Cassini Radio and Plasma Wave Software 2000-2006 £15,232
PPARC Professor M Balikhin A Theoretical Kinetic Study of low frequency waves in high beta non-uniformanisotropic space plasmas 2003-2006 £146,503
EPSRC Professor U Nehmzow and Professor S A Billings Robot MODIC: Modelling Identification and Characterisation of Robotic Environment 2004-2006 £193,722
EPSRC Professor S A Billings Identification and Analysis of Spatio Temporal Systems 2003-2006 £244,255
SRIF Funding Professor J E W Mayhew et al, Professor S A Billings Neuroscience Imaging Initiative 2005-2006 £1.08M
EPSRC Dr Z Q Lang Nonlinear Output Frequency Response Functions 2004-2006 £122,980
Royal Society Dr Z Q Lang The application of advanced optimization approaches to analytical engineering designs 2006 £6,900
South Korean Consortium for Steel Processing Professor M Mahfouf Hybrid Modelling of Engineering alloy Steel 2005-2006 £20,000
Royal Society Dr H Alleyne Visiting Researcher 2006 £1,720
INTAS Innovation Grant Professor P J Fleming, Professor H A Thompson Intelligent Adaptive Condition Monitoring of Gas Turbine Engines 2006 €25,000

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Contracts completed in 2005

Awarding body Grant Holder Title Period Amount
European Commision Professor H A Thompson (Coordinator) FLEXICON-Flexible Control Systems Development and Integration Environment for Distributed Systems 2002-2005 €1,876,139
Sheffield Hospitals Charitable Trust Dr S S Cross (Genomic Medicine), Dr R F Harrison Expression of cell adhesion molecules, matrix metalloproteinases and cell cycle regulator proteins in carcinoma of the oesophagus using Tissue Micro Arrays 2003-2005 £9,000
EPSRC Dr Y Zheng, Professor S A Billings, and Professor J E W Mayhew Identification and Modelling of Haemodynamic Response and Oxygen Delivery to Brain 2002-2005 £223,788
EPSRC (via York University contract) Professor P J Fleming, Professor H A Thompson, Professor V Kadirkamanathan Distributed Aircraft Maintenance Environment - E-Science GRID Demonstrator (Sheffield) 2002-2005 £480,622
EPSRC (via York University contract) Professor P J Fleming, Professor H A Thompson, Professor V Kadirkamanathan Decision support for integrated logistics PhD Project Studentship 2002-2005 £89,700
EPSRC Professor D H Owens, Professor P J Fleming, Dr S Bennett, Dr N Mort Master's Training Package in Control and Systems Engineering 2000-2005 £814,944
EPSRC Professor S A Billings Identification of Engineering Systems that Exhibit Sub Harmonics 2002-2005 £208,476
EPSRC Professor D H Owen with Professors P Lewin & E Rogers, (Southampton University ). Iterative Learning Control with Application to Multi-axis Systems 2002-2005 £201,000
Guild of Air Pilots and Navigators Professor D J Allerton Equipment grant for an Airbus side-stick 2005 £3,500
Royal Academy of Engineering Dr M O Tokhi International conference grant, 1999-2005 £3,900
EC GROWTH Dr M O Tokhi, Thematic Network CLAWAR Mobile robotic demonstrators and applications (Dissemination) 2002–2005 £25,140

