Knowledge Transfer Account - University of Glasgow

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Glasgow's KTA will be made up of 3 workpackages:1. Marketing & relationship buildingWe will raise the profile of EPSRC-funded activity, bundle innovations and IP through innovation sandpits with potential industry partners, evaluate IP through Industrial Star Chambers and facilitate closer interaction between academics and industry through collaboration events around the UK and a seminar series. These new mechanisms will enable linkages between researchers and the marketplace and will build new partnerships with others outside the University, especially those with complementary product development skills.The central theme of the marketing workpackage is to improve communications, both about opportunities, to promote engagement, but equally importantly, communication within opportunities, building relationships which will ensure the most effective and efficient application of resource and expertise at each stage.We believe that it is vitally important, particularly in the early stages, to engage people who can effectively communicate between the research base and the company participants. We will, therefore, employ Technology Translators, with relevant technology backgrounds who will promote the University's Nanotechnology capability to local/national/international organisations. These individuals and agencies will also support consortia to bid for additional KT leverage through routes such as TSB and the Intermediary Technology Institutes. The approaches outlined above are designed to create productive networks involving researchers and external parties. 2. Funding mechanisms: The KTA will also provide funding for short-term support for people, technologies and markets. It will fund academics as KT advocates buying out academic time to focus on KT activities. It will also support entrepreneurial management through an interim CEO programme to add value to the spin-out process by focusing on market assessment, customer identification and early stage business planning. We also propose to implement Technology Development Fellowships which will fund a Technology Developer who would ensure that the technology is progressed at the same rate as the business planning. In addition, we plan to increase our KTP participation and set up 3 nano-based KTPs. The KTA will support a number of projects to reach proof of concept/prototype stage much earlier and technologies that have reached this stage will be eligible for support from the Product Development/Technology Integration fund which will be put in place, recognising that the key opportunities lie in creating solutions to problems by combining technologies across disciplines. The fund will be used to support this integration and to develop the projects we believe to have real commercial potential. Funding will also support validation of research results, primary market assessment and market feedback, speeding up the process of identifying commercially viable products/projects significantly.We will also create a Technology Development Voucher scheme for companies to initiate new relationships between UK SMEs and the University, providing SMEs with access to facilities they would not otherwise be able to afford. This will be a key means of ensuring two-way KT, with companies bringing business opportunities forward for co-development with the University. One of the practical barriers identified by academics to engaging with industry is not having access to funds to visit companies to promote their research. By providing small sums of money we believe that it would facilitate many more projects such as the University's 'First Step' and KTPs3. Training: We will provide academic staff with enterprise training; peer to peer and KT support training, integrated with complementary strands of training given to PGR and researcher community funded Roberts, and will provide industry with CPD modules to enhance their absorptive capacity for research-led innovation.