Grants Factory: Alternative Funding for your Work

13 June 2017, 2-4pm

Venue TBC

Innovation and enterprise funding routes can be a significant and rewarding - but often overlooked - alternative to traditional funding sources. This session, delivered by Kent Innovation and Enterprise (KIE), will increase your understanding of the innovation and enterprise landscape, including Innovate UK and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs), and how they can help you access this funding.

The session also includes presentations from Prof Colin Robinson, Professor in Biotechnology/Head of School at Biosciences, and from Dr Jesse O’Hanley, Reader in Environmental Systems Management at Kent Business School, who will share their experiences of securing alternative funding and working with industry partners.

As ever it’s free and open to all, and tea and coffee will be available. However, do let me know if you intend to come so that I can make sure both room and catering are appropriate.

Finding Partners outside of Academia

Wednesday 14^th Dec, 2pm

Canterbury Campus, Room TBC

Working with those beyond academia has become increasingly important in recent years: forming strong, productive links with non-academics helps to develop, inform and disseminate your research. But how should you identify suitable partners, and how can you make sure that your relationship is mutually beneficial, long-lasting and sustainable? This session will be led by Janine Coomber and Kimm Sutter from Kent Innovation and Enterprise (KIE). KIE is the sister service to Research Services, and provides help and support in forging links outside of the University to exploit the findings of your research.

Grants Factory: Alternative Sources of Funding for your Research

Alison Coles

Whilst many academics and researchers have a good understanding of the traditional sources of funding for their work, they may be less aware of ‘alternative’ sources. There’s a confusing funding landscape out there, but Kent has in place a supportive framework of linked services to help you benefit from it.

Two New Funding Officers

With recent changes in Research Services, we've recruited two new Funding Officers.

Dr Helen Leech has started as the temporary Research Funding & Contracts Officer for Medway. She will be initially based at the Canterbury campus while she is trained in Research Services, but do feel free to contact her if you are in Medway to set up a meeting or to talk about research funding issues.  

Meanwhile, Brian Lingley will be taking over full responsibility for the Social Sciences. He is joining us from Kent Innovation and Enterprise (KIE), where he was responsible for helping academics with enterprise-related schemes, such as the ESRC Follow on Fund. He will be a huge asset to the office, and I would encourage you to get in touch with him with any questions or queries you have about getting research funding.

And me? With Helen and Brian starting it will allow me to concentrating more on cross-disciplinary initiatives, on providing events and training that are relevant to all faculties (such as the Grants Factory), and on championing and strategically developing research funding at Kent. So you’ve not heard the last of me yet...

TSB: What's It All About?

David Bott, the Director of Innovation Programmes at the Technology Strategy Board, visited the University today to give an overview of the background and the ethos of the organisation. Innovation, he said, had become a talisman for many. But what does it mean, and how does the TSB facilitate and support it?

Put simply, innovation is the process of turning ideas into money. Sounds easy enough, but innovators face a number of problems:

• Investment is often too little or too late;
• Innovation is inherently disruptive, and change has to be effectively managed;
• Long term trends aren't always apparent;
• Infrastructural support is often complex or inefficient;
• For better or worse, the government is a huge player and needs to help rather than hinder.

The TSB, then, was founded four years ago to help overcome these challenges by:

• fostering a better environment for innovators;
• reducing the financial risk;
• signposting market trends;
• facilitating collaboration and networking;
• feeding back to government.

Since its foundation it has developed into a body with around 130 staff, who between them have some 1700 years of business experience. So they're commercially focused, and understand the needs of business. The TSB has around £300m to distribute annually, and rather than identifying surefire winners it identifies areas of potential growth and capacity.

How? Well, predominantly by talking to government and analysing the needs of the market. Based on this, the TSB's priorities are:

• Low carbon vehicles;
• Assisted living;
• Low impact buildings;
• Detection and identification of infectious agents;
• sustainable agriculture and the food chain;
• stratified medicine.

In practice, it distributes its funding as follows:

• Through consortia, via a standard (2 stage) or fast track (1 stage) funding scheme. Neither of these should be as time consuming as those for the Research Councils, and David suggested a 2-3 month turnaround was the norm. They also fund feasibility studies, workshops and sandpit events;
• Through individuals, via Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and grants for research and development.
• Knowledge Transfer Networks;
• Missions, to spread the word about innovation in the UK;
• Centres.

If you want to find out more about the TSB and whether it's right for you, contact my colleague Brian Lingley in Kent Innovation & Enterprise who can answer your questions and support you in developing a proposal for them.

DSTL to Visit University: 29 Nov

Kent Innovation and Enterprise are running a joint network event with the DSTL (Defence Science Technology Laboratory , which is part of the Ministry of Defence) on the 29th November. The objective of the event is to provide networking opportunities, to find out about the MOD’s high priority/impact areas and to identify and develop funding and collaboration opportunities.

DSTL is keen to try out a different way of working with universities by bringing a group of DSTL staff from across different domain groups to the campus. This is the first time the DSTL is holding a joint event like this with a University.

The event will start at 10:00 and the morning session will be look at DSTL technology and research needs, and the Centre for Defence Enterprise. The second session will focus on a number of research areas, and will encourage discussion and feedback. A buffet lunch will be served around 12:30 and the event will conclude about 3:45pm.

This is an open event and academics who would like to find out more about the DSTL are encouraged to come along. Contact Lucy O'Grady if you'd like to attend. There will be a poster exhibition, so if you have a poster that might be of interest to DSTL, or would like to prepare one, let Lucy know. Finished posters would need to be ready by Thursday 25th November.

Impact Brainstorm

With many staff now returning after the summer break, I thought it would be good to re-start the ‘Impact Brainstorm’ sessions that we began last year. So every two weeks representatives from Research Services, Kent Innovation and Enterprise (KIE), and the Media Office will get together to ‘brainstorm’ impact for individual academics.

If you are struggling to think how your research meets the Government’s impact agenda, particularly if you’re preparing an application to the Research Councils, we can help. Let me know what research you are doing or are planning to do and we’ll come up with some ideas for potential beneficiaries, audiences, markets or applications.

We’re meeting on Thursday 9 September. You don’t have to attend: just drop me a line (by the today, preferably) with some details of your research, and I’ll get back to you after the meeting with some notes on avenues to explore.