Science partners
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Research networks span the globe connecting many different partners. Read how London is forging innovative scientific partnerships.
As the emerging superpowers of India and China begin to play more prominent and active roles on the world economic stage, new academic relationships are developing.
Rather than being low-cost locations for Western companies to manufacture goods, this new model enables Indian and Chinese scientists and researchers to take part in technological advances as equal partners, forming commercial and academic partnerships that extend far beyond the scope of previous collaborations.
Innovation China UK (ICUK) is a pioneering partnership between five British and 20 Chinese higher education institutions, led by Queen Mary, University of London.
The partnership supports academic and business links between institutions across the UK and China. “We see scientists from China and the UK actively exchanging their knowledge and ideas,” said Manyi Cristofoli, executive director of ICUK.
Alongside Queen Mary, King's College London and the Royal Veterinary College, University of London are helping to support research in energy, climate change, infectious diseases, biomedicine, drug discovery, nanotechnology, material science and space technology.
Research projects funded under the scheme include some highly topical subjects. One project is looking at the causes of earthquakes and how we can better understand and prepare for them.
Members from the Beijing Olympics team also visited the King's College Drugs Control Laboratory this year as part of its efforts to keep the games free of drugs cheats.
Similar collaborations have been forged between individual London universities and institutions around the world.
University College London and Imperial College London's joint venture, the London Centre for Nanotechnology, has recently linked up with a major centre in Japan, the National Institute for Materials Science.
Research is underway to develop innovative solutions to problems in information processing, healthcare, energy and the environment.
Spin-out companies, formed in universities to commercialise scientific breakthrough technologies, are also benefiting from international partnerships.
The biopharmaceutical company Lipoxen was spun out from the School of Pharmacy, aided by a €100,000 payment from the Schering-Plough Corporation in the US, to develop sustained release insulin for the veterinary health market.
In India there is a growing focus on the importance of intellectual property rights and how the country can benefit from strengthening these as it develops export markets for its technological and scientific innovations.
Collaborations such as i2India, part of Imperial College London's Imperial Innovations, aims to create commercial value from intellectual property in India.
The organisation is working with the Confederation of Indian Industry to offer services to Indian companies and help transfer knowledge from London to India as part of a growing pattern of fruitful collaboration.
In a world ever more connected, where knowledge can be shared at the click of a mouse, these kinds of partnerships are increasingly important and offer the prospect of long term benefits on all sides.
Posted: Tuesday 9 February 2010