£18million Funding Announced for Innovative Technologies

Businesses across the UK are being invited to compete for support to develop innovative technologies that could create new growth areas for the UK economy.

The Technology Strategy Board competition will seek to identify and award up to £18m funding to the most innovative businesses, in order to keep the UK at the forefront of modern technology and enhance quality of life.

The call opens on October 12th 2010. Collaborative applications are sought from a wide range of technology areas where the UK has considerable strengths. The Technology Strategy Board are particularly keen to hear from organisations with ideas for ’enabling technologies’, i.e. ones that can lead to the creation of other products and processes that support future development.

Of particular interest to ESP KTN members will be the following technology areas covered by this call:

• Data and image acquisition - developing systems based on sensing and imaging capabilities including location sensing, location services and synchronisation, item tracking, sensors and sensor networks;

• Control systems and power engineering - reducing electricity consumption in the built environment, industrial processes or transport including lighting, photovoltaics, power conversion and management; and

• Systems design and integration - embedded systems, robotics and autonomous systems, and verification and testing of computing system designs including industrial lasers.

The Technology Strategy Board are primarily looking to fund applied research projects attracting 50% public funding, investing between £250k and £500k in each project. Projects will normally last two to three years and should deliver a tangible outcome such as a system or process demonstrator.

An optional briefing will be held in London on 20 October 2010. Helpline 0300 321 4357 competitions@tsb.gov.uk