A showcasing and knowledge sharing event focussed on international development research in Scotland.

The Scottish Funding Council and the University of Glasgow invite you to a workshop and networking event focussed on international development research in Scotland. This event brings together researchers and research professionals from Scottish HEIs and research institutes to showcase their international development research successes, facilitate knowledge sharing across institutions and funders, and identify opportunities for collaborative international development work.

Venue and Programme

Taking place at the University of Glasgow’s Advanced Research Centre, the event will include:

• Scene setting on international development research in Scotland with funders and key sector stakeholders. Confirmed attendees include the Scottish Government, the Scottish Funding Council, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Wellcome, FCDO and UKRI.
• Institutional Research Briefings – A chance for each attending institution to highlight their international development research portfolios. If appropriate, we welcome information sharing on use of ISPF ODA funding to bolster activity.
• Lunchtime Poster Session – Taking place in a publicly-accessible venue, a showcase of the depth and breadth of Scotland’s international development research activity and an opportunity to create new connections between individuals and teams. Early Career Researchers are particularly encouraged to submit a poster.
• Break-out discussions – Interactive discussion and feedback session focussed on how Scottish institutions can be collaborating more effectively on international development research.

A final agenda and additional details will be circulated to registered attendees.

This event will take place fully in-person, however the plenary sessions will be recorded and made available at a later date for those unable to attend in person.

Hosted by the Department of Design, Manufacturing and Engineering Management (DMEM), this conference event showcases the innovative processes and outcomes from over 40 collaborative student team projects through a series of presentations.

As well as providing a platform for our students’ industry-related output, academics will highlight opportunities and mechanisms for industry to work collaboratively with us in the future.

Registration will take place from 08.45 and the event will close at 14.30.

Who should attend?

• Industrialists collaborating in DMEM industrial projects.
• Industrialists interested in finding out more about DMEM and collaborative opportunities.
• Interface and knowledge exchange professionals.
• Academic staff in the areas of design, manufacture and engineering management.
• Senior undergraduate and postgraduate students.

“The power of ideas” is an invitation to the curious, the innovators, and all who seek inspiration to achieve a better world. It is a day designed to inspire anyone interested in the power of new ideas, innovation and entrepreneurship to change the world.

It transcends the typical conference – staging a tribute to the visionaries, the creative minds, the thinkers, and the creators – the individuals thriving within our academic and industry circles and those who’ve journeyed from distant shores to share their light with us.

Guided by the minds that shape tomorrow, we will discuss how research and ideas can blossom into tangible, transformative real-world applications for a better future.

The event organised by Converge will explore the exciting worlds of AI, net zero, data science, and life sciences, charting a course towards a brighter tomorrow.

Join ETP for a dynamic exploration of Scotland’s ground-breaking innovations to enable and accelerate the energy transition. This event brings together leaders and game-changers, developing innovative solutions and initiatives from private, public, and academic sectors. The Showcase will explore the continuing challenges at the forefront of decarbonisation, green hydrogen production, and renewable energy generation, and showcase the emerging solutions and enabling technologies which have risen to tackle some of these challenges.

The format of the day will include Keynote Speeches by Energy Transition Leaders, a Panel Session on Steps to accelerate energy transition innovation in Scotland, Challenge Clinics – Energy Transition, Circular Green Economy, Enabling Technologies and Supply chain, etc. Discussions with industry and public sector representatives highlighting challenges and initiatives and an Exhibition Showcase by Scottish companies of the Energy Innovation Projects, currently going on.

Learn more and register

In January 2024, CPI is convening pharma partners, industry, funding
agencies, regulators and, most importantly, innovators for three days of discussion
around technological challenges faced by the industry.

The event will occur over 3 days, with each day covering a different area:

16th January 2024: Sustainability
17th January 2024: New Modalities
18th January 2024: Digital

Innovators, including established SMEs, recent university spin-outs, and academics are invited to showcase their technology at the event in a short pitch
session — an opportunity to give a brief overview of the technology and highlight
its potential applications and impact on pharmaceutical manufacturing.
As an innovator, you will receive valuable feedback on your technology from the
industry and funding body experts, and understand the opportunities for your
technology, the risks to adoption, and existing gaps.

For more information on this event, please follow the button below.

Background

Therme Group is an industry leader in the wellbeing sector with multiple major water-based wellbeing facilities throughout Europe with new facilities in the UK and Canada under construction.

