Queen's University EPSRC Early Career Equipment Block Grant Investment
Lead Research Organisation:
Queen's University Belfast
Department Name: The Vice Chancellors Office
Abstract
The context:
Queen's values highly its Early Career Researchers (ECRs). We have invested in a programme of support to attract in the best talent and to support them throughout their careers beginning with providing a start-up grant to purchase equipment and to travel to network and develop their own collaborations both in the UK and overseas. Mentoring is critical in maximising outputs and provide a pathway to career development. Queen's Research and Enterprise offers support to navigate the complex funding terrain and assist in developing applications. Queen's has led the UK in First Grant awards with some 36 awards (£3.5M) from 2009. Underpinning our success is continued investment in workhorse and high-end equipment without which our ambitions to be a UK and world-leader for high impact research will not be realised. As part of Queen's "Vision 2020" Strategy we have actioned a strategic growth-for-the future plan having invested some £350M in our built environment and a further £350M planned in the coming five years. In parallel, we have entered into a new research strategy investment phase to strategically target research equipment of highest importance and of widest-use. Queen's has in place "Pioneer Research Programmes" (PRPs) research hubs that represent interdisciplinary entities to tackle (i) long-term energy security (ii) development of materials and application of engineering for medicine (iii) radiation treatment of cancer and (iv) autonomous manufacturing. To complement this our Global Research Institute (GRI) ECIT who's mission is to meet the challenges of collecting, storing and securing the torrent of digital information society now generates. Our ECRs have membership of one or more PRPs or the GRI through which they engage with fellow researchers to broaden their horizons and get to grips with the changing research scene by taking them out of their "silos" and meet head on the Industrial Strategy Challenges.
Our aims and objectives:
Continuous growth and development of our equipment base is critical in realising our ambition to take more of our research to an internationally competitive level by (i) increasing our capability of achieving 4* outputs, (ii) boosting competitive bidding for research grants, including the New Investigator Award (iii) attracting the best researchers from the UK and overseas. This will contribute to making the UK the best place in the world to research, discover and innovate and project further our presence on the global stage. High quality equipment will specifically support ECRs in generating e.g., initial study data to place them in a competitive position to win their New Investigator Award. This first step will initiate the legacy of research outcomes with follow on funding including e.g., Fellowships as a mechanism to accelerate their careers. In line with our ambition to engage on the global stage our ECRs will be supported to apply and win international research awards (USA-Ireland, GCRF, Newton and the EPSRC-NSF/SFI Lead Agreement).
Potential applications and benefits:
The ECRS will be supported by their Academic Mentors and Queen's Research and Enterprise Directorate's; Business Alliance, Research Development and Commercialisation teams. The teams will facilitate the forging of links with industry to accelerate and maximise impact. Queens has strategic international and UK-based partnerships with industry including; Thales, Huawei, Bombardier, Seagate, Kyocera [AVX Ltd) and FP McCann. The multi-disciplinary research of our ECRs in e.g.; optimisation systems, failure analysis, future manufacturing, advanced composites, chemical production, clean energy, machine learning and intelligent infrastructure composites, chemical production, clean energy, machine learning and intelligent infrastructure will contribute to the sustainable growth.
Queen's values highly its Early Career Researchers (ECRs). We have invested in a programme of support to attract in the best talent and to support them throughout their careers beginning with providing a start-up grant to purchase equipment and to travel to network and develop their own collaborations both in the UK and overseas. Mentoring is critical in maximising outputs and provide a pathway to career development. Queen's Research and Enterprise offers support to navigate the complex funding terrain and assist in developing applications. Queen's has led the UK in First Grant awards with some 36 awards (£3.5M) from 2009. Underpinning our success is continued investment in workhorse and high-end equipment without which our ambitions to be a UK and world-leader for high impact research will not be realised. As part of Queen's "Vision 2020" Strategy we have actioned a strategic growth-for-the future plan having invested some £350M in our built environment and a further £350M planned in the coming five years. In parallel, we have entered into a new research strategy investment phase to strategically target research equipment of highest importance and of widest-use. Queen's has in place "Pioneer Research Programmes" (PRPs) research hubs that represent interdisciplinary entities to tackle (i) long-term energy security (ii) development of materials and application of engineering for medicine (iii) radiation treatment of cancer and (iv) autonomous manufacturing. To complement this our Global Research Institute (GRI) ECIT who's mission is to meet the challenges of collecting, storing and securing the torrent of digital information society now generates. Our ECRs have membership of one or more PRPs or the GRI through which they engage with fellow researchers to broaden their horizons and get to grips with the changing research scene by taking them out of their "silos" and meet head on the Industrial Strategy Challenges.
