​DCE group secures major funding boosts from EPSRC to shape the future of UK aviation sector

A new project proposed by the University of Exeter, University of Cambridge, Alan Turing Institute and NATS has successfully received multi-million funding support to develop the world’s first AI air control system. This new ground-breaking project is called BlueBird and is funded by the EPSRC Prosperity Partnership programme for 5 years, with a vision of shaping the future of sustainable aviation by developing the fundamental science and technical approaches to deliver and deploy AI systems for UK airspace. 

DCE group from the University of Exeter will play a crucial role in supporting this interdisciplinary project in the next 5 years, bringing together leading researchers in data science and AI areas to respond effectively to the unprecedented challenges arising from the pandemic, Brexit and global warming.

The DCE group lead, Professor Tim Dodwell who is also the principal investigator of this massive grant elaborated on the necessities and benefits of the establishment of the new partnership with NATS, Cambridge and Turing. “The new partnership is designed to exploit new approaches to AI that enable increases in safety, capacity and environmental sustainability while streamlining air traffic controller training. This partnership will put the UK at the vanguard of technical advances in the sector, to modernise the design and control of UK airspace and positioning the UK as a global leader in sustainable aviation.”

The project which started in July 2021 is offering great job opportunities to early career researchers to be based at Exeter and Turing across three themes: (1) Digital Twin of UK Airspace (2) Multi-Agent Machine Learning Control of Air Traffic (3) Safe and Trustworthy Air Traffic Control. There are three postdoc positions available immediately from the DCE group to work with Professor Tim Dodwell, Professor Richard Everson and Dr Edmond Awad at the University of Exeter on each of these themes. For more details about the job description and how to apply, please click the links below:

PDRA 1 - Exeter / Turing Research Fellow in Probabilistic Machine Learning 

PDRA 2 - Exeter / Turing Research Fellow in Machine Learning Control 

PDRA 3 - Exeter / Turing Research Fellow in Human-Computer Interaction