Scientists and engineers in the South West are being encouraged to work with the University of Bristol in order to bring their exciting ideas to life.
Thanks to an injection of £1.4m of new funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Bristol University is urging local businesses to get in touch with their ideas. Funding will be available from October 2015 to March 2017, with up to £50,000 available for each project from the University’s Research and Enterprise Development team (RED).
Almost 50 projects have been supported since 2012, including collaborations with local employer Rolls-Royce, and Portishead-based meteorological sensor manufacturers Biral. In another partnership, Professor Dave Bull of the Bristol Vision Institute worked with the BBC on High Dynamic Range video formats.
“The projects supported involve a wide range of businesses and public bodies, small and large”
The University of Bristol worked with Rolls Royce on modelling stress in composite materials, while the collaboration with BIRAL developed a device to isolate and analyse airborne particles.
Dr Andrew Wray, Knowledge Exchange Development Manager in RED, said: “The projects supported through the University’s Impact Acceleration Account involve a wide range of businesses and public bodies, small and large.
“Many of them have involved secondments into the University and from the University out to the organisation, enabling people to work together to solve real-life industry problems and commercialise research.”
Fostering entrepreneurship
RED works with academics, researchers, students and entrepreneur communities within and also outside the University of Bristol.
The scheme was set up by the EPSRC to help the UK’s most pioneering scientists and engineers create successful businesses from their research, improve collaboration and foster greater entrepreneurship.
A total of £30m is being given to 33 universities across the country. This is in addition to the £60m allocated in 2012, which gave awards ranging from £600,000 to £6m to British universities.
If you’re interested in working with the University of Bristol you can contact Frances Frith, Lucy Stephens or Andrew Wray in the RED team. Or you can find out more at the Bristol University RED page.
Shona Wright
Shona covers all things editorial at TechSPARK. She publishes news articles, interviews and features about our fantastic tech and digital ecosystem, working with startups and scaleups to spread the word about the cool things they're up to.
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