Skip to content or footer

Launching the new Centre for Engineering Biology at the University of Edinburgh. See the world-leading specialist research facilities including Edinburgh Genome Foundry, the world’s largest automated DNA assembly platform, and EdinOmics, for mass spectrometry, metabolomics and proteomics analysis and hear first-hand about current research and meet some of our key research staff. The morning will include short presentations on how the Centre is driving innovation in many markets including industrial biotechnology (e.g. bioremediation and biofuels), agriculture, the environment, and medicine and healthcare.

The new Centre brings together a community of more than 50 research groups and 200 researchers spanning biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, engineering, informatics, medicine and social sciences from the former Centre for Synthetic and Systems Biology (SynthSys) and the UK Centre for Mammalian Synthetic Biology.

The event will include an opportunity to visit the world-leading Edinburgh Genome Foundry (the world’s largest and most automated platform for DNA assembly) and the EdinOmics research facility (for mass spectrometry, metabolomics and proteomics analysis). These highly specialist facilities make a significant contribution to making Scotland the go-to destination to incubate and grow bioeconomy businesses to scale. The research facilities at the University of Edinburgh are unparalleled in Scotland and we seek to constantly evolve our research environment to allow the best ideas to thrive, push frontiers, deliver economic impact and drive sustainability.

Register

Future economic growth could be held back because of the ‘stark regional divides’ in the UK’s technology sector, as shown by the results in the Local Digital Capital Index 2022.

techUK  is committed to developing strong local economies across our nations and regions that ensure the tech sector is at the forefront of delivering new and improved services, products, careers, companies and helping to tackle climate change. As part of techUK’s plans they are holding a number of sessions and events across the UK.

The first of these sessions will be hosted by KPMG on 2 February in Edinburgh, with Scottish Government and other stakeholders invited. We are delighted to be partnering with KPMG and to be joined by David Gimson, Director, Infrastructure, Government and Healthcare Consulting – Scotland for the discussion.

Agenda

The event will include an SME tech panel looking at the opportunities and challenges for tech firms (especially SMEs) in Scotland, and how SMEs in Scotland are helping to grow the economy, innovate and create new jobs. We’ll also discuss the impacts of the Scottish tech ecosystem, before we have a fireside chat with Mark Logan, Chief Entrepreneur to the Scottish Government. Mark is the former COO at SkyScanner, and as the Chief Entrepreneur to the Scottish Government led the Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review in 2020 which aided techUK in the development of our Local Digital Capital (LDC) Index.

A great opportunity for all local stakeholders to have their say.  

Sign up now.
 

The Scottish Research Partnership in Engineering (SRPe) Annual Conference 2022.

The Scottish Research Partnership in Engineering (SRPe) Annual Conference 2022 is the annual opportunity for industry, academia and government to share the latest technological advances and research in Scotland.

Centred around SRPe’s Strategic Themes; Advanced Manufacturing; Robotics and Autonomous Systems; Engineering for Healthcare; Infrastructure & Environment, the event will take place at the John McIntyre Conference Centre in Edinburgh.

In addition to invited Keynote Speakers, there will be four Strategic Theme sessions with updates from respective Theme Chairs, and each will host a Guest Speaker with Q&A at the end of each session.

Speakers Include:

To find out more and register

Register

How can your clothes be the interface to a better tomorrow?

Edinburgh Futures Institute would like to invite you to consider new ways of considering the clothes you wear as a landscape for technology innovation.

From AI enabled design and co-creation, to robotic textile surfaces, data driven business models and hybrid human experiences across emergent metaverse worlds.

Our requirement to consider sustainable applications for production and consumption of clothing and its potential, leads us to create an event for the hackers, builders, entrepreneurs, material specialists, roboticists, data scientists, anthropologists and fashion experts ready to tackle some of the key challenges of innovating in the sector.

With application across business, care, manufacture, design, material innovations, circular economy, architecture and more, this event aims to collaboratively explore opportunities to re-imagine fashion and technology together at a FashionTech Gathering on 2 December 2022 at the University of Edinburgh entitled ‘Shaping the Future of Fashion’.

As the industry is considering sustainable methods of production, how to harness technology and data to improve production, distribution and customer understanding, we wish to support the journey towards solutions. We need to co-design new circular systems, develop new production methods and the talent that this future needs.

The Institute of Design Informatics recognising these challenges and skills needs is preparing to pilot new Masters opportunities in areas of Fashion Informatics, to which industry can contribute, and in the year ahead draw those skills into your company to undertake a challenge project, and a cohort you can recruit from in the near future.

