Bristol frees up its IP for innovators
In a dramatic move, Bristol University is to open up its research and give away the rights to patented technology for free. The University has world leading research in many areas, including microelectronics, materials science and biotech, and is looking to use its intellectual property to build collaboration with industry, says Dr Neil Bradshaw, Director of Enterprise and the man responsible for commercialising the university’s innovation
The Western Way signed to drive science and technology innovation in the region
The leaders of the councils for Bristol, Swindon and Cardiff met yesterday to sign an agreement to support and promote the ‘Western Way’, the western end of the M4 corridor, particularly with a focus on silicon and digital technologies. The memorandum mirrors the strengths of the region as highlighted in SW Innovation News, as well as the importance of working across the Severn in Wales.
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- Bristol: Europe’s Silicon Gorge (swinnovation.co.uk)
University of Bath researchers convert PC network to DC power
Moving PC networks to DC power
Researchers at the University of Bath have converted a network of PCs to DC power, taking them off the power grid to cut noise and save money and power. The move, the first time this has been done in the UK, also allows the network to be powered directly by micro-power systems such as wind turbines
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Bristol’s first Health Innovation Showcase
A unique exhibition, the first of its kind to be held in Bristol, will showcase the outstanding health innovation achievements in the city and offer a glimpse into the future at what new developments might bring.
The Bristol Health Innovation Showcase is the first exhibition from BRIG-H (Bristol Research and Innovation Group for Health), a partnership of universities and NHS Trusts committed to improving the health of people in Bristol and beyond through research, innovation and closer collaboration.
The Showcase will take place at UWE’s Exhibition and Conference Centre on Wednesday 30 March from 5.30 to 8.30 pm.
The event will provide an opportunity for professionals and members of the public to see first hand 30 exciting innovations on display which have been developed by members of the partnership. Clinicians, researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs behind the latest developments and innovations will be on hand to answer questions and explain their inventions, new procedures and advances in health services.
The BRIG-H partners are: the University of Bristol, University of the West of England, Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust, North Bristol NHS Trust, University Hospitals Bristol NHS Trust, in association with Bristol City Council, NHS North Somerset, and NHS South Gloucestershire.
Scientists, clinicians, and health executives from these organisations have worked together to create new innovations and processes that have benefited health in Bristol.
Deborah Evans, Chief Executive NHS Bristol and Chair of the Bristol Health Leadership Executive, said: “We know that Bristol is regarded as a beacon of innovation. Innovation in health is changing the lives of patients and the city: inventions, research, new companies, treatments, devices and tools are transforming the care and quality of the lives of patients. This event is an ideal opportunity to be inspired by examples of Bristol innovations that have changed people’s lives and talk to the people who have made it happen.”
Professor Richard Luxton, Director Institute of Bio-Sensing Technology, UWE, said: “This event demonstrates how the partners working together can make huge gains. We want to encourage other researchers and clinicians to get involved in innovation and applications for their research. There are many projects which would not have happened without the expertise and innovation of both universities, and the support of the NHS Trusts. We hope this event will show just how much we have achieved together, and the enormous potential there is in the city for further innovation and health improvement in the city in the future.”
The innovations on display range from medical innovations, through to novel improvements to service delivery and community health initiatives. Innovations on display include:
The TOBY trial: – A new treatment pioneered by Professor Marianne Thoresen (University of Bristol) with partners North Bristol Trust and funded by the Medical Research Council, Olympic Medical and SPARKS aims to prevent brain damage caused by lack of oxygen (Asphyxia) at birth by giving cooling treatment within the first six hours of life. The novel treatment lowers the affected babies’ body temperature to 33.5°C and induces hypothermia for 72 hours before gradually rewarming the baby in intensive care. After clinical trials the treatment was introduced in Bristol’s two neonatal intensive care units in 2006 and 60 per cent of babies now survive without significant injury compared to 30 per cent previously in Bristol. In May 2010 the treatment was recommended by NICE for asphyxiated babies. Professor Thoresen is now working with Professor John Dingley (Swansea University) and University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust to improve the prognosis for these babies even further by adding inhaled Xenon gas to the cooling regime.