Our aims and objectives:
Continuous growth and development of our equipment base is critical in realising our ambition to take more of our research to an internationally competitive level by (i) increasing our capability of achieving 4* outputs, (ii) boosting competitive bidding for research grants, including the New Investigator Award (iii) attracting the best researchers from the UK and overseas. This will contribute to making the UK the best place in the world to research, discover and innovate and project further our presence on the global stage. High quality equipment will specifically support ECRs in generating e.g., initial study data to place them in a competitive position to win their New Investigator Award. This first step will initiate the legacy of research outcomes with follow on funding including e.g., Fellowships as a mechanism to accelerate their careers. In line with our ambition to engage on the global stage our ECRs will be supported to apply and win international research awards (USA-Ireland, GCRF, Newton and the EPSRC-NSF/SFI Lead Agreement).
Potential applications and benefits:
The ECRS will be supported by their Academic Mentors and Queen's Research and Enterprise Directorate's; Business Alliance, Research Development and Commercialisation teams. The teams will facilitate the forging of links with industry to accelerate and maximise impact. Queens has strategic international and UK-based partnerships with industry including; Thales, Huawei, Bombardier, Seagate, Kyocera [AVX Ltd) and FP McCann. The multi-disciplinary research of our ECRs in e.g.; optimisation systems, failure analysis, future manufacturing, advanced composites, chemical production, clean energy, machine learning and intelligent infrastructure composites, chemical production, clean energy, machine learning and intelligent infrastructure will contribute to the sustainable growth.
Planned Impact
Who might benefit:
Queen's has supported and attracted highly skilled and motivated early career academics from the UK and global stage. It is essential that we retain and grow our talent pool by investing in state-of-the-art equipment. Queens has strategic international and UK-based partnerships with industry including; Thales, Huawei, Seagate, Kyocera [AVX Ltd) and FP McCann. The multi-disciplinary research of our ECRs in; optimisation systems, failure analysis, future manufacturing, advanced composites, chemical production, clean energy, machine learning and intelligent infrastructure will contribute to the sustainable growth of the UK economy. Queen's has long provided access of equipment and infrastructure to our industrial partners, the industrial use of our equipment will be in these main strands:
We will seek to continue to foster our relationships with companies who have previously used our research equipment capability and skill set and experience at QUB and we will seek to develop completely new links aligned to the expertise of our early career academics. Specifically:
(i) the new capability will be advertised directly to our current contacts and more widely through KT networks e.g.via a press-releases
(ii) we will engage our University exploitation office to increase awareness of the facilties beyond our current contacts, and explore opportunities to augment industrial impact using institutional impact acceleration funds for the early career staff
(iii) engagement of "industry champions", who are also expert-user academics and KT facilitators, who will mentor our ECRs to build new industrial partners and to forge new routes to impact
(iv) access to QUB spin-out companies by ECRs in which there are trained personnel e.g. Green Lizard and Causeway Sensors, Causeway Sensors.
The ECRs will have access to Queen's commercilaisation office, "QUBIS" (http://www.qubis.co.uk/) to facilitate the creation of spin-out companies with a current portfolio of 17 entities in the spheres of e.g., IT technologies and services, porous liquid technologies, environmental due-diligence and power-system performance monitoring. To-date 47 spin-out companies are actively supporting over 1,700 jobs with a collective turnover of around £190 million: the potential impact of our ECRs on the UK economy is significant.
How they might benefit:
The research of our early career academics, and the groups that they lead, is aimed at tackling global challenges to ensure a sustainable future; for example by reducing the carbon footprint in future manufacturing. This capital investment to facilitate state-of-the-art research will e.g., be used to investigate environmental impact and ensure the pathway to environmental impact is efficient and fit for purpose.
