By Stephen Bevan and Sarah Collins
Published 20 July 2026
The University of Cambridge’s strength in bringing together research, business, and investment to inspire innovation and accelerate UK economic growth was showcased at the New Whittle Laboratory’s Frank Whittle Summit.
On the same day His Majesty King Charles attended the new £58 million facility’s official opening, the event welcomed major industrial businesses and tech giants to reignite Britain’s industrial engine in aerospace, energy and defence.
Executives from companies including Rolls-Royce, Boeing, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Siemens Energy, along with leading AI firms, senior government officials, and top researchers, gathered to kickstart a series of missions to pioneer new technologies and industries in the UK.
These missions will transform and accelerate the UK’s approach to innovation in hardware development and manufacturing across aerospace, energy and defence, harnessing AI and autonomous laboratories to shrink today’s multi-year technology development cycles from years to months.
Over the coming decade, it is estimated that technologies developed through the New Whittle Laboratory could contribute up to £30 billion in economic value to the UK and create as many as 10,000 new skilled jobs.
Professor Rob Miller, Chair in Aerothermal Technology and Director of the Whittle Laboratory at Cambridge, said the Summit also aimed to mobilise capital to support UK projects and engineering talent, turning scientific advantage into industrial strength.
He said: “AI is dramatically accelerating hardware innovation across the aerospace, energy and defence sectors. Britain has the capacity and the audacity to compete and win in a global race.
“What’s missing is a bold new approach that champions rapid iteration over incremental improvement. That’s why we’ve established the Bennett Innovation Lab — a sovereign capability designed to launch transformative new missions, each of which is designed to build or transform a UK industry.”
The New Whittle Laboratory encompasses two elements: the Bennett Innovation Lab: designed to launch 20-30 missions over a decade, each building a new industry in the UK; and the National Centre for Propulsion and Power: a rapid test facility designed to cut the time between ideas and testing from years to weeks.
Missions will involve small teams of elite engineering talent, operating in a culture which promotes risk and provides access to Formula 1-style rapid fabrication and testing.
An initial proof-of-concept mission, made possible by philanthropic gifts from Lord Sainsbury of Turville and Peter Bennett, with support from Rolls-Royce, has demonstrated these capabilities. This has resulted in the development of a prototype cryogenic jet engine that burns supercooled liquid hydrogen, representing the biggest shift in jet engine design since Frank Whittle’s original design. Nine new patents have been filed by the project team, and Rolls-Royce plans to use the results to accelerate technology development for its future narrowbody engine.
Representatives from the UK’s world-leading innovation clusters and labs, including the Henry Royce Institute, the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, the Harwell Campus, the Silverstone Technology Cluster, and the Manufacturing Technology Centre, were also present at the Summit.
Lord Vallance, Minister for Science, Innovation, Research and Nuclear, said: “The UK’s universities are among the best in the world, driving breakthroughs that will shape the future and transform lives. The New Whittle Laboratory is an excellent example of how we can turn world-class research into innovation and growth, and I look forward to seeing the pioneering technologies that will be developed here.”
Professor Julia Sutcliffe, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Business and Trade, said: “To remain internationally competitive and at the forefront of critical industries for the UK economy – including aerospace, energy and defence – we must find new models to move much faster. We need to ensure that our great ideas support the growth of businesses in this country, and we believe the mission-led approach being pioneered through the New Whittle Laboratory and our other leading research clusters will be transformative in delivering this.”
Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, said: “We need to speed up innovation in the UK’s engineering sector. The Bennett Innovation Lab offers the incredible opportunity for the UK to build a mission capability which can deliver the UK’s leading science into new industries at an unparalleled pace. This will be a partnership between Cambridge and the other leading technology clusters and institutes across the UK. It’s only by building a partnership of the UKs leading clusters that we deliver the speed of technology development and deployment that the UK needs.”
The Summit was hosted in partnership with the Sustainable Markets Initiative, founded in 2020 by the King – then the Prince of Wales – to help convene global business leaders, investors and innovators to accelerate the deployment of breakthrough technologies and strengthen collaboration between industry, academia and government.
World-leading innovation must be in harmony with our planet, and the new Hatton Professorship of Sustainability at Cambridge was also celebrated at the Summit. Established to mark the coronation of the King – an alumnus of Trinity College – and his championing of sustainability, the Professorship is funded through a £7 million endowment, made up of £5 million from Trinity College and the Hatton Trust, and matched by £2 million from the University.
As well as accelerating both innovation and economic impact, the mission of the New Whittle Laboratory, along with that of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, of which the King has been the Royal Founding Patron for more than 30 years, reflects His Majesty’s longstanding interest in how innovation, business leadership, and sustainability can work together to create prosperity and resilience.
The New Whittle Laboratory is the latest evolution of the Whittle Lab, which was opened in 1973 to place the UK at the forefront of the jet age. It was named for Sir Frank Whittle (1907-1996), the Cambridge alumnus and RAF officer who is known as the creator of the jet engine.
Today, the Whittle Lab is the world’s leading research centre for jet engines and power generation, developing hundreds of technologies for companies including Rolls-Royce, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Siemens Energy, and generating around 10 per cent of the University’s industrial research income. The Whittle Lab has won the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ highest honour in the field – the Gas Turbine Award – a record 15 times.
The Whittle Laboratory received £14.6 million in grant funding for the National Centre for Propulsion and Power from the ATI Programme, a partnership between Aerospace Technology Institute, Department for Business and Trade and Innovate UK. Collaborative industry projects advancing aerospace capability at the Whittle Laboratory have also been supported by funding from the ATI Programme.
The formal opening of the New Whittle Laboratory marks another significant milestone in the development of the Cambridge West Innovation District, home to the University’s world-leading research in science and technology.
Rob Miller is a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
Photography:
Natalie Hall/SDC
Hufton+Crow
Ian Jones
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
source: cam.ac.uk