Introduction

CORNERSTONE is an ambitious consortium research project funded by EPSRC (link to EPSRC) under its Prosperity Partnerships scheme (link to Prosperity Partnerships).

This particular consortium is driven by the UK’s flagship company for engineering quality and excellence, Rolls-Royce plc, and it comprises four of the longest-standing and most reputable University partners to the company – Imperial College, University Of Oxford, Queen’s University Belfast, and University Of Nottingham. CORNERSTONE is all about Mechanical Engineering science and this is appropriate since Rolls-Royce has been built almost entirely on its mechanical engineering excellence. As time progresses, the company will derive increasing amounts of value from advanced computation (including data management, artificial intelligence and modelling of very complex systems), from power electrical and power electronic engineering and from the integration of complex systems from myriads of already-sophisticated components. The company wellbeing rests, in the meanwhile, on it continuing to remain further ahead than the competition in understanding, designing and managing high performance mechanical systems and CORNERSTONE is pivotal in this.

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