Twenty seven ground breaking projects backed by UCL Innovation and Enterprise

Twenty seven innovative projects at UCL have received funding totalling £264,264 in the third round of Knowledge Exchange and Innovation funding for 2017.

This funding stream is designed to stimulate innovation across UCL by supporting impact and knowledge exchange activities aligned with the core themes of UCL's strategy (UCL2034). 

The third round of awards - selected by UCL's Innovation and Enterprise Funding Committee and by senior members of staff - will help eight projects progress towards commercialisation. These include:

A study of the clinical performance of 'k-Plan' treatment planning software, which is designed to predict the outcome of therapeutic ultrasound treatments in the brain (Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering).

A project from the Department of Security and Crime Science to assess the commercial opportunities for Passive Wi-Fi sensor technology, which can be used to 'see through' walls and has a range of potential security applications.

A project designed to motivate children to read via a prototype online learning tool, Digistoryland, developed by the Department for Learning and Leadership at the Institute of Education.

Dr Natalia Kucirkova, who is project lead for the Digistoryland project, said: 'This project will allow us to further test and apply personalisation as a design principle, work with schools and gauge the commercial value and interest in an innovative product. The funding will enable us to meet these objectives more quickly and on a bigger scale.'

Funding was also awarded to nineteen new projects designed to achieve impact through knowledge exchange activities. These included:

A project to assess the progress of tropical cyclones in real-time in order to help with early humanitarian interventions (Department of Space and Climate Physics)

An Institute of Archaeology project to enhance and maximise the impact of interaction between UCL and British Museum staff

An Institute of Education initiative to make autism research accessible for teachers

A Department of Geography joint learning initiative on the roles of religion and faith in responses to displacement from Syria and the Middle East

Improving schoolchildren's literacy by making grammar accessible in the classroom (English Language and Literature)

Twenty four of the projects were funded under the Higher Education Fund for England's Higher Education Innovation Funding, and the remaining three under the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's Impact Acceleration Account funding stream. 

Open Door to UCL Innovation and Enterprise

UCL is full of brilliant new ideas, discoveries and technologies. UCL Innovation and Enterprise is here to help put these to work in the real world. To do this, and to help encourage a real spirit of enterprise across UCL, we know that we must create more face to face opportunities and direct access to our innovation and enterprise experts. To tackle this we will be trying out a new weekly and monthly events programme from October. At these we will be offering drop-in advice, shared learning from UCL people who work with us, as well as new development opportunities.

We are doing this to:  

• develop a broader range of appropriate support for staff and students
• increase ways to learn from each other through peer to peer networking and collaboration

You can get in touch at enterprise@ucl.ac.uk with 'autumn events 2017' as the subject header if you would like to be on our first mailing list about these events. Of course, if you would like to talk to us about an idea you already have, including research collaborations, business and enterprise partnerships, entrepreneurship or short courses, you can also call us on 020 3108 6210.

Links:

Updates on funding opportunities

Groundbreaking projects backed by UCL Innovation and Enterprise

Innovative UCL projects given boost with new tranche of funding