Projects per year
Personal profile
Research interests
Ben leads the Engineering Systems and Design institute (http://www.esdi.ac.uk) comprising 20 academics and 40+ researchers working across six themes: digital manufacturing, energy systems, infrastructure systems, design technologies, design thinking and systems thinking.
In addition to leading the ES&D institute, Ben is CoDirector of the Design & Manufacturing Futures Laboratory (http://www.dmf-lab.co.uk). The lab is researching and creating the tools and technologies of tomorrow, providing game changing capability for the design, manufacture, operation and disposal of next generation products and machines. Projects include: constraint-based and topological optimisation; engineering project health monitoring; tangible interfaces and mixed media prototyping; augmented and mixed-reality; fabricative, additive and subtractive technologies; democratisation of design and manufacture; digital-physical twinning and revision control; and, manufacturing systems of the future.
Ben’s research focuses on product, machine and manufacturing system design. His major research contributions lie in four areas:
- Design Tools and Methods – The creation of tools, technologies and methods to improve the process by which products and machines are designed with a particular emphasis on sectorial methods, understanding design practice, improving design management and emerging technology.
- Computational Design and Optimisation – The creation of computational tools to enable the modelling, reasoning and optimisation of products and machines with a particular emphasis on constraint-based, generative and deep learning approaches.
- Machine and Manufacturing Systems Modelling – The creation of numerical models and modelling approaches to represent the interaction between production/manufacturing machines and the materials they handle with a particular emphasis on high-value manufacturing, and packaging, processing and pharmaceutical sectors.
- Engineering Informatics – The creation of tools and methods to support the capture and reuse of design and manufacturing information over the lifecycle, and the subsequent application of knowledge discovery techniques to generate new understanding and insight to inform design.
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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
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8074: UKPRP Tackling Root Causes Upstream of Unhealthy Urban Development (TRU3D) MR/S037586/1
1/10/19 → 30/09/24
Project: Research, Parent
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CAD Refactoring: A Methodology to Improve Computer Aided Design Models' Editability
Rosso, P., Hicks, B. J., Burgess, S. C. & Gopsill, J. A.
17/09/18 → …
Project: Research
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Brokering Additive Manufacturing
Gopsill, J. A., Hicks, B. J. & Snider, C. M.
1/04/21 → 30/09/22
Project: Research, Parent
Research output
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A generative-based design methodology to enable the democratisation of 3D printing
Goudswaard, M., Nassehi, A. & Hicks, B., 4 Aug 2023, In: Design Science. 9, e21.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review
Open Access -
HOW DO PROTOTYPES CHANGE? CHARACTERISING QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE CHANGES BETWEEN PROTOTYPE ITERATIONS
Real, R., Snider, C., Goudswaard, M. & Hicks, B., 1 Jun 2023, Design society . Vol. 3. p. 2105-2114 10 p. (Proceedings of the Design Society).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference Contribution (Conference Proceeding)
Open Access -
Improving the feel of 3D printed prototypes for new product development: A feasibility study of emulating mass properties by optimising infill structures and materials
Felton, H., Yon, J. & Hicks, B., 24 Jul 2023, In: Design Science. 9, e19.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review
Open Access
Datasets
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The IDEA Challenge 2022 dataset
Ege, D. N. (Creator), Goudswaard, M. A. (Creator), Gopsill, J. A. (Creator), Hicks, B. J. (Creator) & Steinert, M. (Creator), Zenodo, 2023
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8328027, https://zenodo.org/record/8328027
Dataset
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The Prototype Taxonomised
Yon, J. M. (Creator), Hicks, B. J. (Creator), Snider, C. M. (Creator), Jones, D. (Creator), Nassehi, A. (Creator), Felton, H. (Creator) & Kent, L. (Creator), University of Bristol, 23 Apr 2021
DOI: 10.5523/bris.2weasfqx20r7s2u0chvjnxwrze, http://data.bris.ac.uk/data/dataset/2weasfqx20r7s2u0chvjnxwrze
Dataset
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The creation of a neural network based capability profile to enable generative design and the manufacture of functional FDM parts
Hicks, B. J. (Creator), Snider, C. M. (Creator), Jones, D. (Creator), Bennett, P. D. (Creator), Mathias, D. (Creator), Gebler, O. F. (Creator), Goudswaard, M. A. (Creator) & Nassehi, A. (Creator), University of Bristol, 16 Dec 2020
DOI: 10.5523/bris.128vc9hwe7zgm29csj8a84oca2, http://data.bris.ac.uk/data/dataset/128vc9hwe7zgm29csj8a84oca2
Dataset
Activities
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Phil Cash
Ben J Hicks (Host)
20 Jan 2014 → 24 Jan 2014Activity: Hosting a visitor types › Hosting an academic visitor
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Andy Dong
Ben J Hicks (Host)
15 Oct 2013 → 18 Oct 2013Activity: Hosting a visitor types › Hosting an academic visitor
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Nutrition for Life Competition
Ben J Hicks (Examiner)
2013 → …Activity: Examination types › External Examination and Supervision