AVEVA announces winners of first university research and development programme

Winners were selected from 20 submittals. Funds will be used for research that provides proof of concepts, demonstrations of feasibility and related activities.

“Deepening our relationships with the academic community is a major priority for AVEVA as it enables Research and Development collaboration in key areas of our business, including machine learning, analytics, product speed and statistical confidence, among other attributes,” said Dr. Ravi Gopinath, COO at AVEVA. “As AVEVA continues to advance how industrial and infrastructure organisations embrace a digital twin strategy to model and optimise engineering processes, we are increasingly building partnerships with the academic community to invest in tomorrow’s problems today.”

“We are very pleased to have been selected as a first-year recipient of AVEVA’s Research and Development programme,” said Professor Gabriele Sadowski, Chair of Thermodynamics at Technical University (TU) Dortmund. “We will apply and improve the ePC-SAFT model within the Unified Simulation Platform (SimCentral), which will lead to faster and more accurate thermodynamic results. Having a single simulator for the entire life cycle of a process fascinates us.”

“Our research will focus on developing membrane separation models that can be applied to a wide variety of chemical processes, such as oxygen separation from air, alternative natural gas utilisation, and carbon capture from coal-fired power plants. In addition, we will use the Unified Simulation Platform (SimCentral) to develop complete Operator Training Simulators for teaching purposes, which was a strong factor in our project being selected as a first-year recipient of AVEVA’s Research and Development programme,” said Professors Richard Turton and Fernando Lima at West Virginia University. “We are thrilled to work with the AVEVA team to contribute the necessary research to help deliver next generation simulation and modelling software for industrial applications.”

AVEVA selected TU Dortmund, Germany and West Virginia University, USA, out of 20 submissions and after a thorough review by a panel of experts. The full shortlist of finalists included: National University of Singapore, Technical University of Dortmund, University of California (Los Angeles & Berkeley), University of Texas at Austin and West Virginia University.

Selection criterion were based on a number of factors, including how the research and development grant might drive future innovation across industrial operations, how it could be completed through the use of existing resources and how the output could be incorporated into future software offerings.

AVEVA chose the Unified Simulation Platform (SimCentral) as the targeted product for its first University R&D Programme, as it provides an ideal environment for academic institutions to develop additional functionality that can be demonstrated in the context of a practical simulator without the need to develop user interfaces, provide thermodynamic properties, or in some cases, without having to write computer code.