Eleven industry participants (5 beneficiaries + 6 partners) have joined forces to enhance doctoral education, training and research on which ESRs’ careers depend. For this purpose, the best facilities, support and advice through their participation in the training weeks, Supervisory Board and Doctoral Studies Panels are made available to ESRs in order to maximize their prospects for a long-term sustainable research career, whether in industry or academia. In some cases, secondments take place in industry partners (AECOM, Burgmann Packings, COMSA, COTCA, Greenwood Engineering and Microlise) that have welcomed the hosting of ESRs to support the theoretical/experimental research undertaken in their projects (as detailed in the Research Section). In other cases, secondments are hosted by a research institute (TRL), academic partners (AAU and Universite de Nantes) and/or other beneficiaries (complementary with each other, i.e., an ESR hosted by an industrial beneficiary will experience a secondment in an academic environment and vice versa). These participants have been carefully selected to offer real opportunities for collaboration with the TRUSS ESRs, and to provide them mentoring on potential careers in their particular sector.
While all ESRs are experiencing at least one long secondment in a different environment, some have been exposed to two or more secondments, i.e., ESR1 (hosted by UCD with secondments in Burgmann Packings and UNOTT), ESR3 (hosted by ENSA with secondments in UCD and Phimeca), ESR4 (hosted by TCD with secondments in Lloyd’s Register in London, Lloyd’s Register in Aberdeen and Phimeca), ESR5 (hosted by Lloyd’s Register with secondments in UCD and AAU), ESR8 (hosted by Phimeca with secondments in UCD and Universite de Nantes) and, ESR13 (hosted by UNOTT with secondments in TRL and Microlise). These secondments are key training elements for strengthening the ability of ESRs in moving their research forward.