Register

Venue: APEX City Quay Hotel, Dundee

The Scottish Knowledge Exchange Awards, sponsored by Salix Finance, is the flagship event that celebrates the partnerships between business, third sector or public sector organisations and academia. Now in its eighth year the annual event recognises, rewards, and celebrates the impacts achieved through these exciting collaborations that enrich society and support sustainable and inclusive economic growth.

To discover more about the categories, and how to apply visit our recent article. Read More.

Unlocking Potential (U>P) – a powerful people analytics platform helping organisations of all sizes to optimise their workforce 

Background 

Nectis Ltd focuses on optimising wellbeing, performance and productivity in the workplace through people analytics and understanding business ecosystems.  Founder and CEO, Colin Campbell has a wealth of experience in this area, having spent more than 20 years building company ecosystems (the people related to your company). 

The Challenge 

Nectis Ltd successfully competed to deliver against CivTech 5, in 2021 with sponsor Transport Scotland.  Their Challenge – How can tech help foster the development of informal networks when people are working at home or in Work Local hubs? 

To assist in addressing the challenge and through the partnership between CivTech and Interface, Colin approached us to help facilitate collaboration with academia on three 3 different projects: 

The Solution 

The solution developed by Nectis Ltd is Unlocking Potential (U>P) Unlocking Potential – Optimising Business Agility & Performance, a SaaS people analytics platform that visualises patterns of collaboration and uses insight to create agility and wellbeing. This solution uses data driven insights of individuals and teams, to understand their patterns, overcome barriers and breakdown work silos.  In addition, it provides an evidence base for fair working practices, supporting positive working relationships. 

People analytics is a very powerful tool and up until now, the science behind it has been the reserve of researchers and programmers. 

Unlocking Potential (U>P) is a software tool that works by creating a digital model of a company ecosystem (the people related to any organisation) and then analysing it to deliver unique and powerful insights that can help achieve high levels of business agility and performance. 

To assist in addressing the challenge set by Transport Scotland Interface helped facilitate collaboration with academia on three 3 different projects: 

The first related to Data Visualisation where a Data Science for Business MSc student at the University of Stirling undertook a project working with data that was already on the U>P platform and also tested data, to find ways to increase the rate at which data is added, through motivational feedback loops. This was achieved by identifying which forms of data design and delivery optimised insight creation for individual users to help them solve problems and/or take meaningful action.  

Beyond the initial contract with Transport Scotland, Nectis wanted to understand market potential and their initial B2B target market i.e. organisations with remote/complex workforces. Masters marketing students at the University of Glasgow carried out research to establish the serviceable available market for their offering and establish what Nectis could legitimately claim they could deliver on and how to articulate it to these customers.  Other student projects looked at innovation within Nectis’ pricing strategy and at finding ways to reward people for adding data that builds the aggregate picture, as well as, providing value for them individually. 

The third project relating to Security and Anonymised Data Cloud Analysis was as a result of a successful Advanced Innovation Voucher application and involved the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University.  This collaboration built on work already done by U>P with the aim of improving the levels of security in the application, focusing on the collection and processing of personal data, as well as, introducing advanced security measures to enable intelligent analysis of anonymised data.  

A key aspect of the work involved the use Big Data analysis methods in understanding the complex relationships involved in projects, roles, business relationships, behaviours, and so on, to determine good practice in achieving strong outputs, and thus more clearly identify how best to both understand the metrics to be gathered, but also in how to best define KPI (Key Performance Indicators). Understanding that the collection of data around business relationships requires to be kept private, Nectis wanted to develop privacy enhancing methods, which could be used to assess successful engagement, but respect privacy and consent. The collaboration with the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University with their strong background in cryptography, and other privacy related areas, along with their experience in building production ready systems was crucial to the success of this project.   

The Benefits 

The academic rigour awarded by the collaborations with academia have been good for the Nectis U>P brand and have resulted in Nectis achieving the following: 

The Crover – the world’s first robotic device that ‘swims’ through grains to monitor their condition.

Background

Crover Ltd https://www.crover.tech has developed the world’s first small robotic device, known as a ‘CROVER’, that monitors cereal grains stored in bulk inside grain bins or storage sheds.  The CROVER device can “swim” within the grains and uses on-board sensors to measure local parameters, such as temperature and moisture, to build a full map of the conditions within the grains. Unlike current grain monitoring solutions that measure only one variable and have limited reach, the CROVER’s remote monitoring capabilities provide real-time data across a range of measurements allowing grain storekeepers to identify critical conditions, like hotspots early and maintain quality of the grains through proactive management.

