CWN - News & Information for Coventry & Warwickshire
[08
OCT 01] UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK NEWS
Warwick Uni Cash Boost For Work With Business
The University of Warwick has been awarded
£8 million as part of a £120 million government programme to
get UK universities working with business.
The awards have been made as part of the
Government's Knowledge Exploitation Funding programme,
comprising the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF), Science
Enterprise Challenge (SEC), University Challenge (UC), and the
Public Sector Research Exploitation Fund (PSRE Fund).
The main fund - HEIF - is aimed at
supporting the continuing development of the capacity in
universities to interact with business and the community.
Administered by the Higher Education Funding Council for
England, the fund builds on the existing Higher Education Reach
Out to Business and the Community fund.
Announcing the awards, Trade Secretary
Patricia Hewitt said:
"In the past we have failed to take
full advantage of the fact that the UK has some of the best
scientific and academic brains in the world. The Government is
committed to ensuring that 'invented in Britain' becomes 'made
in Britain'."
The £8 million for the University of
Warwick breaks down as follows:
£3,552,000 for the Mercia Spinner
project in which the University of Warwick will lead a
project to help spin out companies from new ideas from 8
Midlands universities (University of Central England,
Birmingham, Coventry, Aston Keele, Staffordshire, and
Wolverhampton universities)
£2,000,000 for Medici - a consortium
of Warwick, Birmingham, Aston, Leicester and Nottingham
universities (led by Birmingham) to encourage commercial
development of bioscience research
£530,845 for the Higher Education
Innovation Fund to provide additional staff to the
University of Warwick's Business and Regional Support Unit
and Warwick ventures organisation to build more links
between the University and business
£1,926,493 Science Enterprise
Challenge funding to expand the work of the University's
Mercia Institute of Enterprise. The Institute, led by the
University of Warwick, is a consortium of West Midlands
universities: Aston, Birmingham, Coventry, Keele,
Staffordshire, University of Central England in Birmingham (UCE),
Warwick and Wolverhampton, designed to create revolutionary
changes in attitudes to entrepreneurship and business
start-up within the region's universities.
