Lincoln University engineering chief Dr Jill Stewart

Due in part to Labour’s controversial policy of trying to get half of all school leavers into university, the higher education (HE) sector has seen a rapid expansion in the past decade or so, with a raft of new institutions appearing up and down the country.

Yet it has been a rather imbalanced growth, leaving the engineering and physical sciences more or less stagnant. There are many reasons behind this but the net result is that there has been no new engineering department in the UK in more than 20 years – until now.

Founded in 1996 as a true ’greenfield’ institute, Lincoln University has been something of a HE success story, plotting a rapid and upward trajectory through the university league tables. Indeed, The Times Good University Guide described its progression as ’the most dramatic transformation of a university in recent times’.

“Siemens needed to find a university that was willing to take a risk and adventurous enough to deliver an academic course in a different way”