Crover Ltd were a start-up when they initially approached Interface in 2019, they have since grown from two co-founders to 20 employees.

Since 2019 they have secured significant investment, raising over £600k in innovation prizes and grants (including Scottish Enterprise and Innovate UK). They then opened a seed funding round for investors and hit their £150k target.

The Challenges / Solutions

“When we initially met Interface, we didn’t have a specific R&D challenge as we were focused on developing our product inhouse. An obvious area for support would have been in the areas of design and engineering, however, through discussions with Louise, she assessed how our business worked and proposed that we undertake a project with the Scottish Financial Risk Academy (SFRA). The project with the SFRA helped us determine precise financial estimates of the value of Crover data to grain storekeepers and its impact on the grain storage economics. Understanding the financial impacts of Crover’s monitoring capabilities, had wider implications such as being able to quantify monetary value to grain insurers, and the potential to reduce insurance premiums for farmers and grain merchants.” Lorenzo Conti, Co-founder Crover Ltd

Following on from this initial project, one of the main technical challenges Crover Ltd faced related to the precise location tracking of the device within the grain bulk. Conventional signals, such as GPS and WiFi, did not work due to their inability to penetrate the solid grain bulk so a novel approach was required. Crover Ltd had undertaken some initial testing of different solutions, however they needed to tap into academic expertise in ultrasonic waves, positioning systems, electromagnetic signals, wireless sensor network (WSN) and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), to help improve the accuracy of the device location.  Interface connected them to the University of Glasgow who undertook an initial feasibility into a means of measuring and identifying the location of the robotic device in bulk grain storage.  This was initially funded by an Impact Accelerator Account fund of £10k, which then led onto a further project where University of Glasgow and Crover Ltd secured a further £27K to continue the project to a successful conclusion.

Since the initial collaboration Interface has assisted Crover Ltd embark on several other successful collaborations focusing more on the future enhancement and performance improvement of the robotic device, by tapping into design and engineering expertise from several Scottish Academic Institutions.  These involved:

The Benefits

The benefits resulting from the numerous collaborations which Interface have helped broker have undoubtedly helped Crover Ltd in both product development and business growth terms.  Interface has helped open doors for Crover Ltd and helped Lorenzo and his team to establish strong links with academia resulting in some innovative and exciting developments.

Since its inception in 2019 Crover Ltd has grown from 2 employees to over 20 employees, has raised significant investment and secured over £600K in innovation prizes and funding.

Background

Yoti is a digital ID and credential management platform that allows organisations to verify identities and trusted credentials online and in person. Yoti’s products span identity verification, age assurance, document e-signing, access management and biometric authentication.

They are working on Challenge 9 of CivTech 5.0 to help NHS Scotland tackle COVID-19 through innovative approaches to testing and the application of technology. They have partnered with a bioscience company GeneMe, who produce rapid COVID tests and have built the first prototype ‘Testing Cube’.  They have integrated Yoti technology to securely link a person to a test and to receive the test result securely into a Yoti digital wallet. They are now driving further innovation around near patient COVID testing and the development of a mass testing machine.

Challenge

Yoti has developed a testing system called FRANKED that delivers results to an individual’s phone in 30 minutes without the need for them to be processed in a laboratory. To date, the work involved with CivTech has focused on evaluating innovative tests to speed up the existing processes in laboratories as well as reduce costs and achieve high rates of accuracy. They were at a stage whereby they needed to develop the ‘Testing Cube’, a highly portable and low-cost testing machine capable of running LAMP based tests.  Yoti will be integrated into the Testing Cube for the secure and rapid delivery of test results as well as being integrated into the NHS Integration Hub to capture this information.

 Yoti took the design to an initial working prototype and required additional expertise to develop it further, creating the potential for the Testing Cube to be manufactured in Scotland for a global market.

Solution

After being referred by CivTech, Interface introduced Yoti to relevant expertise within Robert Gordon University (RGU). RGU has a proven track record and exceptional research output in the field of manufacturing for many engineering applications. RGU undertook a rigorous investigation into how the proposed COVID testing cube could be further improved and offered feasible solutions in terms of different techniques. 

The project was funded by a Scottish Funding Council Advanced Innovation Voucher.

