I am pleased to bring you the first of my guest blogs. This blog is written by our newly appointed Knowledge Exchange manager Shona Campbell. It summarises the opportunities within the Industrial Strategy Green Paper and what we are doing centrally to ensure we are in a good position to respond to them.
Tara’s blog in February explored the Industrial Strategy green paper (open for consultation until April 17th) noting that ‘Investing in science, research and innovation’ is one of the ten pillars upon which the strategy is built. Undoubtedly the most significant aspect for the research base is the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) to which a total of £4.7 billion has been committed, starting with an investment of £270 million in 2017-18, rising to an extra £2 billion per year by 2020-21. The fund will back technologies where the UK has the potential to take an industrial lead, supporting all stages from early research to commercialisation. With the first Challenges announced (read on!) it is timely to share what we know, what we don’t, and what we’re doing about it across the university.
In late January/early February, industry and the research base were invited to inform the definition and prioritisation of Challenges to be issued by Innovate UK & RCUK (UKRI) through a series of workshops and a consultation. I represented the University at one of the workshops (which were incredibly popular with 4 times more applicants than there were places). Areas which were consulted on don’t come as a great surprise and are very much in line with Innovate UK sector priorities:
- Bioscience and biotechnology
- Leading edge healthcare and medicine
- Manufacturing processes and materials of the future
- Smart, flexible and clean energy technologies
- Quantum technologies
- Robotics and artificial intelligence
- Satellites and space technologies
- Transformative digital technologies
- Integrated and sustainable cities
- Technologies for the creative industries
Workshop participants were presented with several straw man Challenges within each area and charged with rewriting them, discarding them, combining them, splitting them up, identifying whole new Challenges, then pitching those considered to be highest priority to participants who then, in low-tech fashion, each voted for their preferences using colourful stickers. Debate was intense, parochial in places but largely constructive, and it will be interesting to see what emerges from the consultation and what weight was given to the aforementioned stickers! Progress has clearly been made as the first Challenges were announced in this week’s budget:
- Development, design and manufacture of batteries to power the next generation of electric vehicles;
- Artificial intelligence and robotics systems to operate in extreme and hazardous environments;
- New medicine manufacturing technologies to accelerate patient access to new drugs and treatments.
What else can we predict at this point in time? We expect at least the early Challenges to have quick turnarounds as Innovate UK is under pressure to spend (not just allocate) ISCF budget in 2017/18. We can already see that projects that can spend money early will be prioritised: ahead of any Challenges being issues the partnership for a high scoring but unsuccessful proposal involving Roger Evans from Computing, Engineering & Maths that fits within Technologies for the creative industries has been asked to confirm willingness to re-submit, without amendment or a full re-assessment) so there is potential for the early bird to catch the worm!
With the university’s research expertise aligning with many of the ISCF areas, and a great track record of business-industry collaboration, the Knowledge Exchange team are delving into the detail of the potential Challenges and will be in touch with academics over the coming weeks to encourage and provide support to respond to announced Challenges, gear up for anticipated competitions, positioning ourselves to bring together strong consortia to develop valuable impactful collaborative projects. May the challenge commence!
Competition launch details aren’t available at the time of writing so we don’t yet know the format; a variety of funding mechanisms were consulted on but we can be confident that Collaborative R&D grants will play a significant part.