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Introduction | Seed Award Criteria

Introduction to UK US Collaboration Programme

The Universities of Bath, Bristol Southampton and Surrey, through their SETsquared Partnership have won a £1.5m award from the Office of Science and Technology (OST). The main objective of the 24 month programme is to create relationships of lasting value with commercial focus around the high-technology research and development clusters of Southern England with those in Southern California for mutual benefit. University California Irvine (UCI) and University California San Diego (UCSD) are our US partners for the programme.

The programme will be developed around four high level disciplines or sectors: biopharma, communications, nano and materials and clean energy. It has already been agreed that further sub-themes will be identified around synergies identified through a research-strength mapping exercise that is currently being performed e.g. biopharma sub-themes are likely to be regenerative medicine/stem cell/tissue engineering and neuroscience.

The programme will seek to develop relationships around two key activities:

1. The seeding of collaborative applied research projects between researchers and industry in Southern England and Southern California, and
2. Accelerating the development of technology start-up companies into US markets through established networks and processes in Southern California and vice versa for US companies into the UK.

Much of the funding will be made available through awards to promote these activities. Those promoting collaborative applied research are likely to be awarded for travel, research bid development, coordination and writing with a small amount being possibly available for proof-of-concept. Those awards to accelerate start-up development into US or European markets will cover travel, the costs of participation on established incubation programmes in Southern California with small amounts also being available for market analysis and feasibility studies. Researchers and start-ups will be proactively encouraged to apply for awards through an ongoing sophisticated identification and qualification effort. Awards will be administered through a defined workflow and agreed by PVC’s, and senior research support and tech transfer staff.

The programme will develop new relationships and also draw upon existing academic champions and technology transfer units across the six institutions as well as existing academic-industry research collaborations. A mapping exercise is underway to identify opportunities for collaboration and a number of researchers have already been identified to participate in a launch trip in the first week of May. Furthermore a number of start-up companies have already been identified from the UK and qualified by Californian based tech transfer teams. Some time of established teams at both UCI and UCSD has been contracted to help us deliver the programme. A business plan is available on request.

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UK US Collaborative Applied Research Seed Award Criteria

The following high level criteria for awards to seed collaborative applied research projects have been developed at meetings with representatives of the four universities research support and tech transfer teams. The business plan has been approved by OST with funding available starting 1st April 2005.

The research support and tech transfer teams are now seeking high level guidance from senior members of each University on these criteria. (Note: These award criteria may be fine-tuned prior to actual implementation, based on their feedback.)

Award Criteria

• Awards are expected to cover the seeding of bids for collaborative applied research between researchers at SETsquared Universities, UCSD, UCI and industry
• There are expected to be around 8 awards per annum to support bid development for these collaborations
• Bid development costs are expected to include bid writing, project management, bid coordination and admin costs
• Awards will be up to £20K, not including international travel costs
• Travel costs of up to £2K per trip will be awarded separately. They will be available to cover the linking of potential collaborators and also a maximum of 4 trips per developing bid (travel criteria will be governed by existing University protocols)
• Only bids generating funding for applied research will qualify, e.g. the research has near-term potential commercial application or is close to commercialisation. (OST have stipulated that this funding is for commercially focussed activity.)
• Discretionary funds to cover proof-of-concept (up to a further £20K per award on top of travel costs) may be available to some of the academic-industry collaborative research bids. (A maximum of one or two of these are expected per annum.)
• Qualifying projects will have participants as follows:
• Option A
  One or more researchers from SETsquared universities
  AND one or more researchers from UCI and/or UCSD
  AND one or more industrial partners (that may be based anywhere)
  OR
• Option B
  one or more researchers from SETsquared universities
  AND one or more industrial partners based in Southern California.
  AND (optionally) industrial partners (based anywhere)
  OR
• Option C
  one or more researchers from SETsquared universities
  AND one or more academics from UCI and/or UCSD

Bids including more than one researcher from SETsquared Universities will be viewed favourably.

Where appropriate projects can also include academics from other universities outside the SETsquared Partnership, UCI and UCSD.

Conferences and Associated Awards

In addition to the focussed collaboration awards above there will also be some funding available for researchers to attend a small number of very high profile conferences and seminars in communications, biopharma, clean technology and nano and materials disciplines and sectors. Qualifying conferences will be communicated to researchers well in advance.

• Most of these events are likely to be in 2007
• Awards will cover travel and conference entry costs

Additional Resources

The programme will also offer some resource to assist in targeting potential collaborators, and to broker relationships between these potential partners.

Examples:

• Building on existing collaborative research between SETsquared Universities and Southern Californian Universities where commercial partnership is now appropriate, e.g. WUN research.
• Integrating industry or researchers from Southern California into existing academic-industry collaborative research programmes. The programme would seek appropriate industrial companies based in Southern California and/or UCI or UCSD academics to participate in existing academic-industry collaborative research programmes operating in South England such as the 3CR and MobileVCE programmes.
• Introducing industry or researchers from Southern England to existing Southern California collaborative research programmes. By identifying collaborative research programmes that already exist in Southern California and, where the programmes constitutions allow, brokering introductions to these programmes for SETsquared university researchers, and/or corporate researchers based in Southern England, e.g. Calit2, various defence related programmes including CCAT and SPAWAR.
• Seeding new applied (commercially focussed) research programmes by targeting SETsquared university academics already involved with industry partners and seeking to link them to appropriate academics in Southern California or targeting UCI or UCSD academics already involved with industry partners and seeking to link them to appropriate academics from South England.

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This page last updated 3/20/2006.