Benefits

Company

The company wants to bring the Testing Cube to the market to make access to testing fairer and available to more people across the world.  Yoti will benefit from an increased volume of tests ordered as a result of the new capability.

University:

This partnership has resulted in a base of investigators and students who have undertaken this research; enhancing knowledge and providing benefits to the emerging sector. RGU will also have a case study for students who will benefit from understanding the real-life engineering problem solution.

Scottish Economy:

In Scotland, the intention is to manufacture the Testing Cube for approved use in the NHS for an innovative approach to near patient care using the innovative FRANKED Lamp test so that rapid and accurate tests can be carried out without the need to transport samples to a laboratory. This will dramatically improve the current testing regime and potentially save lives.  It will also help reduce pressure on laboratory processing capacity as well as the infrastructure required to capture samples and transport them to centralised laboratories. The Testing Cube could also be deployed on a student campus for on-site rapid and accurate student COVID testing.  

The Testing Cube and the FRANKED test will transform the way testing is carried out and help build an infrastructure that makes Scotland, particularly in rural settings and places of high vulnerability, more resilient and capable of dealing with similar public health emergencies in the future. This project has the potential to make Scotland an innovation hub for COVID-19 related technology development.

The aim is to successfully develop the Testing Cube, leading to its manufacturing at scale in Scotland.  This will secure jobs and attract potential inward investment into the Scottish economy.

Background

Creative Carbon Scotland (CCS) believes that arts and culture organisations have an essential role in achieving transformational change to a sustainable future.  Their vision is of a Scotland where this role is recognised, developed, and utilised by both the cultural world and others interested in sustainability.

Creative Carbon Scotland provide training and support for arts organisations to reduce their carbon footprint and help nearly 120 key organisations in mandatory carbon reporting to Creative Scotland. Their culture/SHIFT programme builds connections and collaborations between arts and sustainability practitioners to apply their different skills, practices and working methods to address challenging and complex climate change-related issues. 

Challenge

It is widely recognised that artists across all artforms can offer new insights and alternative perspectives to bring about change in wider society. Creative Carbon Scotland are among several organisations who have worked on projects with embedded artists to address environmental sustainability and climate change. The artists have worked over extended periods, using cultural approaches to address these complex issues within organisations in the private, public and third sectors. Creative Carbon Scotland were keen to promote this type of collaboration, and the development of a library of case studies was a key step in the process of disseminating this approach. It aims to enable new users to discover a range of new ways of working with artists to address sustainability challenges.

The organisation recognised that for the case study library to deliver maximum impact, the evidence from a very wide and diverse range of ’embedded artist’ projects needed to be presented in a unique and engaging way.  Consequently, they sought to collaborate with an academic team to co-design an innovative categorisation and tagging framework to enable rapid and effective searching within the Library.

Solution

Funded by a Scottish Funding Council Innovation Voucher, Creative Carbon Scotland collaborated with Gray’s School of Art at Robert Gordon University to prototype the Library of Creative Sustainability hosted on the CCS website: a new digital resource showcasing best practice examples of collaborations between sustainability partners and artists seeking to make the world a better place. The framework was co-designed with end users to ensure that it met the needs of managers and decision makers within the sustainability and regeneration sectors.

Benefits

The Library of Creative Sustainability has allowed Creative Carbon Scotland to support advocacy and engagement with sustainability leaders in private, public and third sector organisations; presenting an opportunity for artists, designers, and other creative practitioners to share their skills, knowledge, and perspectives to not only address environmental sustainability, but also change the way we interact in society – thus re-imagining culture and embedding sustainability within it.

The prototyping of the Library web page benefitted Creative Carbon Scotland by further positioning it as a vital partner for leaders in the private, public and third sectors at the intersection of arts and culture with sustainability. The research work provided CCS with further examples on which to base new work and the resource itself will help introduce and persuade new partners to take up these opportunities.

The academic partner at RGU benefitted by having their research utilised, specifically through the creation of a suite of user-focused case studies. Both parties will benefit from the development of the framework for categorisation and tagging, generating new ways of engaging users.

Additional Activity

Following the successful delivery of the partnership with RGU, CCS received further support from Dr. Siobhán Jordan, Director, Interface who matched the company with University of Strathclyde Department of Management Science.  Iain Phillips, a student at the Department collaborated with CCS to review the key outcomes of several years of mandatory carbon reporting and reduction across artists, designers and other creative practitioners funded by Creative Scotland.  CCS have a long-standing track record of undertaking research and are also collaborating with University of Stirling Management School.