Technology Innovation Centres

Written evidence submitted by Universities Scotland (TIC 38)

Technology Innovation Centres

Introduction and Declaration of Interest

Universities Scotland is pleased to respond to this important inquiry on behalf of our 20 members, the Scottish Higher Education Institutions. We have consulted widely with them, but they may also choose to respond separately; a full list of our members is given on our website www.universities-scotland.ac.uk . While working closely and sharing draft responses with, Universities UK, we feel it is important to draw attention to the distinctive characteristics of the Scottish research and innovation landscape, and how this affects the views and needs of our members.

1. What is the Fraunhofer model and would it be applicable to the UK?

According to their website, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is Europe’s largest application-oriented research organisation. It was founded in 1949, as a complement to Germany’s Max Planck Institutes, which concentrate on basic research, and now includes 59 Fraunhofer Institutes which promote and undertake applied research "of direct utility to private and public enterprise". They focus, almost exclusively, on STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths and Medicine) disciplines. They have an annual budget of about €1.6 bn (£1.4bn), of which more than half comes from private businesses. The organisation has a decentralised structure, whose General Assembly includes Institute Directors, with overseas offices in Europe, USA, Asia and the Middle East.

The Fraunhofer model is one that has worked for Germany and has already been shown to work in other countries including US, Italy and Austria. We welcome the UK Government’s foresight in committing large sums of money to Technology Innovation Centres, and would welcome the opportunity to test the model in Scotland.

The benefits of innovation will only be realised in the long term, beyond the lifetime of any particular Government. TICs, as proposed by the Dyson and Hauser reports are intended to introduce long-term, predictable, and sustainable baseline funding for selected areas of translation of research. This would be very welcome, since the Scottish Funding Council, like HEFCE, currently funds such activities through formulaic funding, or by funding finite projects which aim to become self-funding.

In the UK, there are a number of initiatives and institutes with similar aims to the Fraunhofer Institutes, some with an even longer pedigree, but no overarching structure like the German Gesellschaft. We should not replicate the entire Fraunhofer model for fear of duplicating or even damaging the work of existing institutes or initiatives, but there is plenty of scope to establish new initiatives or institutes where there are gaps, and to better co-ordinate and promote existing ones. The creation of TICs must be carefully scoped, recognising that the Fraunhofer model has been developed over decades and operates in a different economic climate and business culture. We should work with Fraunhofer rather than try to emulate them or even compete with them.

New TICs will need to build upon established brands or endeavour to build a brand quickly as the "Fraunhofer" brand is formidable and widely recognised in and, increasingly, beyond Europe. No other UK or European institution has achieved such industry pull in terms of funding and collaboration with industry. Moreover, the lobbying power of the Fraunhofer Institutes at the European level should not be underestimated and should be a force to be reckoned with if similar institutions wish to influence or benefit from European initiatives in Research and Development.

Our University research is highly regarded worldwide but UK, and particularly Scottish investment in business innovation substantially lags behind that of our major competitors. Universities already work directly with a variety of organisations across the spectrum of research, innovation and technology development. With 20 closely connected HEIs and a tradition of academic collaboration reaching back to the Enlightenment, Scotland is a well connected hub of world-leading research. Scotland’s research base is committed to the pull through of research to innovation, exploitation and subsequent benefits to society and the economy.

2. Are there existing Fraunhofer-type research centres within the UK, and if so, are they effective?

There are many different approaches which have been developed in Scotland and the UK which have similar aims and objectives to the Fraunhofer model, namely to deliver technological innovation and solutions to problems which deliver impact and solve problems via applied STEMM research. A wide range of models have been developed to address this basic purpose which have not replicated the details of the Fraunhofer model, and which the TIC concept could build on. These are often highly innovative approaches aimed at delivering the same benefits to our industrial economies, capitalising on Scotland’s research leadership in areas such as Medicine, Energy, Manufacturing, Digital and Rural Economies; some of these are described below. Some distinctive aspects of the Scottish research and innovation landscape are: The continuing existence of our economic development agencies, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise; a culture of strong collaboration between universities, business and the public sector; and the Community Health Index (CHI), a unique patient-related number used in Scotland for all health communications.

