College of Science & Engineering

The College Research and Business Development team, along with the Research Strategy and Innovation Office (RSIO) can provide support to:

• help you engage with industry
• advise on seeking relevant research funding
• identifying potential partners
• exploiting the outputs from research projects in partnership with industry or other stakeholders. 

The College Research and Business Development team also promote details of the various mechanisms and opportunities to help you engage.

Please make contact at an early stage to share your ideas and requirements.

If you have an external partner who wants to work with you speak to your business development manager who will advise the next steps, help you get costings/contracts initiated. The information in this toolkit and the contacts at the end will help you navigate.

Working with external partners can be hugely rewarding by:

• helping to develop an understanding of real world problems
• identifying new academic challenges
• leading the development of impact that tackles the most pressing challenges facing local and global society. 

Developing a strong network of partners puts you in a position to strengthen funding proposals with letters of support or commitments in cash or kind. Through your partners you may gain access to expertise, facilities or data which is increasingly required for successful grant proposals and allows you to move swiftly when opportunities arise (e.g. funding calls which have to be led by an industrial partner).

Research impact

Impact is simply a real world benefit that arises from research, for example the research may improve the operating efficiency of a business resulting in competitive advantage to the UK or lead to social benefits by influencing Government policy or enhancing healthcare.

Research funders place an increasing importance on the delivery of Impact, so even if you don’t plan to carry out industrially applied research you do need to consider Impact when applying for funding.

When you have external partners interested in your research and willing to contribute time and effort to engaging with you then the Pathways to Impact section can be much easier to write.

By integrating Impact development with the research programme you can strengthen the credibility of the proposal.

Research Excellence Framework (REF)

Impact REF is an exercise in which the UK Government makes an assessment of the quality of research carried out in UK Universities. The exercise has significant financial and reputational consequences for the University.

An important element, of REF, is the assessment of impact case studies.

By developing strong external links, you may reach the point where one or more of these partners will utilise your research outputs to:

• make a better or cheaper product
• reduce their costs or environmental impact
• change policy.

In this situation the University will be interested in working with you to gather the evidence of the Impact that this has so that we can create an Impact Case Study for the Research Excellence Framework. Examples of impact case studies can be found on the James Watt School of Engineering website's Impact Cases page and the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences REF2021 page.

So, whether your research is applied or blue sky – having an external partner or a strong network is going to benefit your research and your career.

There are many different ways that you can work with external organisations and the engagement can range from low level commitment from the company or organisation (providing advice and guidance), up to Contract Research where they may fund a full research programme within the University. Examples include:

Student Projects

Student projects are an excellent way to develop relationships with external organisations who may be new to University research. It also provides more real life projects and challenges for the students. For a company, it’s a great way to gain access to new ideas, expertise, and capability via the student and their academic supervisor. This approach has the added benefit of allowing the student and the company to consider if there may be future employment opportunities. Speak early to partners to find out if they might have topics for student projects to enable you to build it into the planning process.

Industrial Studentships

By sponsoring a studentship an external partner can specify a PhD topic and work with the student and academic supervisor to access basic research outcomes relevant to their business. Studentships allow you to develop strong relationships with industry which will hopefully lead to longer-term, higher value projects.

The College of Science and Engineering has a 50%/50% industrial studentship scheme – if your industry partner is willing to fund 50% then an application can be made to the college to seek matched funding. Speak to the Research and Business Development team if you have a potential project.

Collaborative research

Working with external partners opens up new research challenges and these organisations can benefit from extensive and ongoing input to the research process. You can also offer such partners access to world-class research expertise and facilities. Jointly we can seek external research funding from organisations such as; Innovate UK, European Commission, Ministry of Defence and Research Councils.

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships are undertaken with a collaborative partner, often from industry. They must identify a strategic challenge they wish to address and the academic can help address. A KTP Associate, e.g. a recently qualified graduate, will work with you, but spend much of their time based within the business to manage the project and apply their own knowledge.

The West of Scotland KTP Centre will advise if projects are eligible and work with partnerships to develop applications. The KTP scheme is based around calls based on the Innovate UK priority themes, deadlines are the same as the Innovate UK Deadlines. If you’re interested in discussing KTPs please contact Gordon Meiklejohn in RSIO.

Strategic partnerships

The ideal situation is when the University can have strategic partnerships with external partners. These are long term mutually beneficial relationships that deliver research and commercial synergy that neither partner could achieve alone. In many instances, dedicated research laboratories can be established which would significantly extend the capabilities of the industrial partner. These take a significant amount of time and effort to create and maintain.

