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Celebrating 5 Years of World-Leading Fluid Dynamics Research and Innovation

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Celebrating 5 Years of World-Leading Fluid Dynamics Research and Innovation

The Leeds Institute for Fluid Dynamics Celebrates Five Years of World-Leading Research and Innovation

We are pleased to announce the launch of the Leeds Institute for Fluid Dynamics (LIFD) 5-year report. This report reflects on the last 5 years of LIFD’s growth, achievement and impact since its launch in late 2018-early 2019.

Fluid dynamics is an enabling technology for industry sectors as diverse as transport, healthcare technologies, marine and energy. It plays a key role in the most important challenges facing today’s society, including the drive to net zero, understanding disease and predicting weather and climate.

LIFD’s expertise in fluid dynamics spans a broad spectrum of the field, from fundamental theory and mathematical modelling to cutting-edge data-driven methods for fluids, and experimental techniques across the scales, ranging from microfluidic and nanofluidic flows to large-scale industrial processing. Research strengths include climate and weather prediction (e.g. forecasting severe storms); clean energy and transport (e.g. nuclear systems); environmental flows (e.g. flooding mitigation); health and medicine (e.g. aerosol transmission of infectious diseases); advanced manufacturing (e.g. improving efficiency of vehicles); astrophysics and geophysics (e.g. space weather prediction).

As one of the leading institutes for fluid dynamics research and education worldwide and the only fluids institute in the UK, LIFD has grown its membership by 50% over the last 5 years, with >300 staff and students now involved across a wide range of disciplines at the University of Leeds addressing some of the aforementioned crucial societal and economical global challenges.

Professor Shearer West, Vice-Chancellor and President, University of Leeds:
“In just five years, LIFD has become one of the world’s leading centres for fluid dynamics research and teaching. It has raised the UK’s profile globally, influenced policy, and driven innovation across industry and society. The University is proud to support its continued growth and impact in the years ahead.”

Over the past five years, LIFD has:

  • Driven national influence with the landmark “Our Fluid Nation” report, highlighting a £13.9bn industry employing 45,000 people in the UK, and helping secure new EPSRC funding schemes including the EPSRC National Fellowships in Fluid Dynamics scheme.
  • Delivered global impact through pioneering research in climate modelling, health, clean energy, space weather, manufacturing, and data-driven fluid dynamics (3,465 publications with > 52,000 citations – 61% co-authored internationally; £242M+ in grant funding secured).
  • Reinforced its leadership in education with a second renewal of its outstanding EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Fluid Dynamics. Now the only CDT in Fluids Dynamics in the UK, we will have trained >160 PhD students by 2028, with 70% of our alumni now leading in the sector in both academia and industry.
  • Forged and strengthened strategic partnerships with industry, government, and universities worldwide, including the Met Office, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and Nanjing University.
  • Inspired the next generation through high-profile outreach in Maths City, at outreach events with activities such as the Wetropolis flood demonstrator, and the launch of a free FutureLearn online course (engaged >10,000 school children and members of the general public across our outreach projects in the last 5 years).

Professor Steve Tobias, LIFD’s founding director:
“When we launched LIFD, we couldn’t have predicted the scale of what we’d achieve. We’ve become a world-leading hub for fluid dynamics, influencing policy, driving innovation, and training the next generation of experts who will shape the future of this field.”

Looking ahead, LIFD’s next five-year strategy focuses on two major goals:

  1. Expanding international and industry engagement to make Leeds the partner of choice for research, consultancy, and policy advice.
  2. Establishing a Data Driven Fluid Dynamics Centre as a global beacon for AI, machine learning, and advanced computational methods in the field.

Read the full LIFD 5-year report

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Media Contact for queries: Matt Gardner [email protected]