Scotland announces 8th round winners of proof of concept scheme

The development agency Scottish Enterprise announced the winners of the eighth round of funding under its proof of concept scheme, which provides support for university technologies that have the potential to form the basis of spin out companies, or be outlicensed.

Each project awarded support has to demonstrate the quality of the research idea and the market demand for the resulting product or service.

The latest grants have gone to a range of sectors. In Life Sciences the winning projects are:

• A range of inexpensive skin patch solar UV indicators which show a colour change when the wearer is about to sunburn, under development by Strathclyde University
• A non-invasive way of monitoring patients' health without taking blood samples, leading to better patient monitoring on the ward or at home, also a Strathclyde University project
• A process to allow tissue metabolic activity to be determined using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for the first time, which will help diagnose and treat a range of clinical conditions such as stroke, heart attack, cancer and epilepsy. This project is based on research carried out by the Greater Glasgow Health Board.

In electronics Edinburgh University won an award for the further development of spoken dialogue software tools which make it easier for businesses, such as call centres, to develop more natural, flexible automated conversations with customers.

Edinburgh University was also awarded money for the further development of a process that cleans and treats seawater and groundwater water, using renewable energy from the sun or wind.  The process will also remove inorganic pollutants such as arsenic, fluoride, uranium, nitrate and other toxic compounds

The five projects have been awarded funding of just over GBP1 million, following feasibility studies to ensure that the commercial opportunities for each project are maximised.

These are the final five projects to be awarded support in round 8 of the programme.  In total, 21 projects have been awarded GBP 4.4 million of funding in this round.

The programme was set up in 1999, to address the lack of funding, from both the public and private sectors, to support the development of research concepts into commercial products or services. To date GBP 38.76 million has been invested in 206 projects.

Since 1999, 206 projects have been supported, resulting in 40 spin out companies and 38 licencing deals, creating over 500 jobs, and pulling in a further GBP 210 million of public and private investment.