When planning to engage with a potential external partner, consider the following:

• Expectations: what do you each expect to get out of the relationship? Consider timeframes and areas of mutual interest.
• Intellectual Property: who will own the outputs from your collaboration? Could this relationship prevent you working with other organisations?
• Publishing: will you have freedom to publish? Do you need to give your partner the opportunity to review papers? Could you develop joint publications
• Resources: who is going to carry out any research activity? Can you do it yourself? Do you need to employ someone? If it’s a short term project is it feasible to employ an RA? Do you have students who might be interested in gaining some industrial experience?
• Management: How will your collaboration operate? Will you meet regularly, face to face? How will you review and assess progress?
• Reputation: does the external partner have a positive or negative reputation – how might this affect your own profile?

When engaging with a potential external partner, share details of what you hope to gain from partnering with them. This might include their:

• time
• knowledge
• feedback
• facilities
• networks
• training opportunities for your students/staff
• their potential to create Impact.

You should also mention the potential benefits of involvement for them. This might include:

• first sight of new research?
• option to licence technology
• access to highly skilled staff
• solving a challenge they have identified
• hosting them/some of their staff
• training opportunities for them.

It will likely take several conversations to get to a point where you can ask a potential partner organisation to provide a letter of support for your project, get involved with your project or contribute to shaping the project (co-design).

Useful resources

• Guidance for letters of support from EPSRC and STFC
• Presentation on writing letters of support from ECDP
• Guidance for embedding impact in EPSRC proposals (requires vpn)
• Introduction to Working with the University (slide deck)

Often it can be helpful to pump-prime a new relationship to demonstrate commitment to the aims, and to generate results that may convince the partner to support the activities to the next stage. The following funds and mechanisms support this type of engagement.

• University of Glasgow Knowledge Exchange Fund
• Impact Acceleration Accounts (IAA)
• ESPRC IAA
• Consultancy
• Contract research
• Innovation Vouchers
• “Proof of Concept” type awards
• Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund
• Innovate UK

University of Glasgow Knowledge Exchange Fund

The University’s KE Fund supports high-quality knowledge exchange activities and impact generation across the University. It supports groups and individuals capable of influencing and creating impact.

Eligible activities include: secondments between the University and a non-academic partner, activities to turn research outputs into a commercial proposition, market and commercial assessments or surveys; building prototypes or demonstrators; application-focused feasibility projects; proof-of-concept work, support for engagement with policy-makers, other user communities or the general public in order to generate impact. The fund will cover staff buy-out, Fellowships and Internships to work on specific KE projects, and will support engagement activities with non-academic organisations to sow the seeds of new collaborations and more strategic engagement. The KE fund will also support training and Networking activities. Projects will normally last 1-3 months with a funding allocation of up to £30k.For more information click here.

Contact: Speak to a Business Development Manager

Impact Acceleration Accounts (IAA)

The University holds a number of IAAs from the Research Councils; the EPSRC account will be of primary interest to the College of Science and Engineering, but there are also BBSRC and ESRC accounts. Further information on IAA can be found here.

ESPRC IAA

The EPSRC-funded IAA supports a range of Knowledge Exchange interventions with a focus on small-scale investments that pump-prime wider KE activities and impact generation. Support from the IAA allows you to engage with partners in a number of ways, e.g. it can support collaborative research projects, secondments, small scale feasibility studies and network development.  Projects must be based on previous EPSRC funded research.

Further details can be found here. 

Contact: Lynne McCorriston, CoSE

Consultancy

Often external partners would like to access academic knowledge and expertise. As an academic member of staff you are entitled to engage in up to 30 days consultancy per year – with the approval of your Head of School. Consultancy is different from research as you will not generate new Intellectual Property. From any consultancy project the first £5k is returned to the academic in full (taking tax/NI into account). Above £5k 20% will be deducted by the college. Multiple consultancy projects at <£5k cannot be undertaken in any one year with the same company.

Charging for consultancy: There is no fixed rate. You should speak to the contracts managers in the Research Support office to generate a costing and discuss relevant agreements for the activity.

The University’s consultancy policy can be viewed here.

Contract research

The University’s expertise and facilities cover a wide range of disciplines allowing us to offer you unique, inter-disciplinary solutions to satisfy research requirements. Contract research services are tailored to meet the specific needs of individual organisations; projects are managed with the fullest attention to client organisation's timescale and budget.

Our wide ranging experience includes working with international blue chip companies from many sectors.

