Tue, 01 March, 2022
TWI group manager for public funding management, Heidi Dyson has been overseeing the preparations for the upcoming R4i Conference and Exhibition. With her knowledge of the event, its aims, and what it offers to attendees, we took some time to find out more about R4i, project funding, and why you might want to register to join us on the 7-8 April.
Hi Heidi, can you start by letting us know what your role at TWI entails?
In my role as group manager for public funding management, I oversee the delivery of projects funded by public money from negotiation, to delivery and audit. We work closely with our colleagues from the technology innovation management team and the technology groups to ensure we deliver projects that are financially and contractually sound and, most importantly, have a record of project results.
You have been involved in a number of collaborative projects at TWI, what do these projects offer to those involved?
We pride ourselves in ensuring we contribute positively to the innovation outputs of the projects using the technical expertise we have at TWI, but also use our global network to disseminate the work projects deliver. In addition, we have the opportunity to highlight our SMEs’ work and capture the importance of the innovation to everyone involved, including providing understanding of the work to our end users.
The funding and support we get from funding bodies leverages the research aspirations of TWI and our collaborators. Without the funding, our ability to support our Members in their roadmaps and contribute our expertise in the creation of game changing innovation would not be possible. Time is of the essence to ensure the global challenges are addressed in a timely manner.
As for R4i, why was it decided to hold this event and what does it offer attendees?
The recent pandemic has challenged public funded management to make sure the work delivered using public monies makes a difference. We need new ways to ensure continuity of our work and see the amazing results we have seen through the years reach a wider audience. We want awareness of our work to reach TWI Members and our global network. This is what we promised our stakeholders – to make our work matter in their own roadmaps and also allow our collaborative partners’ work to reach a global market more effectively and efficiently, using TWI’s dissemination and exploitation specialists and tools.
This event is a game changer for TWI – the innovation and skills directorate under Professor Tat-Hean Gan are consciously making every effort to take our innovations to market. We want our technology groups’ and our collaborators’ work to see the market each project has intended to serve.
Can you tell us a bit more about the line-up of presenters at R4i?
As each collaborative project has its own story to tell, the R4i event also tells our stakeholders a story.
TWI’s Council chair, Humbert Mozzi, and Research Board chair, Simon Webster, are showing their support to this event by sharing their vision as to why they continue to contribute their time and expertise to TWI, its membership and other stakeholders. Our chief executive, Aamir Khalid, and innovation and skills director, Tat-Hean Gan will expand on the corporate plans and the ambition of TWI post Covid.
We are joined by our innovation centres, represented by Geoff Rodgers, vice provost – research, Brunel University. Geoff will talk about the importance of the research coming from innovation centres whose aim is to bridge the gap between academia and industry through collaborations with TWI Ltd.
Different to our usual events is the presence of venture capitalists (VC), accelerator and innovation hub. We have asked our VCs, Ashley Head and Tom Onions to also have a Q&A session on day two to help TWI staff and project collaborators understand the requirements of taking products to market and scaling up. Carbon13, a Cambridge venture builder will be looking into the public funded portfolio to help serve their mission of reducing CO2 emissions, with Dr Chris Coleridge, founder and CEO of Carbon13 sharing his insights on their important work. The St John’s Innovation Centre, one of the foremost incubation units in Cambridge, will be represented by managing director David Gill, who will share the journey of start-ups as they venture into scaling up. We will have a representative number of projects from the 30-plus we will be highlighting that are ripe for the next step to give the audience an idea of what has been developed and how they can impact the sectors they have aspired to serve. These will be featured in future releases and in materials supporting the event.
We must not forget that, on day two, as well as the Q & A with our VCs, we will also have a presentation on the Horizon Results Booster HRB, an EC programme that provides the tools to help take projects to market. TWI has been prominent in this space, thanks to the hard work of Dr Namrata Kale in promoting her portfolio or projects using the HRB medium. Another valuable contribution for the attendees is a briefing on Horizon Europe and Innovate UK programmes – making these easy to understand and show how the participants’ innovation may fit with these.
As well as the presentations, there are a number of brokerage opportunities – can you tell us what these are designed to offer?
We wanted to take this opportunity to introduce our network to the good work of our public funding experts, who are often the first port of call when engaging with TWI and our innovation network. We have representatives from the technology innovation management (TIM) and our technology group funding experts who will be available to have face-to-face meetings with event participants in order to work on potential collaboration. We will be sharing their profiles with the participants and indeed the public in case they want to meet with our colleagues who will help write the proposals.
Thanks for your time –but before you go - is there anything more you would like to add?
TWI very much look forward to bringing together the research community at this event to show each other what we can do and contribute, ensuring we have good innovation coming out of our organisations in order to solve global problems but also, as said, taking products from publicly funded projects through to market. We want to ensure we create a positive impact for meeting global challenges.
We look forward to welcoming you to this game changing event – and may it be the first of many in years to come!
You can register to join us at the Research for Impact event, here.