This week’s poll focuses on the announcement of seven multi-million pound Prosperity Partnerships that establish research collaborations between industry and universities.
The EPSRC has announced a second round of Prosperity Partnerships: five-year projects to investigate topics of national and global importance co-funded by government and industry, with the research areas identified by business and undertaken in collaboration with universities. The first round of projects, announced last year, are now attracting additional foreign investment from business partners, the council said.
The new projects involve industry partners such as Akzo Nobel, AstraZeneca, Oxford Photovoltaics, Google, Rolls-Royce, Tata Steel and Weir Group. The EPSRC investment in the partnerships amounts to £20.4m, while industry partners are putting in £16.8m and universities are contributing £4.9m. These partnerships now represent the flagship approach to co-investing with business in basic research, and contributes to the government’s aspiration to invest 2.4 per cent of GDP in R&D by 2027. The most recent figures available, for 2016, have a total R&D expenditure representing 1.67 per cent of GDP, putting the UK 11th in the ranking of EU countries.
The seven new projects are:
Developing a new virtual factory approach to steel production, involving computational techniques and scale-up activities, aimed at reducing screening times for new materials by a factor of 100 led by Tata Steel in partnership with Swansea University
New materials for solar panels, focusing on perovskites, led by Oxford PV in partnership with Oxford University
Sustainable coatings and paints, using studies of coatings failure combined with a machine learning approach to designing protective coatings and nanocomposites, led by Akzo Nobel in partnership with the University of Manchester
Bio catalysts for production of medicines, and developing both new complex therapeutic molecules and new manufacturing technologies, led by AstraZeneca with Prozomix and in partnership with Manchester University
Quantum simulation and software development to harness the power of quantum computing, combining developments in quantum processor hardware with quantum algorithm development, led by Google in partnership with University College London
Hi-fidelity virtual 3D simulation of a complete gas turbine engine during operation, led by Rolls-Royce in partnership with Edinburgh University
New oil and gas well stimulation technology, using numerical modelling, sensing and electronic control to enable a targeted pulsed stimulation process that could improve exploitation of subsurface energy sources in a socially responsible way, led by Weir Group in partnership with Strathclyde University
In the first round of partnerships, 11 projects were announced, covering topics including electromagnetic and acoustic materials, photonics, offshore wind energy, vehicle electrification and nuclear asset management.
This is the latest in a long line of attempts to stimulate and direct basic research towards filling industry’s needs, which historically have not been entirely successful. We would like to ask engineer readers whether they think that this approach be more fruitful than others, and whether the right subjects are being tackled in this round of partnerships.
Comments are, as usual, welcome, but we ask all contributors to read our guidelines for content of comments and remind everybody that moderation is in effect. We will announce the result of this poll on 2 October.
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