Academics call for more funding and closer ties with business
Science and innovation, hopes Gordon Brown, will administer the smelling salts to our faltering economy. Speaking at Oxford University last month, the Prime Minister laid out his vision for the proliferation of scientific discovery and its commercialisation. "[We must] move away from an economy centred so heavily on financial services to one that is broader-based. We will not allow science to become a victim of the recession, but rather focus on developing it as a key element of our path to recovery," he said.
Strong rhetoric, but "focus" costs money. That's why Imperial College, backed by Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh universities, is lobbying the government for an extra £1bn to help turn more ideas into businesses. It's a timely plea. While Brown champions the need for more spin-outs, it seems apposite to question how they will be funded. The recession is already making investment for established businesses hard to come by. Scientists are rightly concerned that finding the right type of funding for university spin-outs could get even tougher.
Science minister Lord Drayson is backing the call for extra funding. Drayson's view is that under Obama's leadership the US could start to reassert itself in the battle for innovation supremacy. But with his attention fixed on balancing the UK balance sheet, Brown could well argue that higher education has already received more than its fair share of investment over the past few years, not least through the Higher Education Innovation Fund.
The government's intention is to maximise the potential of all investment by improving links between academia and industry. Labour's Innovation Nation White Paper of last year pledged to make the UK "the best place in the world to run an innovative business or public service". It proposed a doubling in the number of knowledge transfer partnerships between businesses, universities and colleges.
Professor Sir Roy Anderson is the rector of Imperial College London and a non-executive director of GlaxoSmithKline. He supports greater links between business and academia as a possible solution to the downturn. We must leverage the success of our academic research, he says: "The UK has four universities in the world's top ten." But ideas don't always attract the necessary finance. At Imperial Innovations, the commercialisation arm of Imperial College, "we have five times as many ideas as we can find the venture capital to support," says Anderson.
John Armitt, who is chairman of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), says cooperation is the key to maximising the effects of academic research and development. He cites partnerships, such as the one between researchers in Edinburgh and Toronto that led to the recent advancements in stem cell research as crucial, but maintains that the biggest gains are to be made from a fusion of academic endeavour and business know-how. "The interplay between industry and academia is not always about new ideas," he says. "Industry must be prepared to share IPR, share research costs and share success."
Why would a small business want to work alongside a university? "A need to stimulate innovation, to do something new, to do something different," says Philip Extance, pro-vice chancellor for business partnerships and knowledge transfer at Aston University. "Often it's a route to finding skilled people," he adds. "In the current climate there has to be some merit in putting some thought into how you will respond to the new world order that will follow this recession, because it's not going to be the same world. The successful companies will be those that have begun to think about what comes next."
Extance is a proponent of Case Award and Knowledge Transfer schemes, which enable businesses to effectively hire the services of research students to solve commercial problems. Mining company Rio Tinto, for example, linked up with the University of Nottingham to investigate the use of sensors for improving the health and safety of its workers. "As mines get deeper," explains PhD student Grubb, "heat becomes more of a problem. One of the ways we can monitor the health of a miner by is looking at physiology, breathing, heart rate, or body temperature. But it's important that this equipment is non-intrusive." Grubb developed a non-invasive heart rate sensor, which was built into a hard hat. The sensor uses light to measure variations in blood volume. "We're now talking with manufacturing companies about moving this technology into the supply chain," he says.
The partnership is mutually beneficial. Industry receives an injection of talent and ideas; the university gets a working case study with which to further its research, plus a contribution to the cost of education. The cost to the business of a Case Award like Rio Tinto's is about £8,000 for three years. Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) schemes, like the one at Reading University, cost considerably more, but can be part-funded by organisations such as EPSRC. Philip Ribbins, joint managing director of Orchestr8, a supply chain software company, says involvement in Reading University's KTP scheme has enabled the company to grow. "I was sceptical at the start, but we have developed a very good relationship with Reading. We've taken on the graduate that was working in the programme, so we now have a highly skilled, well-versed person working in our team that we wouldn't have been able to get otherwise."
For more targeted, short-term help, small firms in the West Midlands can apply for Index Vouchers. The scheme, which is used by businesses to solve specific problems, allows a direct swap of RDA funded cash for academic expertise. Xoptix, a Birmingham based engineering firm, chose this route when managing director Stuart Barton discovered that the company's monitoring equipment wasn't up to scratch. Xoptix makes equipment that measures minute particles, helping cement manufacturers improve setting time and the strength of the product. "The problem was," explains Barton, "that cement powder was getting onto the optical system and dirtying the measurement cell." It was an aerodynamic problem with the design of the cell. "We weren't experts in aerodynamics. We needed some help."
Barton applied for an Index Voucher from the University of Birmingham-£3,000 worth of help from the university's department of chemical engineering. Dr Serafim Bakalis and his students developed a mathematical solution to refine the aerodynamics of Xoptix's measuring equipment. It enabled the company to solve a problem that was slowing production. "The voucher system gave us a way out," says Barton. "Without that help, it could have killed us as a company."
Posted 11 March 2009 : Director.co.uk
