Written by Yuri Mejia, University of Sheffield

A few weeks ago, a newsletter from Digital Catapult landed in my inbox with a simple question: how can digital twins deliver real business value? I clicked through, and it caught my interest.

Digital twins aren’t new — the concept goes back to the 1960s — but the field is moving quickly. The newsletter pointed to a projected compound annual growth rate of around 31% between 2026 and 2033, driven by AI, IoT and smart manufacturing. What I liked most wasn’t the figures, but the main idea: the value of a digital twin doesn’t come from the model itself, but from what it lets you do — connecting data, insight and action in close to real time.

That idea connects well with what we’re trying to do at the Digital Design Network+ (D2N+). Our vision is to build an active digital design community and make the most of digital design technologies so we can design faster and better with less — and help UK engineering reach net zero sooner. Digital twins are one of those technologies: a way to design and test complex systems more quickly, and get better solutions into action. So it made sense to me to go and see how another community is putting them to work.

Digital Catapult opened the UK Digital Twin Centre in Belfast a little over a year ago to explore practical applications across sectors like aerospace, maritime and defence. Their approach is refreshingly grounded — demystify, demonstrate, deploy — starting with understanding and real use cases before scaling anything. Their first adoption accelerator brought together nine partnerships to tackle real commercial challenges, and a new round is now open across sectors including automotive, agri-tech, clean energy, creative industries and life sciences.

So I did the obvious thing: I opened an account on their community platform. There are “Circles” for introductions, funding and resources, and sharing challenges and use cases — a nice low-friction way to meet people working on related problems.

I’ll be honest, though: I’m still building the habit of actually showing up. It’s easy to sign up somewhere and then never go back. So I’ve done something small but useful — I’ve put a recurring weekly slot in my calendar to check in, read what people are posting, and contribute where I can. A gentle nudge to keep the connection alive rather than let it drift.

If any of this resonates with you, I’d warmly encourage you to take a look and consider joining too. The more of our network that turns up in spaces like this, the richer the conversations become — and the more likely we are to spot the overlaps between design, regulated industries and emerging technologies like digital twins.

If you’d like to explore it yourself, the UK Digital Twin Centre community is at digitaltwin.digicatapult.org.uk. I’d love to see some familiar faces there.