Cambridge-MIT spins out comms network

The move comes just before the institute's £65.1 million UK government grant runs out at the end of September. Set up as a joint venture between the University of Cambridge and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000, the institute’s grant was originally due to last five years, but it later agreed a one-year, no-cost extension of the whole programme with the Department of Trade and Industry. Another £16 million was to be raised from the private sector in the UK. The institute is owned jointly by the two universities.

The two-year-old Communications Research Network was turned into a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee and incorporated in England. That means the founding members own the company by right of their annual subscriptions rather than by holding shares, and their liability is limited to £1, Cambridge University spokeswoman Tamara Roukaerts said.

Both BT and Fujitsu will participate actively in CRN's working groups, where academic researchers and industry technologists collaborate on specific areas of interest. The current projects include critical infrastructure protection, telecoms for transport, spectrum, innovations in telecommunications, interconnection, photonics and core-edge dynamics.

Forum for the future

“The CRN is a forum for anyone interested in the future of communications,” said David Cleevely, CRN’s chairman. “Our multi-disciplinary, cross-sector approach and links with the world’s best research institutions leave us uniquely placed to offer our members an international overview of a global industry – a view that will help our members stay ahead of the game."

The funding for the Cambridge-MIT institute (CMI), set up to help create partnerships and relationships between the two institutions, as well as corporations and other parties of interest, will continue in a more limited way for another two years with an initial £1.5 million from the British government, according to William Lucas, deputy director of the CMI at MIT.

Despite spinning off some of its activity, Lucas claims the institute is a successful model of cooperation among academics, industry and others. "CMI has been encouraging the growth of collaboration between the two universities, but it was set up in a way to include corporations and other parties. The notion that communities of research can be pulled off with core funding is powerful," Lucas says. While both the United States and Europe have many collaborative research centers, "What's new here is the scope and scale of it.”

The CMI directed funding to more than 100 both educational and research projects, including the CRN. Earlier spin-outs include Praxis Courses Ltd., Cambridge, UK, which offers courses on technology transfer and which in late May won £100,000 of funding from the London Development Agency. Another is OrthoMimetics, also based in Cambridge, which recently was granted an exclusive license by CMI to commercialise medical device technology that will help reduce the need for joint replacement surgery. The company is now seeking Series A financing.

Collaborative model

Although the ultimate success of the CMI model may take a while to measure, Lucas points to one project he believes serves as a model for collaboration among researchers, corporations, policy groups to regulate aircraft, and the public: the Silent Aircraft Initiative launched in autumn 2003. The collaboration, he says, helped get technology tested earlier than would have been possible had academics only been involved.

The project involves developing technology that will decrease the noise of commercial aircraft, matching it to that to of the ambient urban environment. While noise reduction initially was focused on takeoff, the researchers also explored ways to slow down aircraft for landing more quietly. One option: making a steeper descent that would keep planes higher and out of earshot for a longer. Participants in the project include BAA, British Airways, the Civil Aviation Authority, Lochard, Marshall Aerospace, National Air Traffic Services, the Royal Aeronautical Society, Rolls-Royce and Boeing.

"This is an exemplar in bringing together various stakeholders. It would have taken years for academics to test changing the landing angle, but it took one year with industry, the pilots’ association and other parties," Lucas says. He adds that the "novel engineering design" created by the project is "more appropriate for industry to take forward now."