About the Project
Applications accepted all year round. Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only).
Develop a strategy and implementation of a semantic digital thread that preserves design intent and change management from design through manufacture, inspection, service and end of life.
- Lead Supervisor: TBC (JC Chaplin) University of Nottingham
- Second Supervisor: To be confirmed
- Industry Partner: Sought
- Project Start: October 2026
- Target Background: Mechanical Engineering, Digital Manufacturing, possibly Computer Science
- Industrial Funding: Sougnt
- Advert Close Date: TBC
- Programme: 4 year Engineering Doctorate (EngD) with industry placement
Meaning, not just data, across decades.
In any complex safety-critical system, it is challenging to understand how design intent and requirements trickle down into manufacturing, inspection, in-service and end-of-life decision making. Often called the "digital thread", this is particularly challenging when the expected service life of the product spans decades and multiple versions of the digital tools that enable the design.
The difficulty lies not just in technical issues with data formats, but in preserving the meaning of decisions: why a feature exists, why a tolerance was chosen, what assumptions were made. This is particularly difficult in nuclear contexts where configuration management and the control of changes is essential.
This project aims to understand why meaning gets lost in long-term digital threads, what information is necessary to preserve design intent, how open standards and semantics can preserve intent, and how traceability looks in practice within the nuclear sector.
Aims and objectives
Aim: develop a strategy and implementation of a semantic digital thread which preserves design intent and change management from design through manufacturing, inspection, service and end-of-life, supporting queries and auditing to enable regulatory compliance.
Objectives:
- Importance of preserving design intent: understand where meaning gets lost today, between software products and versions, and the real-world impact.
- Scope of preservation: determine what design intent and information is necessary for later maintenance, change management, end-of-life and audit.
- Standards and semantics: investigate how open standards, ontologies and knowledge graphs can preserve meaning across tool boundaries and time.
- Validation: identify KPIs and metrics for maintenance, change management and audits.
- Demonstration: show practical use of the system and experimentally verify the improvements.
Alignment to STAND-UP impact targets
- >50% reduction in overall build or decommissioning process time
- >40% reduction in maintenance time
- >30% reduction in person hours on builds (not applicable)
Apply for this project
Contact the lead supervisor or programme team to discuss your interest. Full application instructions are on the How to apply page.
Funding Notes
£26,000 per year, plus a significant project, travel and training budget. Open to UK home students.
Where will I study?
University of Nottingham
Ranked among the UK’s top 20 universities and in the world’s top 100 (QS World University Rankings 2026), Nottingham offers a PhD experience that combines research excellence with real-world impact. You’ll be taught by academics who are experts in their field, at a university known for its pioneering research – from the birthplace of the MRI scanner to Nobel Prize-winning discoveries.
For the fifth year running, more of our graduates are in highly skilled employment than any other UK university (HESA Graduate Outcomes 2021–2025). With careers support for life and strong employer links, we’ll help you build a future without limits.
Nottingham is the third most targeted UK university by leading graduate employers (High Fliers 2024), with global connections to companies like JP Morgan, ASOS, Unilever, GSK, and Deloitte.
Ranked in the top 10 for student life (UniCompare 2026), our award-winning campuses are home to students from over 150 countries. With an amazing range of sports clubs and societies, plus the vibrant city of Nottingham on your doorstep, you’ll find plenty of ways to connect and thrive.
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