November 2005

PPARC KITE Club - Technology and Industry News

To receive this newsletter by email Melanie Illsley at PPARC Melanie.Illsley@pparc.ac.uk

November 2005

1 KITE Club Advanced Instrumentation Workshop 30.11.05

Registration for the KITE Club Advanced Instrumentation Workshop is now closed. We are oversubscribed for this event, so please attend if you have registered.

2 Research Councils' Business Plan Competition - outlines by 31.12.05

Every good business starts with two things; a good idea and a robust business plan. You supply the idea, and we'll give you the skills, knowledge and support you need to develop a first-rate business plan! This will be provided through expert trainers, coaches and mentors. Plus - the opportunity to win funds to help with the development of your business idea. Not all ideas will become new businesses, and the training will include best practice in establishing sensible options for developing your idea.

The competition is open to researchers funded by all of the Research Councils including PPARC and at CERN. Postgraduates, postdoctoral researchers and academic staff who have a business idea arising from research and want to develop this further are encouraged to participate.

Taking part is easy - just prepare a one page summary of your business idea, without giving away any potential business secrets and complete the short application form by 31.12.05. Once accepted for the competition you will benefit from training through a two day commercialisation workshop.

The second phase of the competition will provide you with access to highly skilled experts with experience of research commercialisation. They will help to guide you in the preparation of a high quality business plan - the essential requirement for marketing your business idea to potential investors.

Prizes of up to £25,000 will be awarded to the business plans judged to have the best potential to help turn business ideas into reality.

For further information, please contact Nathan Hill or visit www.rcuk.ac.uk/innovation/bpc/index.asp

3 New KITE Club Special Interest Group in Security and Defence

As part of our planned development of the KITE Club, we shall be establishing some Special Interest Groups (SIGs). The first SIG will be in Life Science and Healthcare Technologies and the second will be in Security and Defence. We expect to hold inaugural SIG meetings in February and March 2006.

If you have interests in the security and defence area, including projects funded through the Joint Grants Scheme, please contact Glyn White to register your interest.

4 Partnerships for technology development with BBSRC

BBSRC has established a £23m Tools and Resources Programme in order to stimulate development of instrumentation relevant to its research. We are keen to support the PPARC community in development of such instrumentation in collaboration with BBSRC researchers. Two calls for proposals have recently been announced:

Tools and Resources (T&R) Development Fund The £3-4m Tools and Resources (T&R) Development Fund is intended to support small or short-duration, pump priming research projects and / or to bring together communities for collaborative purposes.

It is anticipated that grants of up to £80-£100k will be made. Research projects should be of between 6 and 18 months duration but community networking activities can extend for up to three years. Peer review will be 'light touch and fast track' to enable the academic community to respond rapidly to both existing and emerging challenges. See www.bbsrc.ac.uk/science/initiatives/trdf.html

Technology Development Research Initiative The TDRI will have two calls for proposals, one in autumn 2005 and a second in autumn 2006. Each call will highlight a number of research priorities identified by the Tools and Resources Strategy Panel. The budget for the first call is in the region of £10m (approximately £7m from BBSRC, at least £3m from EPSRC) and BBARC anticipates awarding 20 -25 grants subject to the quality of proposals received.

Applications should demonstrate technology development research challenges. In addition to this, the new technology should also be applied to a biological system within the remit of BBSRC and have the potential for wide spread application in the biological sciences. For details, see www.bbsrc.ac.uk/science/initiatives/tdri.html

If you would like to develop partnerships in life sciences or healthcare technologies, please contact Mark Littlewood.

5 New PIPSS - First applications now welcomed

Following our announcement of the new PPARC PIPSS scheme, the first applications for mini-PIPSS are welcomed from 1st December 2005 (open call). The first closing date for mainline PIPSS proposals is 10th January 2006, with quarterly closing dates thereafter (1st April, 1st July and 1st October in 2006).

Details of the new PIPSS scheme are now available at www.pparc.ac.uk/In/Sc/PIPSS_announcement.asp and support is provided by the Innovation Advisory Service.

6 Latest Collaborative R&D Funding Call - IT interest

The autumn 2005 round of Technology Programme funding has been announced, with £63m on offer. Of particular interest to the PPARC community should be an indicative £10m in the field of 'data and content storage, management, retrieval and analysis'. The deadline for registering interest is 31.1.06 and outline submissions should be received by 6.2.05. Please see www.dti.gov.uk/technologyprogramme/nov05_comp.html#pdfs for details and www.dti.gov.uk/technologyprogramme/Data_storage.pdf for information on the IT call.

Please contact Nathan Hill for support in developing an application.

7 KITE Club Innovation Advisory Service PPARC has reappointed the Cambridge-based company Qi3 to deliver its Innovation Advisory Service for UK business and interdisciplinary partnerships. Qi3 will also, in partnership with the Office of Science and Technology, deliver a parallel service supporting transfer of CERN technologies to the UK. The reappointment followed a public competition in which over twenty companies participated.

The Qi3 team is led by Nathan Hill and includes Glyn White, who specialises in security, defence, aerospace and space sectors, Mark Littlewood, who specialises in healthcare and life science technologies and David Rafe, who provides market research and KITE Club event support.

Commenting on the reappointment, Keith Mason, Chief Executive of PPARC said "engagement with industry is a vital component of PPARC's work. Our strategy focuses on developing a higher rate of collaborative technology development with companies to develop the underpinning technologies required for our science programme, and to transfer these technologies to broader applications. PPARC has committed to double the rate of Knowledge Transfer brokering activity over the next three years. We are delighted to have reselected Qi3 to deliver our brokering support for industry and interdisciplinary partnerships".

Details of the KITE Club and its Innovation Advisory Service are at www.pparc.ac.uk/In/intro.asp Learn more about Qi3 at www.qi3.co.uk.

Contacts: KITE Club Innovation Advisors and CERN UK Technology Transfer Officer.

Nathan Hill: email: nathan.hill@qi3.co.uk

Tel: 01223 422405. Also Mark Littlewood mark.littlewood@qi3.co.uk

Glyn White glyn.white@qi3.co.uk and David Rafe david.rafe@qi3.co.uk.

For enquiries about the Basic Technology Research Programme, please call 01223 422407.

Registration for events is available via www.qi3.co.uk/events.asp

November 2005

PPARC KITE Club - Technology and Industry News

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