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Contracts completed in 2004

Awarding Body Grant Holder Title Period Amount
EPSRC Professor D J Allerton, A F Clarke Feature Extraction in Enhanced Vision Systems for Civil Aircraft 2001-2004 £330,328
PPARC Dr H Alleyne A Programme of Plasma Wave Turbulence Studies with the Cluster II Digital Wave Processor 2001-2004 £337,798
ESA/Astrium Dr H Alleyne Double Star Programme 2002-2004 £51,030
EPSRC (a ROPA Award) Professor G R Tomlinson, Professor S A Billings and Dr Z Q Lang A Novel Approach to Vibration Attenuation by Exploiting Nonlinear Energy Transfer Concepts 2002-2004 £136,931
Royal Society Dr D. Coca Optimal Control and Stabilization of Parabolic-like Equations 2004 £1,430
ALSTOM Power Professor S Daley Active Control of Rotating Stall in Axial Flow Compressors 2003-2004 £14,000
HEFCE (under the HEIF Knowledge Exchange Programme) Dr R F Harrison Kickstarting an Innovation Culture and Early Stakeholder Interest for Advanced Methods for Online Modelling, Identification and Filtering 2003-2004 £9,000
Rolls-Royce Professor P J Fleming Support of EPSRC CASE students 2000-2004 £44,000
Rolls-Royce Professor P J Fleming Multivariable control of gas turbine engines (ANTLE) 2000-2004 £48,000
EU INTAS Consortium (Co-ordinator: Professor P J Fleming) Intelligent Adaptive Condition Monitoring of Gas Turbines Based on Markov Modelling 2001-2004 €150,000
Rolls-Royce Professor P J Fleming Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre in Control and Systems Engineering 2000-2004 £1,155,060
University Research Fund Dr Z Q Lang Development of a Symbolic Computing Software Package for Nonlinear System Analysis and Design 2004 £3,000
Royal Society Dr Z Q Lang Application of advanced optimization approaches to the design of engineering systems and structures 2004 £1,800
The British Council (Treaty of Windsor Scheme) Dr Tokhi MO with IST - Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal Effective modelling and control of flexible robot manipulators 2002-2004 £3,000
EPSRC Dr Tokhi MO with University of Leeds, University of Southampton, Salisbury District Hospital, The Inspire Foundation, and Spinal Injuries Association Bio-robotic walking orthoses - phase 1 2001-2004 £114,933

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Contracts completed in 2003

Awarding body Grant Holder Title Period Amount
EU Framework 5 Professor D J Allerton Smart Hybrid Integrated Navigation Equipment (SHINE) 2000-2003 £215,000
Royal Society Professor M A Balikhin Host PI for The Royal Society Postdoctoral Fellowship 2002-2003 c£12,000
PPARC Dr H Alleyne Cassini Post Launch Support for PRWS 2000-2003 £7,980
EPSRC Professor S A Billings Identification of spatio-temporal dynamical systems 2000-2003 £212,573
EPSRC Professor S A Billings, Professor G R Tomlinson Frequency domain estimation and filtering for nonlinear systems 2000-2003 £167,637
EPSRC Professor D A Linkens, Professor J H Beynon, Professor I C Howard From processing to properties: characterisation of toughness 2000-2003 £315,760
EPSRC Dr R F Harrison A New Approach to Non-linear Adaptive Filtering 2001-2003 £86,212
DTI,
Rolls-Royce,
TRW
 Professor H A Thompson Low Emissions Combustion Control for Aero Gas Turbines 1999-2002 extended to 2003 £120,000,
£34,000,
£12,000
EPSRC Professor D H Owens Multi-periodic Repetitive Control 2000-2003 £150,000

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Contracts completed in 2002

Awarding body Grant Holder Title Period Amount
EPSRC Professor P J Fleming with Dr S Bennett, P Wellstead and S Hope Process Control Systems Integration 1999-2002 £148,621
GlaxoWellcome Professor Fleming PJ with V Gillett and P Willett Evolutionary computation methods for drug discovery 1999-2002 £130,000
EPSRC Professor S A Billings and Professor G R Tomlinson Estimation, Analysis and Synthesis of Nonlinear Systems 1997-2002 £131,535
EPSRC Dr Y Zheng, Professor S A Billings, Professor J E W Mayhew, P J Coffey Identification and Analysis of Spatio-Temporal Systems with Applications to Brain Imaging 1997-2002 £272,620
EPSRC Professor S A Billings Wavelet Modelling of Nonlinear Systems 1999-2002 £134,156
EU TMR Network Professor D H Owens Advances in Nonlinear Control, as part of an EU consortium co-ordinated by SUPELEC, Paris 1998-2002 €129,000
EPSRC IMMPETUS Phase 1 Professor D A Linkens Advanced Models for Improved Planning and Control in Hot Working of Metals 1997-2002 £2,764,049

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