The UKRI Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is funding the partnerships with a £41 million investment, matched with a further £56 million from businesses and academia.
The projects will deliver pioneering technologies that will improve lives and grow the economy. They include:
- advancing drug development and manufacturing so that life-saving medicines can reach patients sooner
- using AI to help examiners mark GCSE and A-level exams more accurately
- protecting national transport, manufacturing and energy infrastructure from future cyber attacks
- developing longer-lasting batteries to transform the electrification of cars, aircraft and ships.
Working with industry partners
Each partnership is co-created and co-delivered with UK business partners to ensure the research addresses industry needs. They range from big household names to small and medium-sized enterprises, including:
- AstraZeneca
- Bupa
- GSK
- Pulplex ltd
- Quantum Motion Technologies
- Rolls-Royce
- Synthomer
Making a real difference to people’s lives
EPSRC Executive Chair, Professor Charlotte Deane said:
“Our flagship Prosperity Partnerships scheme brings together world-class expertise from businesses and academia to solve big challenges to support the growth of industry and advance UK research.
“These 23 ambitious projects present a significant investment in the UK’s future. From speeding up drug manufacturing to longer lasting batteries, these partnerships have the potential to make a real difference to people’s lives and help boost the economy”.
Transforming future medicines
Several projects will focus on making drug manufacturing faster, cheaper and more sustainable.
Two separate projects are partnering with AstraZeneca. The first, being conducted at the University of Bristol, aims to replace palladium, a rare-polluting metal used in drug manufacturing, with earth-abundant metals like iron and nickel to reduce carbon emissions.
Meanwhile, University College London (UCL) will drive a new era of AI-powered biopharma to improve the development of next-generation antibody therapies for cancer, obesity and autoimmune conditions.
Another UCL project is set to make advanced, life-saving protein medicines more widely available. Whilst the University of Strathclyde will partner with GSK to design and test new classes of molecules that can tune and even re-programme biological systems.
Addressing different challenges
Among the other projects, a partnership between King’s College London and exam board AQA will develop a safe AI virtual assistant to help examiners mark exams more accurately and consistently, seeking to ensure that students receive the fairest exam results.
Swansea University will strengthen cyber security in critical national transport, manufacturing and energy infrastructure, aiming to protect against future cyber threats and prevent economic losses.
Meanwhile, the University of Nottingham will develop next-generation lithium-sulphur batteries designed to endure hundreds of charging cycles without losing energy, potentially transforming electrification of transport and helping to achieve net zero targets.
A flagship scheme
Since 2017, when the initiative was launched, 100 Prosperity Partnerships have received a total share of more than £600 million from EPSRC, industry partners and research organisations.
Such partnerships have paved the way for new and exciting discoveries and innovations, for example the development of a fleet of zero-emissions buses across the UK through a partnership between Wrightbus and Queen’s University Belfast.
The scheme has also formed strong links between companies and universities, leading to further collaborations. A new project announced today between the University of Edinburgh and Rolls-Royce willdrive cleaner aviation, it builds on the success of a previous Prosperity Partnership, ASiMoV.
The new project takes ASiMoV’s research to build the world’s first complete gas-turbine simulation one step further with both physical and computational modelling.
Model-assisted, self-optimising unit operations for accelerated bioprocess optimisations
Led by Prof Dr Nicolas Szita, University College London
Business Partner: Dr Colin Jaques, Lonza
This project aims to make advanced, life-saving biopharmaceuticals (protein medicines) more widely available. Next generation biopharmaceuticals are becoming increasingly complex. More complex molecules are more difficult to produce. To bring new discoveries of such complex molecules to the patient requires careful evaluation and optimisation of the manufacturing process. To achieve this goal, Lonza and UCL Biochemical Engineering will together harness advances in three technology areas and create a novel approach for biomanufacturing optimisation. They will combine microfluidics, a technology capable of finely controlling small liquid volumes, with advanced analytical methods and artificial intelligence to rapidly find the optimal conditions for biomanufacturing of any given new biopharmaceutical. Overall, the project aims to enable the delivery of new medicines to patients quicker, more cost-effectively and sustainably.
These partnerships show the range of real-world challenges the UK’s world-class research base is helping to tackle – from cutting carbon emissions in heavy transport, to improving access to life-saving medicines.
By backing scientists to work hand-in-hand with industry, we’re combining cutting-edge research with business expertise to turn science into practical solutions that can make a difference in people’s daily lives.
