RESEARCH NEWS
UK agri-tech manufacturing partnership
WMG, University of Warwick is part of a cross-governmental partnership( with DEFRA digital, data, technology and security; Innovate UK and the Manufacturing Technology Centre- MTC), to support businesses to scale up agritech manufacturing in the UK.
By focusing on accelerating product manufacturing, AgriScale fills a critical gap in the innovation pipeline, helping promising technologies move from validated prototypes to market quickly and reliably. Through the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, five businesses will receive tailored support from WMG and the MTC to address specific manufacturing challenges exemplified through carefully selected, UK-based companies.
Emilio Loo Monardez, WMG’ s Principal
L-R: Angela Eagle, Minister for Food and Agriculture, announced the six-month pilot accelerator programme, AgriScale, at the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit.
Engineer and AgriScale project lead, explained:“ AgriScale is about reducing the risks that prevent promising innovation from reaching the market and helping businesses expand their strategic ambitions. By working alongside government, academia and industry, we are helping businesses to accelerate innovation, overcome manufacturing challenges and drive adoption and commercialisation to strengthen the sector and boost farmer productivity.”
This hands-on approach aims to accelerate the development and commercialisation of new technologies, helping to grow a globally competitive and sustainable agri-tech manufacturing base in the UK. The challenges faced by the selected organisations range from design for manufacture and technology roadmap calibration to manufacturing process optimisation and key technology development. n
https:// warwick. ac. uk
Durable alloys for clean hydrogen energy
An £ 859k EPSRC grant in the UK will support research to prevent hydrogen embrittlement in metals. Dr. Livia Cupertino-Malheiros, Assistant Professor in Mechanics of Materials in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering( Imperial), will lead the new‘ Hydrogen Embrittlement Mitigation by Engineering Grain Boundary Composition’ project beginning in early 2026. The work will improve the resilience of metals exposed to hydrogen, helping to advance safe, durable infrastructure for the clean energy transition.
Hydrogen embrittlement happens when tiny hydrogen atoms slip into weak spots inside metals and make them brittle. These weak spots are called‘ grain boundaries’, the invisible lines where different crystal-like regions of a metal meet. When hydrogen builds up there, the metal can suddenly crack and break.
“ This hidden process poses risks for critical components used in energy and transportation, where metals must withstand extreme conditions. By identifying the best grain boundary structures to resist hydrogen, the project aims to guide the design of new alloys that can stay strong even in challenging environments,” outlined Imperial.
The experimental results will feed into a new computational model designed to predict hydrogen embrittlement with greater accuracy. By combining small-scale experiments with large-scale simulations, the research will provide a much clearer picture of how metals behave in real-world conditions. The project will draw on expertise from across Imperial and beyond.
Dr Cupertino-Malheiros commented:“ This project gives us the chance to unlock a deeper understanding of how metals degrade in the presence of hydrogen. By combining expertise across materials science, engineering and modelling, we hope to provide industry and society with more durable alloys that will support the safe growth of hydrogen as a clean energy source.” n
www. imperial. ac. uk
Showcase for Austrian research initiatives
The European Digital Innovation Hub EDIH AI5Production supports companies in meeting today’ s digital challenges with the overarching goal of enabling sustainable, resilient and human-centred production systems in line with Industry 5.0. The A15Production project consortium includes 16 Austrian companies and both university and non-university research institutions based in Vienna and Upper Austria.
On 15 October 2025, EDIH AI5Production, organiser of the AI5Production Symposium, hosted an event at Johannes Kepler University Linz under the theme“ Digitalisation in production: solutions and applications”.
AIT( the Austrian Institute of Technology) presented four posters, demonstrating the intertwining of digitalisation, sustainability and technological innovation in production. AIT’ s
The Austrian Institute of Technology HQ.
third presentation focused on approaches to increasing energy efficiency in welding processes.
“ As part of the project, the status quo was first assessed on a welding inverter that corresponds to the state-of-the-art in the industry. Based on this, a concept was developed that uses modern technologies( semiconductor materials and control technology) in combination with innovative circuit designs to achieve considerable savings in resource consumption. This reduces both energy consumption and component requirements,” said the team.
The fourth AIT DynamicAIControlEPE project is investigating an AI-supported image analysis system that enables adaptive closed-loop control of a forming process— specifically, a tensile test on aluminium samples( e. g. EN AW-5083). n
https:// ai5production. at /
www. ait. ac. at
18 | ismr. net | ISMR December 2025 / January 2026