Adults with Asperger Syndrome: plugging the service gap – The Bristol Autism Spectrum Service (BASS) was established to fill the service vacuum for adults with Asperger Syndrome who are unable to access support from mainstream services. It has received national recognition as an example of best practice and contributed to the government’s strategy for adults with autism. The service model is being replicated in other UK regions. BASS facilitates assessment and diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome for adults, provides a programme of post-diagnostic support and provides training for mainstream providers. By plugging the service gap for adults with Asperger Syndrome the new service helps to improve mental wellbeing and life outcomes for individuals. Training has been delivered to 500 health and social care professionals, employment agencies and JobCentre Plus staff. The project leaders from Bristol Autism Spectrum Service, AWP are: Dr Ian Ensum, Matt Trerise, Annie Alexander, Amy Baddeley, Dr Rona Aldridge, Dr Peter Carpenter, Simon Allen and Gemma Allen.
OdoReader – Diagnosing bacterial infections at the bedside – OdoReader is a prototype device which accurately and rapidly identifies disease causing bacteria in diarrhoea such as the bacterium Clostridium difficile, which is highly infectious and causes a severe form of diarrhoea. OdoReader captures and analyses the chemicals in the smell of the diarrhoea and is able to give an accurate diagnosis within 20 minutes. This new prototype device is robust and reliable and can help prevent the spread of infection. There are plans to develop similar devices for other infections and this device is ideal for use in the developing world. The project leaders are Professor Chris Probert, (University of Bristol) and Professor Norman Ratcliffe (UWE) collaborating with North Bristol NHS Trust and University Hospitals Bristol NHS Trust. OdoReader is being developed with the support of the Wellcome Trust and will be ready for launch in 2013.
The BRIG-H consortium will also be hosting a Health Innovation Challenge during the afternoon before the exhibition, bringing together scientists, researchers, clinicians, patient representatives and others from Bristol, to generate new ideas and facilitate collaborations and initiatives to improve health in the city.
Researchers look at using virtual antennas
Virtual antennas – using several antennas of equipment nearby – can improve the performance of wireless devices in some cases, say researchers at the University of Bristol’s Centre for Communications Research (CCR)
CCR has also launched a £10m Doctoral Centre opening next week
The Big M review – Future innovations in mobile technology
Over 200 mobile professionals and developers gathered in Bath for the Big M conference on Monday, looking at a range of key issues for the mobile industry.
David Simpson has written a great review here: http://davidsimpson.me/2011/03/23/the-big-m-conference-bath/ and highlights Paul Golding’s presentation on future innovations.
Paul, the lead Innovation Architect and CEO of Wireless Wanders in Swindon, is a great example of the strength of the region – he has been on the leading edge of the mobile industry for 20 years, defining, designing and implementing many new products and services. He is the inventor of the first ever mobile internet portal (Zingo), designed for Lucent Technologies in 1997 and developed further for NTT DoCoMo in 1998. He was recently consulting as Motorola‘s Chief Applcations Architect and now resides at O2 as a founder member of “The Lab,” which is an “intrapreneurial” venture to exploit new business opportunities using Web start-up methodologies. He also founded the O2 Incubator. He is also a mentor in the Springboard Incubator program.
His presentation from the Big M is here and well worth a read: http://www.slideshare.net/pgolding/big-m-conference-future-mobile-innovations
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SELEX opens technology Centre of Excellence in Bristol
Italian multinational SELEX Systems Integration has opened a technology Centre of Excellence alongside the Ministry of Defence at Abbey Wood in Bristol.
University of Bath develops weather satellite
A micro-satellite project from the University of Bath has won a position to be sent into space as part of the UK’s first CubeSat mission.
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- Scots space firm in cash lift-off (bbc.co.uk)
Medical electronics spotlight in Bath
i-Med: How medical electronics will deliver patient power
Thursday, 24 March 2011 and Friday, 25 March 2011, Bath Ventures Innovation Centre, Broad Quay, Bath, BA1 1UD
Experts in medical electronic systems are gathering in Bath next week for the SiliconSouthWest iMed seminar. This looks at the increasingly important area of medical electronics and applications, particularly with the use of wireless networks. Speakers from the NHS, silicon and embedded systems companies and applications developers will explore the opportunities for developing the next generation of medical systems and their place in the healthcare ecosystem.
Confirmed Speakers:
- Noel Hurley, Chief Operating Officer, Toumaz Technology
- Phil Evans, Director, Ocean Blue Software
- Tim Phipps, Cambridge Consultants
Plus healthcare expert panel led by Dr Nigel Harris, Director, Bath Institute of Medical Engineering
- Stephen Hope, Docobo
- Angus Donald, NHS Innovations South West
- David Rogers, Ex President and Chief Executive, Lucent EMEA
Bristol physicists move closer to efficient single-photon sources
A team from Bristol has taken a big step toward efficient single-photon sources that could be used for completely secure optical communications.
