As to what I do;
I'm the senior researcher in the Design Research Centre in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UCL.
http://www.mecheng.ucl.ac.uk/research/m ... -research/
We work closely with the NAME researchers:
http://www.meng.ucl.ac.uk/~nag_web/
I'm sustained by research funding, typically 3-year projects from the EC or UK bodies such as EPSRC and most recently ONR-Global. These are on subjects ranging from fire safety of passenger ships to low carbon shipping. My personal research interest is in the development of computer aided ship design methods - my PhD was in this area - particularly those employing new interface methods. Within this, I also carry out unsolicited design projects to support more general research aims (e.g. an electrically armed Type-45 replacement, a UXV carrying submarine etc) and consultancy work (e.g. OPVs for NDP, JSS for one of the bid teams, LCS for ONR Global, Motherships with BMT for MoD).
This is pretty typical of a post-doctoral researcher, with ones time split between several projects. At doctoral level (in the UK anyway) one would expect to be focussed on a single subject. All the DRC PhD students (3 working, 1 completing, 2 to start this year) are on industry-cofunded research within specfic interests (e.g. survivability, upperdeck EMC etc). My PhD was a little different in that I had no single funding source, so essentially was told to do some designs, then write a PhD about it!.
RP1