Seven new Prosperity Partnerships projects that will build links between the UK’s research base and industry have been launched by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
Industry partners include Weir Group, Tata Steel, Rolls-Royce, AkzoNobel and AstraZeneca, and university spin-out company Oxford PV.
An EPSRC investment of £20.4m has levered in £16.8m from industry partners and a further £4.9m from universities.
Prosperity Partnerships are EPSRC’s flagship approach to co-investing with business in long-term basic research. They are five-year, multimillion pound research collaborations on topics of national and global importance which have been co-created by leading UK universities and businesses with a strong research presence in the UK.
The programme is in its second year and its approach has been enthusiastically received by business partners. Partnerships from the first round have attracted additional foreign investment from the business partners to strengthen relationships further.
The programme is making an important contribution to achieving the Government’s aspiration of investing 2.4% of GDP in R&D by 2027 – not just through the initial investment from business but through acting as a conduit for businesses to exploit the new knowledge in internal R&D programmes.
The new projects map to four of the Industrial Strategy Grand Challenges, involve 19 industry partners and ten universities, and will fund 50 studentships. They cover a wide range of activities and processes that include developing:
- high-fidelity virtual simulation of a complete gas-turbine engine during operation, with Rolls-Royce
- a virtual factory approach to steel production, led by Tata Steel
- new well stimulation technology that could improve the exploitation of subsurface energy sources, led by Weir Group.
- new materials for solar panels, with Oxford PV
- new coatings and paints that are more sustainable with AkzoNobel
- new bio-catalysts for use in the production of medicines, with AstraZeneca
- quantum simulation and software development to harness the power of quantum computing, led by Google.
EPSRC executive chair Professor Philip Nelson said: “Our first round of Prosperity Partnerships are proving a great success. They are bringing universities and industry together and applying the creative energies of both to engineering and scientific challenges. Our next round of Partnerships covers a broad range of fields and we are confident that these projects will deliver real benefits to all their partners and help the UK research, discover and innovate.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wyLltMho9g
Project summaries:
https://epsrc.ukri.org/newsevents/news/prosperitypartnershipsround2/