Fluorescent “defect centres” in diamond act like atomic-scale light sources at toom temperature but need to be etched to generate the best source, and this is a huge challenge. them strong contenders for use as sources of single photons (the quantum light particle) in secure quantum cryptography schemes, says J. P. Hadden, a Ph.D. candidate in the Centre for Quantum Photonics at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Bristol.
“Defect centres could also be used as building blocks for ‘solid-state quantum computers,’ which would use quantum effects to solve problems that are not efficiently solvable with current computer technology,” Hadden says.
“We managed to show an improvement in the brightness of these defect centres of up to ten times by etching hemispherical ‘solid immersion lenses’ into the diamond,” he said. “This is an important result, showing how nanofabrication techniques can complement and enhance quantum technologies, and opens the door to diamond-defect-center-based implementations of quantum cryptography and quantum computation.”
More recently, Hadden and colleagues developed a technique that allows them to reliably etch these structures over previously characterized defect centres to a precision of about 100 nanometers — another significant step toward a practical and repeatable combination of nanotechnology and quantum optics.
The team presented its findings in Applied Physics Letters, a journal published by the American Institute of Physics.
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- Bristol team builds optical components for quantum computing (swinnovation.co.uk)
- Blog – Physicists Build Single Atom Memory For Quantum Information (technologyreview.com)
- Quantum Internet One Step Closer? (lockergnome.com)
- The quantum singularity – doing the first thing quantumly that classical computers cannot (nextbigfuture.com)
Bristol to be part of high-value manufacturing Technology and Innovation Centre (TIC)
The National Composites Centre (NCC) at the University of Bristol has been named as a partner in the first of a UK-wide network of elite technology and innovation centres
Bristol’s NCC is one of seven highly capable and internationally recognised research centres around the country which will make up the new Technology and Innovation Centre (TIC) for high-value manufacturing which is distributed right across the UK.
The centre will be one of a network of about six in which the Government will invest a total of more than £200 million over the next four years with the aim of enabling British businesses to commercialise the results of world-class research in the UK and access major new high-tech markets.
“I am delighted for the NCC to be working with the five other centres – the Centre for Process Innovation in Wilton & Sedgefield, the Advanced Forming Research Centre at the University of Strathclyde, the Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry, the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in Rotherham and the Warwick Manufacturing Group at the University of Warwick – in the formation of the high-value manufacturing TIC,” said Peter Chiver, Executive Director of the National Composites Centre (NCC),
“This is fantastic news for Bristol. Today’s announcement recognises the world-class expertise in advanced manufacturing in the South West and the fantastic potential of this industry to secure jobs and prosperity for decades to come. On a more practical level, it will enable Bristol to solidify its position at the forefront of composites, an industry that is growing at eight per cent per year. This is a huge opportunity for the National Composites Centre.”
Guy Orpen, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Enterprise at the University of Bristol, said: “There is no doubt that composites will form a vital part of the UK’s manufacturing renaissance. This key part of the UK economy will be driven by closer collaboration between industry and the very best of academia and we are proud that the University of Bristol and the NCC’s initiating partners are playing such a significant role in this important part of the UK’s economy going forward. This is very good news for Bristol, the region and the UK.”
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Bristol hosts its first Wiki Academy
Image via CrunchBase
When: Saturday 19 March 2011 from 10am
Where: Room 1.06, Merchant Venturers School of Engineering, Woodland Road, University of Bristol, BS8 1UB
The first Wiki Academy in Bristol is being held tomorrow at the Bristol University School of Engineering with a range of volunteer speakers, including Steve Virgin, a member of the Wikimedia UK board. The Academy is using a room with a networked Windows PC and Powerpoint and will make the slides available online afterwards. Use of slides isn’t mandatory: talk through the relevant WP pages if that’s more informative.
The Academy looks at the different ways to use Wikipedia and includes a discussion on microgrants. The agenda for the day is here
XMOS pulls in chip veterans for advisory board
Company expands globally as it enters high growth phase
Bristol-based chip developer XMOS has appointed a new advisory board to provide it with valuable business and technical guidance from some of the semiconductor industry’s most experienced and successful members. A sales and business development office has been opened in Austin, Texas and XMOS is also establishing a new software product support and development center in Chennai, India.
Bristol wins funding for open-innovation universities and free intellectual property
Bristol and two other leading universities to have won funding from the Intellectual Property Office to pioneer easy access to its intellectual assets.
The Universities of Bristol, Glasgow and King’s College London have won £80,000 in funding from the Intellectual Property Office – the government body responsible for granting Intellectual Property (IP) rights in the United Kingdom – to pioneer easy access to their intellectual assets.