Therme’s guiding philosophy is “Wellbeing for all” which delivers a holistic approach to wellbeing and includes a social outreach dimension to make the facilities available to all of the community in the city regions where they have sites. This holistic approach encompasses the aesthetics and design of the built environment, the impact of the water based, and other wellbeing treatments offered and extends to nutrition and the sources of food offered on site.

Therme UK has plans to open a major new £125M facility on the Clyde serving as the regional centre in Scotland to deliver Therme UK’s 90:90 UK access strategy. This seeks to position Therme facilities such that 90% of the UK population are within 90 minutes’ drive of a Therme facility.

The Challenge

Therme Group have five main guiding principles and areas of focus around which they build their business model and facilities. These are Health, Equity, Security, Learning and Environment. In each case they are interested in strategic research partners that can help Therme as a group deliver improved operational delivery, minimise environmental impact and ultimately improve customer experience.

They have developed subject specific strategic research & development (R&D) relationships with the University of Florence for the built environment and in Scotland they have supported research activity in the University of Glasgow and James Hutton Institute (Dundee) developing frameworks of wellbeing and food technology respectively.

The collaboration facilitated by Interface came about from the combination of a planned major facility in Glasgow and the recognition of the strength in the University of Glasgow in four key areas of research, Wellbeing Research, Informing Policy, Wellbeing Technology and Environmental Technology directly relevant to Therme’s long term needs. This led to a feasibility study, supported by Interface, which provided an evidence base for exploring the creation of a global Centre of Wellbeing Research Excellence (WellEX) in Glasgow.

The Solution

Interface made initial introduction and discussions between Therme Group and the University of Glasgow who successfully applied to the Inward investment Catalyst Fund to support a WellEX feasibility.

The basis of the feasibility study was to raise awareness of the opportunity and develop connections between senior management at the Therme Group responsible for Innovation and the relevant Business, Social Science, Health and Technology academics and departments within the University. In particular, the feasibility exercise and subsequent discussions identified four areas of future collaboration where Therme’s interests and the University of Glasgow’s expertise aligned.

These included:

Wellbeing innovations: Therme Group is primarily interested in understanding how wellbeing improvement can be brought about for individuals and populations, and the broader benefits of wellbeing on society, the economy, and the environment through evidence-based research.

Informing policy: Through close collaboration with the local government and communities, the research conducted by WellEX is expected to support the work of the University of Glasgow to explore, validate, and inform wellbeing strategies and policies at the local and national levels, working to understand the complexity of policy intervention.

Wellbeing technology: To explore, develop and test “wellbeing technology” focused on improving the effects of wellbeing innovations and users’ experience within and outside Therme Group sites.

Sustainability practices: To explore and validate sustainability practices for Therme wellbeing activities and facilities to leverage renewable energy sources and reduce carbon emissions.

The feasibility study validated the concept of a Global Centre of Excellence, providing an evidence base for a Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) funding application in 2022 and ongoing funding applications.

The findings showed that the University of Glasgow was well placed to both anchor and act as an international R&D hub for Therme’s aspirations to develop a world-class centre of excellence in wellbeing. The planned development of a major new facility in Glasgow, serving the Scottish population catchment area, offers a unique opportunity to create such a WellEX and capture the significant research, societal and economic benefits this would bring to Scotland.

The University of Glasgow are commited to developing this proposition further and presenting a full business case for consideration by Therme Group, the University, and strategic partners such as Glasgow City Council and Scottish Government agencies, including Scottish Funding Council (SFC), Scottish Development International (SDI), and Scottish Enterprise (SE).

The Benefits

• Validated the concept of a Global Centre of Excellence to be based in Glasgow, providing an evidence base for a BEIS funding application in 2022 and ongoing funding applications.
• Development of a much deeper relationship with Therme Group as partners on wellbeing which can be developed further as the new Glasgow facility is built.
• Development of a cross disciplinary working group in Glasgow in response to Therme’s interest and catalyzed by the Interface report. This cross disciplinary group is currently developing funding applications around the theme of healthy ageing.
• Potential to generate a strategic new initiative at the institutional level by encouraging the University of Glasgow for the first time to carry out a strategic review of all its wellbeing research strengths across all disciplines for Therme Group as a serious industrial partner.
• The WellEX initiative has the potential to generate significant new jobs and economic activity in Glasgow, provisionally estimated between 10-20 net additional FTEs.
• This collaborative research also aligns well with the developing Wellbeing Economy policy of the Scottish Government.

