Links with business and industry
The Shell effect
Whilst research on biofuels was already happening at the University in the School of Biosciences, a recent grant from Royal Dutch Shell plc (“Shell”) has given it a major boost.
The funding has enabled the University to conduct a major three-year project investigating the potential for microscopic algae and bacteria to become a viable source of biofuels in the future. Led by Dr John Love, Senior Lecturer in Plant Molecular Biology, the project involves a team of twenty and the Shell funding is supporting five PhD students. Dr John Love said: “We already know that algae have potential to produce biofuels. What we are now doing is investigating how they do it at the molecular level, to increase the yields and efficiency of biofuel production.”
Professor Nick Talbot, Head of the University of Exeter’s School of Biosciences said: “This is a major opportunity for the University and allows us to carry out really cutting-edge research in the sustainable production of biofuels from non-food organisms. The University is investing £80 million in science and is focused on world-class research that will have real benefits to society. This is one of our biggest research projects and we are delighted that Shell is supporting us in this way.”
Attomarker aims high
The scientific challenges facing society today include the need for a greater understanding of complex systems such as the human body and in this case, the immune system. Attomarker Ltd is seeking to develop a low-cost, robust instrument, for use in a GP’s surgery that can measure up to 100 components of whole blood in 15 minutes.
The vision is that one day a patient will be able to go to the GP, give a small blood sample and, whilst the GP is assessing their symptoms, a series of tests will make a diagnosis, providing a dynamic profile of the immune system. The impact on society could be enormous; the test could tell precisely which antibiotic to use and whether the immune system is ready to fight an infection. The test results may also help in screening for chronic diseases such as Alzheimer’s or MS or provide information on the health of patients who are unconscious.
Attomarker is a spin-out company from the University formed last year and is based in the University’s Innovation Centre. It has recently been awarded a £62,000 grant by the South West Regional Development Agency (SWRDA) to develop this area of research further.
Spatial awareness
Research at Exeter goes as far as finding out what really makes business tick. Prism, a research group led by the University and supported by government and business partners, uses psychology, business planning and organisational change to answer some of the fundamental questions surrounding workspace.
The group’s research has found that people who are able to express something of their own identity by contributing to the design of their own workspace perform faster and report being more content. This translates into real business benefits, with up to a 32% increase in productivity.
This research originated as a PhD and this led to the formation of the company, based in the Innovation Centre. Dr Craig Knight, managing director of Prism comments, “Our work attempts to develop an optimal model of space management with widespread uses and applications. Our goal is to make the provision of a psychologically rewarding environment an economic necessity, not just a ‘nice to have’ luxury. We are therefore very keen to forge links with organisations that can see the benefits and opportunities created by our approach.”
Short Term Conflict Alert (STCA)
Short Term Conflict Alert (STCA) systems are used to alert air-traffic controllers to dangerous potential airspace conflicts. The NATS STCA system, covering the busy London terminal airspace, handles over 3,000 aircraft per day. It is crucial that the system raises genuine alerts, but also important to minimise the number of nuisance alerts to avoid crying wolf too often.
The STCA program is a vastly complicated predictive model with more than 1,500 adjustable parameters, which are currently tuned manually. Dr Richard Everson and a team of researchers have developed evolutionary multi-objective optimisation algorithms to locate the Pareto front, the curve that describes the optimal trade-off between genuine and nuisance alerts, allowing NATS to choose the best compromise. These methods are currently being implemented throughout UK air traffic control centres as part of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership with NATS.
Environmentally friendly biodiesel
Researchers from the Camborne School of Mines, have been testing the first commercial fishing boat to run on environmentally friendly bio-diesel made from vegetable oil. The 30-foot fishing vessel, named Ma Gandole, has been successfully operating off the coast of Newlyn over the summer. Biofuel could be made available for commercial fishing vessels around the world, significantly reducing overall carbon dioxide emissions as well as reducing other sulphur emissions to zero. One of the aims of the project is to determine whether biodiesel can be used as a direct substitute for red diesel in fishing boats without the need for modifications to the engine or fuel system.