The University of Dundee’s Drug Discovery Unit (DDU) aims to translate basic science into lead compounds to validate drug targets, to use as tools to investigate disease pathways and, when appropriate, to advance to pre-clinical drug candidates. The DDU has two major research focuses, neglected tropical diseases and innovative targets and pathways. Approximately £22M of funding has been awarded to date, from a variety of funders including the Scottish Funding Council, Scottish Enterprise, the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance, the University of Dundee and the Wellcome Trust. The DDU is a fully operational and integrated drug discovery team with the full range of disciplines required for early phase drug discovery.

Edinburgh Bioquarter is a unique Science Park that has attracted $1.2 billion public/private investment. It offers a large new teaching hospital, the University of Edinburgh’s world-renowned medical school and bespoke biomedical research and development facilities all on one site. The existing site hosts over 1,200 dedicated researchers, including the largest grouping of stem-cell researchers in the UK. The newly opened 100-acre site at BioQuarter will ultimately provide more than 500,000 square feet of further academic research space and an additional 900,000 square feet of accommodation for commercial research-based companies.

Established in 2003, Glasgow Biomedicine is a joint initiative between the University of Glasgow and NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde. Six local hospitals are involved in an integrated, interdisciplinary centre of excellence for the management of non-commercial and commercial clinical trials research. Each year, it manages about 1500 existing trials and starts a further 600, with an average spend of £15.5M per annum.

The Division of Signal Transduction Therapy (DSTT) is a unique collaboration between the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit and the College of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee and five of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies. The aim of the collaboration is to develop inhibitors of kinases and phosphatases for the treatment of disease, and for the study of cell signalling. DSTT is in its 13 th year and 3rd renewal and has attracted over £40 M in funding . C ompanies share access to all unpublished results, technology, know-how and reagents in the participating laboratories and have the first rights to licens e the intellectual property generate d . The DSTT is regarded by the major industrial partners as an extremely successful model for industry /academia collaboration.

Scotland is widely believed to have the greatest marine renewable energy resource in Europe if not the world. The European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) is a test centre created to promote the development of the wave and tidal stream energy conversion industries. Based in Stromness on Orkney, EMEC was established as a limited company with funding of around £14.5 million/year and 18 staff. Since 2004, a wide range of commercial companies have taken advantage of the testing services and facilities provided by EMEC.

EMEC headquarters shares a building on the Heriot-Watt University Stromness Campus providing synergy in marine renewables and environmental research with a number of HWU spin out companies supporting the development of marine technologies. In May 2007 Heriot-Watt University Stromness and the nearby University of the Highlands and Islands’ Energy Research Institute in Thurso were jointly awarded £1 million to create a marine renewable energy research centre of excellence. In June 2009, the ERI secured a further £14 million to undertake three major renewables projects.

The Scottish European Green Energy Centre (SEGEC) in Aberdeen opened in May 2009 with £1.6m from the European Regional Development Fund, more than £1 million over three years from the Scottish Government, and £0.6m from the University of Aberdeen. SEGEC will focus on marine energy, offshore wind, long distance super grid development and smart distribution grids, carbon capture and storage, renewable heat and energy efficiency. It aims to help the Scottish green energy sector secure maximum benefits from engagement with Europe through developing partnerships with businesses and institutions, designing collaborative projects and accessing European funding.

The Centre of Engineering Excellence for Renewable Energy (CEERE) is a partnership with the University of Strathclyde to manage the development, design, engineering, project management, procurement and asset monitoring of Scottish & Southern Energy’s (SSE) portfolio of onshore and offshore wind farms in Europe, to be set up over the next three years at an estimated cost of £20 million. In July 2010, SSE signed a strategic agreement with Mitsubishi to explore a range of technologies including offshore wind farms, advanced technology for smart electricity grids and low carbon vehicles, carbon capture and storage and high-efficiency power generation.

