MAY 2012
This is the first ‘newsletter’ for the Science City Advanced Materials 2 project. The aim is to share
information about progress and updates on the achievements on the project and the wider Science
City Research Alliance.
Science City Research Alliance Advanced Materials 2 project
Science City Programme news:
Professor Chris McConville (right) has been appointed Director of the Science City
Research Alliance (SCRA), replacing Professor Pam Thomas. Chris is Professor of
Physics at the University of Warwick and has been a theme lead on the Advanced
Materials 1 project from the start. As Director, Chris is very keen to encourage
further interaction between the two universities including developing a SCRA
website.
Advanced Materials 2 update:
The ‘financial’ phase of the AM2 project is now complete and the funding received from Advantage
West Midlands and ERDF has finished. In total, the project received just over £8.5 million (£7.7m
capital funding for new facilities and equipment and £795k revenue funding).
The project will continue until March 2018 and both universities are committed to the Science City
Research Alliance and building industrial collaboration.
Outputs:
The Advanced Materials project
continues to deliver the
contracted outputs on plan. The
targets for skills and
patents/licences have now been
achieved (although the project
will continue to record this
information and over achieve).
The Business-related outputs on
the project are currently ahead
of forecast and on track for the
future. We have achieved 120%
of targets for Business Assists in
the last 12 months and 150% for
Collaborations.
Output
Jobs Created – New jobs created
(26 AWM)
Business Creation – business created &
demonstrating growth (2 AWM)
Business Support – business supported
to improve their performance (39
AWM)
Business Support- business engaged in
new collaborations with the knowledge
base (39 AWM)
Skills – People assisted to improve skills
Graduates into employment
Levered Revenue Funding
Creation of Demonstrator Projects
New Patents or Licence Agreements
Workshops
Peer Reviewed Publications
Presentations at Conferences
Target to end Claimed to
March 2012 date (April
2012)
Total Output Percentage
Target
Complete
(2015 for
ERDF, 2018
AWM)
53
40%
7
21
1
1
5
20%
21
23
79
29%
14
22
79
28%
43
7
£4,870,516
153
8
£6,282,481
132
29
£20,000,000
116%
28%
31%
1
1
12
27
16
1
5
18
158
135
3
3
22
205
205
33%
167%
82%
77%
66%
Please continue to acknowledge the Science City and ERDF funding in grant applications, papers
and presentations so we can continue to achieve these outputs. See
go.warwick.ac.uk/am2/acknowledgements to download logos and for further information.
Events:
Several dedicated events have been held across the region over the past 12 months. These were
aimed at industry participants in applicable market sectors to the project and served to raise the
profile of the universities, create links between academics and industry and market our capabilities.
Companies attending included Jaguar Land Rover, Alstom, high-tech regional SMEs, Knowledge
Transfer Networks (part of the Technology Strategy Board) and financial professionals. Feedback
has been extremely positive.
Examples include the “Nanohealth Discovery Day” (ThinkTank, Birmingham), a “Coatings, Surfaces
and Interfaces Discovery Day” (University of Warwick), a “Materials Modelling and Property
Prediction Industry Workshop”, (Think Tank, Birmingham), and Breakfast Briefings at the National
Motorcycle Museum (Solihull) and Manufacturing Technology Centre (Coventry).
MAY 2012
Business Engagement:
The Advanced Materials 2 project has initiated new relationships with over 70 companies across a wide
array of market areas and technical topics. Many items of commercial work have taken place - several
leading to repeat business.
Business engagement highlights include:
The use of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Gel Permeation
Chromatography (GPC) techniques allied with research expertise to
understand and improve ingredients in Unilever’s personal healthcare
products.
Ellipsometric characterisation of surfaces to investigate reproducibility
of the surface preparation with Coated Conductor Cylinders Ltd (3Cs).
GPC Facilities at Warwick
Testing and analysis of the surface characteristics for Precision Micro
Ltd.
There
have
been several
new business
models
by the
including:Chromatography (GPC)
GPC Sustainability
Pilot: since
its creation
over piloted
a year ago
the project
Gel Permeation
Sustainability Pilot has been very busy. So much so that it recently took on a full time employee to fulfil
commercial orders and maintain the excellent facility for research workers. Repeat business has been
generated from the likes of Unilever, Pfizer, Munidpharma, Coopervision, Sun Chemical etc. and the pilot is
now truly self sustaining and is kept extremely busy.
Training courses for Industry: A successful Gel Permeation
Chromatography polymer analysis training course was arranged and 82%
of delegates gave feedback which varied from ‘Very good’ to ‘Excellent’. A
repeat of this course has been organised and is fully booked and a
Materials Surface Characterisation course is being arranged.
Five new patents have also been generated so far on the project.
Materials Characterisation Facilities at
Birmingham
Other project achievements:
Dr Anna Peacock has been awarded a £125k EPSRC First Grant “Ferrocene-peptide adducts for DNA
binding: Towards sequence-selective electrochemical DNA sensors”. The project will look at
coupling biological recognition motifs with electrochemically active ferrocene in an effort to
develop functional peptide adducts.
Two Marie Curie fellows will be joining Dr Paul Davies’ research group. Their work will develop and
exploit the use of gold catalysis to synthesise key molecular building blocks for bioactive and
functional materials, and in the design of new bifunctional catalyst structures.
Dr John Fossey was awarded an EPSRC first grant at the end of 2011 which will allow him to
develop new types of dyes for use in solar cells. He has also been successful in attracting European
funding in the form of a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship allowing investigation into
catalytic sensors. This novel approach will deliver catalysts that are also sensors for their own
efficacy, which will be useful in reaction optimisation for rapid drug synthesis.
News from other SCRA projects:
th
The final major SCRA launch took place on 24 April with the opening of the Mechanochemical Cell
Biology Building at the University of Warwick by Sir Paul Nurse.
SCRA funded research facilities in the Life Sciences are being used in a $3.4m programme of research
into targeting antibiotics at ‘superbugs’. This research programme is lead by Professor Chris Dowson,
includes Warwick and Birmingham universities and is funded by the Canada/UK Partnership on
Antibiotic Resistance (a collaboration between the UK’s Medical Research Council and the Canadian
Institutes of Health Research).
Professor Jihong Wang (Energy Efficiency) is the lead researcher on IMAGES - an Energy Storage
project with 13 industrial partners including National Grid - which has won £3.7m from EPSRC.
th
Hydrail is an international seminar taking place at the University of Birmingham on 3-4 July. The
event will bring together research expertise from the Hydrogen and Energy Efficiency projects.
If you have any feedback or news you would like to share, please contact Andrew Todd (AM2 Project
Manager) at andrew.todd@warwick.ac.uk