Innovation Challenge Knowledge Exchange School 2014

Nesta innovation grants

Saturday May 10th to Wednesday May 14th
The Work Foundation, St.James’, London

Knowledge exchange is increasingly a central part of research projects in all disciplines and is playing an ever greater role in the assessment of academic research. Familiarity with, and experience of, knowledge exchange techniques has become crucial to the development of successful research careers both within the university sector and in the world of commercially focussed research.

This school is for post-graduate research students seeking to raise their awareness of knowledge exchange, team work and approaches to innovation in preparation for post-doctoral work.  It is run by Lancaster University in partnership with The Work Foundation and brings together early-career academic researchers with partners from both private and non-profit sectors to work on real-world innovation challenges. It is based on the successful Enterprise School model; as one of our participants put it after the last School: it ‘can absolutely change your way of thinking, approaching life and progress your career’.

Working with tutors and mentors from Lancaster University and The Work Foundation’s partners alongside independent experts, participants will be introduced to a series of key, applied knowledge exchange skills used widely in the business sector. The programme offers the opportunity to develop experience project based teamwork, and skills that will serve students well during their research as well as helping their post-doctoral career development (be it in academia or in another sector).

Working with Astute Radio (a young Internet media company) and a group of The Work Foundation’s network partners from various sectors, teams will deploy and develop these approaches to work on innovation challenges set by the partners and reflecting real-world issues confronted by these various organisations.

The school is hosted by the Work Foundation in London St.James’ and includes hotel accommodation nearby and all necessary refreshments/meals as part of the package.

Cost: the programme costs £600 per student

 For an application form please email J.a.beech@staffs.ac.uk

 

 

HEIF call open

HEIF logo

Enterprise and Commercial Development have opened a call for Continuous Improvement projects under our Higher Education Innovation Funding programme.  The ‘Continuous Improvement’ themed call is designed to support innovative projects, collaborations with companies and cross faculty working.

For this call we are inviting applications for projects in the areas of Energy/Low Carbon and Health and wellbeing. Applications can be submitted from the 27th Jan – 28th Feb 2013.

Please contact Alex Harvey, HEIF Project Manager for an application pack via A.Harvey@staffs.ac.uk.

 

Staffordshire University HEIF mid term review

HEIF logo

We are now two years into our HEIF programme and a lot has happened. So I thought it would be useful to provide some high level  figures on the activity that has taken place from Aug 2011- July 2013. Please find attached a document demonstrating the outputs achieved to date. View here: HEIF mid term review – External Copy (Nov 2013)

Alex Harvey, HEIF Programme Manager

HEFCE has announced funding allocations for 2013-14

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) will allocate £4.47 billion to 129 universities and higher education colleges and 203 further education colleges for the academic year 2013-14.

This funding is allocated for the following key areas and activities:

  • £2.3 billion for teaching
  • £1.6 billion for research
  • £160 million for knowledge exchange
  • £280 million in capital grants
  • £149 million in special funding.

Further details are given in ‘Recurrent grants and student number controls for 2013-14’ (HEFCE 2013/05).  The ring-fenced settlement for science and research means that HEFCE can maintain overall levels for research and knowledge exchange funding until 2014-15.