The Power Networks Demonstration Centre (PNDC) is a collaborative project between Scottish Enterprise, the University of Strathclyde and various industry partners to create a world class facility to support the development and validation of future electrical power distribution technologies. The PNDC is expected to play a central role in accelerating the deployment of emerging "smart grid" technologies by enabling developers to demonstrate their functionality within a realistic, controllable grid environment. Scottish Enterprise has approved a £7.1 million grant to the University of Strathclyde to support the capital costs on a site owned by Scottish Power in Cumbernauld. In parallel, the University is also negotiating a Membership Agreement with Scottish Power (SP) and Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE).

The National Subsea Research Institute (NSRI) based at the University of Aberdeen is an industry- led and demand-driven partnership between UK industry and academia to develop a co-ordinated research strategy for the subsea sector.

The James Watt Institute for High Value Manufacturing www.smi.hw.ac.uk at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh includes the only Innovative Research Manufacturing Centre (IMRC) in Scotland and the North of England. With accumulated funding over £11M from the EPSRC and £5M from industry since 2005, IMRC focuses on science-based development of novel high value manufacturing technologies, processes and products relevant to industry in the three themes of Photonics, Microsystems and Digital Tools. 

iSLI (Institute for System Level Integration) http://www.sli-institute.ac.uk/index.php is a unique academic collaborative venture of four of the UK’s leading universities: Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt, Glasgow and Strathclyde, and with links to the University of the West of Scotland and Lancaster University who bring key skills in the use of MEMS technology. iSLI sits at the critical interface between the academic and commercial engineering worlds. Funding for iSLI is underpinned by a financial commitment from Scottish Enterprise.  

The £25 million Advanced Forming Research Centre (AFRC) is a collaborative venture between the University of Strathclyde, Scottish Enterprise and engineering firms including Boeing, Mettis Aerospace and Rolls Royce. It aims to create state-of-the-art manufacturing technologies for the UK's aerospace, energy, marine and automobile industries. The Centre, which opened in June 2009, is the first of its kind in the UK and is intended to become a beacon for engineering and manufacturing excellence.

Dundee’s reputation as a global centre for digital media originated with the Lemmings computer game series, written by Dave Jones, a graduate of Abertay University. To build on such success, Abertay University launched the world’s first computer games course in 1997. Now a brownfield site in Dundee City Centre is being transformed into a new creative media district. Seabraes Yards is a £50 million collaboration between Scottish Enterprise and private and public sector partners, to support start-up companies, local businesses and inward investors. The first facility, Seabraes House, houses several digital media businesses including Proper Games, which develops games for Playstation 3, Xbox and Wii.

Within the V ictoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in Dundee , planned to be completed in 2014, Design in Action (DIA) will develop products, services and processes where design is a concurrent process of conceptualisation and planning. R esearchers and the design and manufacturing industry will form partnerships to fast track design driven new product and process development that supports economic and cultural growth. The V&A in Dundee is supported by the University of Dundee , the University of Abertay Dundee , Scottish Enterprise, Dundee City Council and the V&A.

Finally, we would like to stress the importance of strategic alliances between universities and multinational corporations.  For example Heriot-Watt University has Strategic Alliances with Renishaw, Selex Galileo, BAE Systems Surface Ships and AWE that facilitate research for the companies, research income for the University and knowledge exchange between them. Technology Innovation Centres need to replicate the best of these Alliances while allowing universities and companies to maintain individual relationships which have taken many years to build.

3. What other models are there for research centres oriented toward applications and results?

The Fraunhofer Institutes concentrate on collaboration with industry on research applied to industrial aims. One should not ignore applied research collaborations with charities which have aims for the public good. Briefing documents produced by the Association of Medical Research Charities (http://www.amrc.org.uk/news-policy--debate_pawg-scotland ) provide some excellent examples of such collaborations in Scotland.

A number of Scottish initiatives in this area rely on virtual networks and project or programme support rather than physical infrastructure.

Research Pools

The research pooling initiative was created by the Scottish Funding Council in 2003 to encourage researchers across Scottish higher education to pool their resources and respond to increasing international competition. By concentrating investment on networks of excellence, this has created powerful, well resourced communities that are now attracting research talent from across the world. These dynamic collaborations between research departments can provide Scotland’s universities with a competitive advantage which other countries would find difficult to replicate.

