Eleven research teams in seven of the University's Schools have received grants totalling £170,000 to accelerate the impact of their research. These awards were made through pilot funding schemes from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
The awards of £10-20,000 support diverse knowledge exchange and commercialisation activities over the coming 12 months: product design and product testing, market research, applying natural hazard research with businesses, secondments, and producing resources for dissemination to business and the public.
BBSRC’s Sparking Impact Award and NERC’s Impact Accelerator Fund were distributed by an internal competition and panel review managed by the University’s Research and Enterprise Development Division (RED).
Dr Neil Bradshaw (Director of Enterprise and Panel Chair) said: 'These competitions ran to a tight timescale. In only six weeks our academic community created many excellent proposals and we were oversubscribed by almost 50 per cent. The Panel had to make tough decisions and we look forward to seeing how cutting-edge research can deliver great impact through these projects and partnerships.'
The full list of awards is as follows:
Biochemistry
Dr Richard Sessions (BBSRC-funded) for ‘User documentation, tutorials and example data for Bristol University Docking Engine (BUDE)’. Producing a user manual for protein-protein docking, binding-site identification and drug screening.
Biological Sciences
Professor Richard Wall (NERC-funded) for ‘Ticks and tick-borne disease: sheep farmer knowledge-transfer in South West England.’
Chemistry
Professor Rich Pancost (NERC-funded) for ‘Climate lessons from earth history: lessons of political value to the renewable energy sector?' A secondment with Regen South West.
Professor Dek Woolfson (BBSRC-funded) for ‘Self-assembling and peptide cages: from development to biomedical applications’.
Clinical Sciences
Professor Stafford Lightman (BBSRC-funded) for ‘Prototype development of miniaturised automated sampling system for 24-hour monitoring of hormone levels in man’.
Earth Sciences
Dr Juliet Biggs (NERC-funded) for ‘Using magmatic and geothermal data to inform geothermal energy production in Ethiopia'.
Professor Stephen Sparks (NERC-funded) for ‘Identifying high-risk volcanoes’. With United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (ISDR), Munich RE, Willis Group and Risk Management Solutions (RMS).
Geographical Sciences
Professor Paul Bates (NERC-funded) for ‘Commercialisation of flood risk products for insurance markets’.
Veterinary Sciences
Professor Michael Mendl (BBSRC-funded) for ‘A novel test of affective state for laboratory animals: development of a prototype ‘home cage’ testing protocol in collaboration with Delta Phenomics BV’.
Dr Eric Morgan (BBSRC-funded) for ‘Applying targeted parasite control on smallholder farms in Botswana using a mobile phone-based decision-support system’.
Dr Claire Weeks (BBSRC-funded) for ‘Safety tests of a prototype block (FeatherWel) designed to reduce injurious pecking in laying hens’.