Glasgow has become one of Europe's more significant small-satellite cities, which surprises people who have not been paying attention. The combination of a strong engineering school, a cluster of manufacturers and a shipbuilding city's tolerance for building difficult objects has produced a genuine capability.
The university's contribution is concentrated in spacecraft systems, thermal design and the assembly, integration and test discipline that turns components into a spacecraft. For first-time payload teams, this last capability is frequently the one they did not know they needed.
Beyond space, the nanofabrication and precision engineering work here is long-established, and the biomedical engineering groups have a productive relationship with a large clinical estate.
The institution is old, confident and refreshingly unpretentious about industrial work. Site visits are easy to arrange and generally involve someone showing you hardware.
Capabilities
- Spacecraft systems, thermal design and qualification
- Assembly, integration and test for small satellites
- Nanofabrication and precision engineering
- Gravitational wave and precision measurement instrumentation
- Biomedical engineering and imaging
- Advanced manufacturing process development
Ways in
The routes that exist, and what each is suited to.
Qualification support and test campaigns
Access to thermal-vacuum and vibration facilities together with the procedure writing and test conduct that a first campaign requires.
Contract research
Defined engineering work on thermal, structural or systems problems, costed and delivered to industrial reporting standards.
Co-funded studentships
A route for firms who need a long question answered properly and can wait three years for the answer.
How to approach them
For qualification work, approach with your intended launch environment and your least comfortable margin. That is where the conversation will end up regardless.
The department is used to commercial confidentiality and will work under non-disclosure without fuss, provided the arrangement leaves the students able to publish something eventually.
Known for
- Spacecraft engineering supporting a cluster of Scottish small-satellite manufacturers
- Instrumentation contributions to international precision measurement collaborations
- Nanofabrication underpinning several generations of device research