On-demand direct access where expert industrial users have access to the equipment, for example on Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) projects where industry is guided by expert QUB academic staff and have investment in research outcomes to give a competitive edge and long-term engagement and sponsorship of QUB-based research programmes linked to other universities who's ECRs will be given access to the equipment (e.g., Ulster University). In this way, the pool of ECRs benefiting from the equipment investment will be much greater than those based at QUB, maximising usage and maximising impact.
Recent examples of companies that have to date benefited from Queen's expertise through consultancy include (i) Procter and Gamble;"Evaluation of Extrusion and Foaming Technologies" (ii) Cirdan; "Design of Filters and Their Use in Linear Tomosynthesis Systems (iii) VTT-ESA; "Investigation of the use of an Analogue Retrodirective Antenna for Self-Tracking of Launch Vehicles and (iv) Sensor Indicator Products; "Development of Smart Adhesive Indicators".
Queen's has supported and attracted highly skilled and motivated early career academics from the UK and global stage. It is essential that we retain and grow our talent pool by investing in state-of-the-art equipment. Queens has strategic international and UK-based partnerships with industry including; Thales, Huawei, Seagate, Kyocera [AVX Ltd) and FP McCann. The multi-disciplinary research of our ECRs in; optimisation systems, failure analysis, future manufacturing, advanced composites, chemical production, clean energy, machine learning and intelligent infrastructure will contribute to the sustainable growth of the UK economy. Queen's has long provided access of equipment and infrastructure to our industrial partners, the industrial use of our equipment will be in these main strands:
We will seek to continue to foster our relationships with companies who have previously used our research equipment capability and skill set and experience at QUB and we will seek to develop completely new links aligned to the expertise of our early career academics. Specifically:
(i) the new capability will be advertised directly to our current contacts and more widely through KT networks e.g.via a press-releases
(ii) we will engage our University exploitation office to increase awareness of the facilties beyond our current contacts, and explore opportunities to augment industrial impact using institutional impact acceleration funds for the early career staff
(iii) engagement of "industry champions", who are also expert-user academics and KT facilitators, who will mentor our ECRs to build new industrial partners and to forge new routes to impact
(iv) access to QUB spin-out companies by ECRs in which there are trained personnel e.g. Green Lizard and Causeway Sensors, Causeway Sensors.
The ECRs will have access to Queen's commercilaisation office, "QUBIS" (http://www.qubis.co.uk/) to facilitate the creation of spin-out companies with a current portfolio of 17 entities in the spheres of e.g., IT technologies and services, porous liquid technologies, environmental due-diligence and power-system performance monitoring. To-date 47 spin-out companies are actively supporting over 1,700 jobs with a collective turnover of around £190 million: the potential impact of our ECRs on the UK economy is significant.
How they might benefit:
The research of our early career academics, and the groups that they lead, is aimed at tackling global challenges to ensure a sustainable future; for example by reducing the carbon footprint in future manufacturing. This capital investment to facilitate state-of-the-art research will e.g., be used to investigate environmental impact and ensure the pathway to environmental impact is efficient and fit for purpose.
On-demand direct access where expert industrial users have access to the equipment, for example on Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) projects where industry is guided by expert QUB academic staff and have investment in research outcomes to give a competitive edge and long-term engagement and sponsorship of QUB-based research programmes linked to other universities who's ECRs will be given access to the equipment (e.g., Ulster University). In this way, the pool of ECRs benefiting from the equipment investment will be much greater than those based at QUB, maximising usage and maximising impact.
Recent examples of companies that have to date benefited from Queen's expertise through consultancy include (i) Procter and Gamble;"Evaluation of Extrusion and Foaming Technologies" (ii) Cirdan; "Design of Filters and Their Use in Linear Tomosynthesis Systems (iii) VTT-ESA; "Investigation of the use of an Analogue Retrodirective Antenna for Self-Tracking of Launch Vehicles and (iv) Sensor Indicator Products; "Development of Smart Adhesive Indicators".