This project benefitted from the Scottish Inward Investment Catalyst Fund. The Scottish Inward Investment Catalyst Fund launched by Interface and the Scottish Government promotes Scotland as a leading destination for inward investment and supports businesses not yet located in Scotland but seeking to establish stronger ties with academia here. As well as funding research and development it provides an opportunity for the company to establish relationships and give insight into other aspects of the Scottish landscape, such as further investment opportunities, supply chains and the skills base to strengthen the case for investing in Scotland.

This joint event organised by both the Biochemical Engineering Special Interest Group (BESIG) within the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) and the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre’s (IBioIC) Scottish Fermentation network (SFN), is being hosted at The University of Strathclyde’s Technology Innovation Centre (TIC) in Glasgow.

The majority of organic chemicals, nutraceuticals, fuels and polymers are still derived from fossil-based feedstocks, predominantly oil and gas. Advances in molecular biology techniques and an increased awareness and understanding of many emerging microorganisms, engineering biology methods and bio-based feedstocks, are now allowing scientists and engineers to rethink how the chemicals of the future are produced.

This one-day conference will look to bring together those with an interest in chemistry, biology, engineering and entrepreneurship, which are all the skills that will be needed to transition chemical production to bio-based methods using bio-based feedstocks. Talks will feature a range of speakers from universities and industry, covering a range of sectors looking to address this conversion. Featuring not just how they are addressing technical challenges, but also how to scale these to production, supported by several organisations that can help support with their services from cell identification to engineering and de-risking scale-up.

Scottish Research Partnership in Engineering (SRPe) Annual Conference 2023 on 31st October 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 Health and Care; Infrastructure & Environment, the event will take place at the Technology & Innovation Centre in Glasgow.

In addition to Keynote Speakers, there will be 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 confirmed are:

• Professor Peter Bonfield OBE (Vice-Chancellor and President, University of Westminster, and Co Chair of the EPSRC ‘Tomorrow’s Engineering Research Challenges’ Report)
• Dr Hina Khan (Executive Director, Space Scotland)
• Dr Janette Wark (EPSRC Head of Regional Engagement – Scotland)
• Professor Trish Connolly (Chair of the SRPe ‘Engineering for Health and Care’ Thematic Leadership Group, Director of the Strathclyde Institute of Medical Devices, University of Strathclyde)
• Professor Sean Smith (Chair of the SRPe ‘Infrastructure and Environment’ Thematic Leadership Group, Director of Centre for Future Infrastructure, University of Edinburgh)
• Professor Bill Ion (Chair of the SRPe ‘Advanced Manufacturing’ Thematic Leadership Group, Emeritus Professor; Design, Manufacturing & Engineering Management, University of Strathclyde )
• Joe Galloway (Research Support Manager – Overseas Funders, University of Glasgow)

There will also be opportunities to learn about SRPe’s industry focused doctorate programmes; the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland Industry Doctorate Programme (NMIS-IDP) and the Scottish Research Partnership in Engineering Industry Doctorate Programme (SRPe-IDP), as well as the latest collaborative funding opportunities for industry and academia in a Funding Showcase.

For further information, please get in touch with Andrew Dryden at andrew.dryden@srpe.ac.uk.

The UK’s biggest festival for a zero-carbon built environment will play host to transformative discussion and knowledge exchange on how we can break through barriers to accelerate our journey to zero carbon.

As we reach COP28 let’s accelerate the progress made in the last year and do what needs to be done to keep the momentum going.

BE-ST Fest 2023 is a three-month festival showcasing best practice, new solutions, hands-on training, and emerging opportunities for a zero-carbon built environment. The month will build up to the summit at our innovation campus on Wednesday 1st November. The conference will bring together different players across the sector who are focussed on the future of decarbonising our built environment.

This event is for anyone working in the built environment looking to accelerate their journey to zero carbon. It aims to not only inspire action but engage in the real challenges and real solutions.

The BE-ST Fest Summit is a rich programme featuring a morning conference and expo, with a chance to dive deeper into specific topics through a mix of workshops, hackathons, seminars, and other events in the afternoon.

Morning conference with thought-provoking keynote speakers Networking with 500 attendees
50+ exhibitors & demos of low carbon solutions
14 afternoon seminars & workshops
Innovation factory tours

Programme
Hosted by Sara Edmonds, Co-Director National Retrofit Hub and Head of Citizen Engagement at BE-ST.

08:30 Coffee & Networking

09:30-12:30 Conference

12:30-14:00 Lunch, networking & expo

14:00-16:30 Workshops, seminars, demos, tours and expo