Earlier this year, Glasgow became the first UK university to offer Intellectual Property, including groundbreaking medical and scientific research, to business and entrepreneurs free of charge. The award will be used to fund a collaborative project to move the free IP concept on to create a consortium of open-innovation universities.
The project aims to collectively promote free IP opportunities to industry and increase awareness of the vital role universities have in stimulating innovation and economic competitiveness.
Dr Kevin Cullen, Director of Research and Enterprise at the University of Glasgow, who is leading the project, said: “We hope to run an open and accessible project which aims to embed and test a new approach to licensing whilst stimulating debate around the issues of university and company collaboration, and the role which universities have in encouraging innovation for the benefit of UK society and the economy.”
Dr Neil Bradshaw, Director of Enterprise at the University of Bristol, said: “This pioneering project will advance the use of IP created by our three Universities by innovative growth companies and offers a new way for Universities to contribute to the growth required in the UK economy.”
Dr Alison Campbell, Managing Director, King’s College London Business, said: “This project allows us to capitalise on our ethos of open innovation at King’s. Our ambition is that it enables more effective engagement with industry across the sector.”
Please contact Neil.Bradshaw@bristol.ac.uk for further information.
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Psychological issues vital after nuclear accidents says researcher
The psychological issues of nuclear accidents such as Fukushima Daiichi in Japan are just as important as the immediate health issues says a leading trauma expert speaking in Bristol. “Twenty five year on, we can safely say that the biggest problem of the Chernobyl accident was not cancer or ecological but psychological, and I think that will be the situation in Japan,” said Elena Bodnar, director of the Trauma Risk Management Research Institute at the University of Chicago. Her experiences with the Russian nuclear disaster led to the innovative design of a face mask.
- Japan Radiation Leaks Feared as Nuclear Experts Point to Possible Cover-up(alternet.org)
- Nuclear power plant accidents: listed, visualised and ranked since 1952(guardian.co.uk)
- Fukushima Fallout: How Bad Could It Get? (news.sky.com)
- Japan: New meltdown fears at second reactor; how much radiation has been released in Fukushima crisis? (boingboing.net)
- Second Chernobyl in Japan ‘very unlikely’, IAEA says (earthtimes.org)
Local student scoops Intel prize
Roxanne Pollard of Chipping Sodbury School
A student from Gloucestershire has won major engineering award for her electronics design.
Roxanne Pollard (19) from Chipping Sodbury School designed a bicycle helmet incorporating special indicator safety features and has been invited to represent Great Britain at the 2012 Intel-sponsored International Science and Engineering Fair in the US with all expenses paid.
The award was part of the Young Engineer for Britain programme, whose sponsors include SW firms STMicroelectronics, Airbus and GKN.
Alan Egan (16), who attends King Edward VI Camp Hill Boys School in Birmingham, won The Duke of York’s Award for the creative application of electronics in the Young Engineer for Britain national final with a multimedia router, which provides quick and easy routing of multimedia content from various inputs to multiple output destinations using a simple and intuitive colour-based interface.
The Group 1 (16-18) winner was Aseem Nishra from Hymers College in Hull with jeans that react like a set of drums when the wearer taps their thighs. The Group 2 (14-16) winner was Hemang Rishi from Winchester College with a novel robotic vacuum cleaner. The Group 3 (12-14) winner was a group comprising Shea Quinn, Gavin Fox and Caolan MaGee from Abbey Grammar School, Newry with a Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Assistant.
Entering the Young Engineer for Britain competition
Any secondary school students aged 12-19 can enter the 2012 Young Engineer for Britain Competition with enhanced exam projects, or, projects designed specifically as entries for the competition. More details can be found at http://www.youngeng.org/index.asp?page=165
BVM launches mobile division with new PC system
BVM Mobile, the new operating division of well-established Southampton electronics company BVM, has introduced a Mobile PC family.
Nationwide laboratory software for undergraduates for trial by Christmas
Bristol ChemLabS hopes to have trial versions of laboratory skills software for biological science undergraduates ready by Christmas. The software will follow the successful model of undergraduate and A-Level chemistry software developed by Bristol ChemLabS and its Bristol-based software partner Learning Sciences Ltd. See the full story by Sian Harris of SWinnovation News.
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Second round opens for rural broadband bids
Bids are now invited for the second wave of funding for Broadband UK – see more
£1.5million medical exhibition opens in Bristol
A permanent £1.5million exhibition all about the human body and the brain opens in Bristol
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