Innovation Vouchers

£5k Vouchers are available to Scottish based companies to work with academics on activities such as: problem solving, proof of concept and technology demonstration (sometimes follow on funding of up to £20k is available but must be matched with a financial contribution from the company. This support helps to create long-term collaborations between SMEs and the University of Glasgow. Priority is given to projects that assess both the feasibility and potential of a new product, process or market and can lead to opportunities to attract follow-on funding.

Opportunities for such projects come in via Interface a central hub connecting organisations from a wide variety of national and international industries to Scotland's 23 higher education and research institutes.

“Proof of Concept” type awards – available from most UK research councils to those who have already held RCUK funding. The awards fund technology development from early stages (low technology readiness TRL 1-4) toward a demonstrator/ prototype. NERC offer both PATHFINDER (feasibility/market study type projects) and Proof of concept

STFC offers a CLASP award while the MRC Confidence in Concept (MRC-CiC scheme) is focussed on healthcare application of technology and is often in collaboration with NHS Trusts

Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund

The Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund was created to provide funding and support to UK businesses and researchers, part of the government’s £4.7 billion increase in research and development over the next 4 years. …more 

Innovate UK

Innovate UK funds and connects business-led innovation.  Universities can be partners on Innovate UK funded projects in the following areas:                                     

• Emerging and Enabling Technologies
• Health and Life Sciences
• Infrastructure Systems
• Manufacturing and Materials
• Open Programme

There are many benefits to commercialising your research:

• The practical application of your work
• Develop technology to its full potential
• Wider recognition of your research
• Forging collaborative partnerships
• Gaining financial sponsorship/support
• Revenue Sharing
• Recognition for KE activity within University PDR and promotion process

Commercialising your research provides many benefits for the University:

• Public good & benefit to society
• Evidence of research success & Impact – REF!
• Raise institutional profile
• Economic benefits – local/ global
• Revenue stream

The routes to commercialise your research are via Licensing or Spin-out.

Spinout and Start-up Funding

The CONVERGE Challenge®

National Business plan competition open to all Scottish University staff & students, offers a prize fund of >£100K for research to develop a business opportunity (spinout or start up). The Challenge provides dedicated training on business planning, IPR, Finance & teambuilding and runs February through September annually.

Royal Society of Edinburgh Enterprise Fellowship

Enterprise fellowship are 12 month, fully funded posts where a researcher (hosted by their University) has the opportunity to develop a research idea towards a commercial goal (a Spinout/ Start-up company). Application dates are November & May and any application must be approved by RSIO and the relevant Head of School.

Overview

By law, the University owns the Intellectual property (IP) generated by its employees in the course of their normal duties. However, often projects with external partners will be subject to different terms. For example, agreements could be put in place to reflect that:

• a company fully funds a project to develop a new product based on existing IP so wishes to own the foreground IP developed in the new project
• a company funds an industrial studentship so wishes to own the foreground IP.

The University does not automatically own intellectual property developed by students. Students will generally own the IP they develop during the course of their studies unless ownership is governed in some way by a third party agreement (e.g. through research contracts, studentships and funding agreements).

Invention disclosure

If you think you have invented something, please complete the Invention Disclosure Form which will be submitted to RSIO and you will be contacted to discuss the project/invention.

Licensing

By licensing your research, the University will provide a company or organisation with the right to use your research outputs/device/method in the course of their activities. An agreement will be drawn up that states what return you/the University will receive. After deducting costs incurred by the University, the University will share all income with the inventors. The distribution policy is as follows:

In some cases we will offer companies a ‘free’ licence under our EasyAccess IP program with the only commitment that they seek to exploit the technology within a three-year period. This supports impact creation for IP that might not be considered high value.

Spin-out Creation

Creating a spin-out company provides you with a vehicle to commercialise your research if there isn’t an existing channel to get your outputs to market. The University supports entrepreneurship and the creation of spin-out companies via the IP & Commercialisation team in RSIO in partnership with the venture capital company IP Group plc. Our partnership with IP Group plc. provides access to expert advice in business creation, growth and seed investment funding. If the group declines an opportunity or does not wish to invest then the University is free to seek investment elsewhere.

For all spin-out ventures, the founding equity is shared between employees and the University before any funds are invested into the business. The founding equity share is as follows:

More information

To find out more about Intellectual Property and Commercialisation visit the Research Strategy and Innovation Office's webpages, including:

• IP & Commercialisation
• Information for inventors
• Intellectual Property Management