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TWI Innovation Centre

Driving Innovation through Collaboration

achieving technology excellence and accelerating research

TWI Innovation Network

The TWI Innovation Network works to nurture and coordinate partnerships, enabling engineering advances in specialist areas across a range of industry sectors in response to commercial needs, as well as helping to train and up-skill the next generation of industry experts and staff.

TWI Innovation Network encompasses the National Structural Integrity Research Centre (NSIRC), Innovation Centres, Technology Acceleration Programmes (TAPs), and Private Technology Innovation Partnerships (PTIPs).

Innovation Network partners benefit from open access to facilities, allowing them to carry out work at TWI’s headquarters in Cambridge using state-of-the-art equipment in dedicated laboratories.

About TWI

TWI is one of the world's largest, independent, not-for-profit, membership-based research and technology organisations. It was established in Cambridge, UK in 1946 and now has bases internationally in Greece and Germany, South East Asia, India, the Middle East, Central Asia and the USA.

TWI has a multi-disciplinary staff of specialist consultants, engineers, scientists, researchers and technicians dedicated to bringing engineering, materials, structural integrity management and joining techniques into the 21st century. Focused on bridging the gap between research and industry, TWI promotes the latest approaches following the digital revolution in industry.

Through its Innovation Network, TWI has a number of innovation centres and technology based programmes as part of a large portfolio of innovation activities. Innovation centres are joint industry-research partnerships between TWI and academia. Technology Acceleration Programmes see TWI collaborating with SMEs and TWI Industrial Members to focus on moving innovative concepts through to commercialisation.

Private Technology Partnerships are long-term relationships with technology organisations to develop novel solutions and address industrial challenges for future needs. In combination, these form an open innovation eco-system with transformative socio-economic impact.

Technology development

Key technology developments include digital twin, artificial intelligence (AI) analysis and automation, Industry 4.0, smart manufacturing, industrial internet of things (IoT), immersive visualisation and autonomous robotic systems. TWI aims to bring cutting edge research to industry and is exploring the latest advanced materials, quantum technologies and nanotechnology. TWI’s deep and unique history allows its experts to balance traditional techniques with modern technologies, to find the sweet spot between digital and physical engineering.

Technical excellence

TWI is internationally renowned for its technical excellence, industrial focus and cross disciplinary experts who can add value to almost every industry sector including energy (renewable, conventional, oil and gas, nuclear energy), transportation (automotive, aerospace, maritime), infrastructure (highways, bridges, tunnels), electronics, manufacturing (additive/3D printing, high value, high volume, FMCG), defence and medical devices.

As an industrial, research and development focused organisation, TWI is always looking for new, innovative companies to collaborate with on the next generation of public funded projects and future technologies development. In order to fund its ambitious research and development programme, TWI has a specialist Technology Innovation Management team which supports the technical experts by securing public funding for engineering research and innovation. Since 2008, TWI has acquired £325m for TWI and partners in over 288 projects.