Research funding receives a boost

Two new innovation centres will lead the search for emerging technologies

The centres will search for new technologies

The UK’s search for emerging technologies is to receive a £19m boost through the creation of two new research hubs.

Universities keen to host the Innovation and Knowledge Centres (IKCs) are being invited to bid for the investment, with the final selections due to be announced in September next year.

The IKCs will combine academic and business design facilities with the aim of promoting the commercial exploitation of new developments, said Walter Gibson, senior technologist at the government-backed Technology Strategy Board (TSB), which is contributing £5m to the scheme.

“The UK’s future global competitiveness will depend on our ability to exploit emerging technologies,” said Gibson.

“The new centres, with the TSB’s involvement, will help provide the critical commercial expertise and skills needed to accelerate the exploitation of new technologies.”

There are already two pilot IKCs, at Cambridge University and the Optic Technium centre in North Wales, launched in 2005.

The funding for the next wave of projects is an encouraging step, said Stewart Davies, board member at venture capitalist New Venture Partners.

“Universities are the engine rooms of invention,” he said.

“These innovation centres are another mechanism to try to get the work that goes on in research departments realised as value-generating activity.”

But the scheme to build stronger links between research and business will take time, said Davies.

“The question is how to make the universities in this country work like their US counterparts ­ they started doing this kind of thing 50 years ago, and we are only just beginning,” he said.

Over five years, the two winning universities will receive £7m from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and £2.5m from TSB.