An interesting set of deals bring together major companies and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in a new model for academic/industry collaboration.
Procter & Gamble and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council have signed a five-year agreement "to jointly fund research in the areas of process engineering, physical and synthetic chemistry, and materials and their properties".
The deal is worth £4 million. Half from each partner, albeit that some of P&G's contribution may be "in kind".
This continues EPSRC's development of a new model for working with industry. It takes university/industry links on to a new level, beyond simple researcher/company collaboration.
Several major companies, such as Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, have already moved away from multitudinous small projects with academic groups scattered all over the country to more focused links, with larger lumps of money and bigger research programmes. This new model takes the process further up the food chain, in helping to set research priorities in the first place.
The P&G collaboration is the fourth such arrangement for EPSRC. It started off in 2003 with BAE Systems (£30 million over five years). Then came Philips with "a £6m agreement to fund research and training in biomedical technology".
The latest deal is with E.ON UK for a "£10m low carbon university research programme". In this case, the five-year programme was developed with support from four partner universities that already have expertise in low carbon research – Loughborough University, University of Nottingham, University of Birmingham and Imperial College, London.
You can get some idea of the areas that the research will cover in the P&G collaboration from the link to the EPSRC's Current Calls For Proposals. This tells us that there will be projects in the areas of;
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nano-fluid behaviour and control.
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botanical extracts
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the characterisation, modification and mathematical modelling of sudsing systems.
The announcement of the arrangement quotes Charles Bragg, P&G's Director of R&D at the Newcastle Technical Centre as saying: "Our goal is to now source at least 50% of all our new ideas externally. It's therefore a great pleasure to announce this important strategic partnership with the EPSRC."
At the Research Council end of the equation, the move appears to be a response to government pressure to deliver more genuine innovation from research. The announcement quotes Alicia Greated, EPSRC's Engineering Programme Manager, as saying that the deal "aligns with the aspirations set out by the Government in the Science and Innovation Investment Framework 2004-2014 to raise the profile of the UK knowledge base and increase knowledge transfer".
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