The research pools undertake basic and applied research, and most also aim to commercialise research in partnership with business.

The current Pooling initiatives are:

■ Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (www.supa.ac.uk )

■ ScotCHEM (Chemistry, www.scotchem.ac.uk )

■ Edinburgh Research Partnership in Engineering and Mathematics (www.erp.ac.uk )

■ Glasgow Research Partnership in Engineering (www.grpeng.ac.uk )

■ Marine Alliance for Science & Technology for Scotland (www.masts.ac.uk )

■ Northern Research Partnership in engineering (www.northscotland-research.ac.uk )

■ Scottish Alliance for Geoscience, Environment and Society (www.sages.ac.uk )

■ Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (www.sire.ac.uk )

■ Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance (www.sulsa.ac.uk )

■ Scottish Imaging Network: A Platform for Scientific Excellence (www.sinapse.ac.uk )

■ Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (www.sicsa.ac.uk)

■ Energy Technology Partnership (www.etp-scotland.ac.uk )

There are similar initiatives, including partners outside the university sector, in Applied Education Research, Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professions Research, Criminal Justice, and Policing Research

The Chief Scientist’s Office of the Scottish Government’s Health Directorate funds over £60m of applied research in Scotland, including the NMAHP research collaboration, and the Scottish Academic Health Sciences Collaboration, which is accessible to researchers throughout Scotland, but based around the four Scottish medical schools in the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee. They also fund NHS Research Scotland, which offers a portal for fast, efficient approval of multi-centre clinical research studies; this has resulted in a reduction of median approval time for clinical trials from 53 working days in 2008 to 20 working days in June 2010.

The Scottish Government spends approximately £45 million each year on agricultural, biological and environmental research, managed by the Rural and Environment Research and Analysis Directorate (RERAD) and conducted primarily through its Main Research Providers (MRPs). They also compete for funding from other sources in the public and private sectors. They are companies limited by guarantee governed by independently appointed Boards.

The MRPs are collaborating on a new initiative, knowledgescotland, to help deliver key outputs from the scientific community to policymakers in Scotland and beyond. The knowledgescotland website can be found at http://www.knowledgescotland.org/.

The main research providers are:

Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland (BioSS) provides support and research on mathematics and statistics to the other Main Research Providers.

University of Aberdeen, Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health carries out research on how nutrition can prevent disease, improve human and animal health and enhance the quality of food production in agriculture.

Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) carries out research to meet the needs of the land based industries focusing on sustainable crop and livestock systems, animal health and welfare, economics, socio-economics and the environment. It is also a member of Universities Scotland, providing a unique combination of teaching, consultancy and research.

Scottish Crop Research Institute (SCRI) is a major centre for research on agricultural, horticultural and industrial crops, in particular, potatoes, barley and soft fruit. It works very closely with the University of Dundee.

Macaulay Land Use Research Institute carries out research to meet the needs of sustainable rural development and environmental management in Scotland and similar areas worldwide. From April 2011 the institute will merge with SCRI to form the James Hutton Institute; the Moredun Research Institute, which carries out research on diseases of livestock, will be affiliated.

The Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh has a mission to explore and explain the world of plants; its functions include research, education, collections and public access.

Universities Scotland particularly welcomes the Scottish Government’s recent initiative to support 3 Centres of Expertise between the MRPs and other research institutions:

• Reducing the Impact of Animal Disease Outbreaks

• Water

• Climate Change including risk and uncertainty

and two strategic partnerships between the MRPs and Universities in:

• Animal Science Excellence

• Food and Drink Science

4. Whose role should it be to coordinate research in a UK-wide network of innovation centres?

The obvious candidate for this role would be the Technology Strategy Board.

5. What effect would the introduction of Fraunhofer-type institutes have on the work of Public Sector Research Establishments and other existing research centres that undertake Government sponsored research?

Other respondents will be better placed than Universities Scotland to comment on this. However, as shown by many of the examples above, our members are very keen to strengthen links with such research centres; indeed, some of them are now embedded within universities.

Universities Scotland

02 December 2010