Chemistry wins prize for Industrial Collaboration

The Department of Chemistry has been awarded first prize in the prestigious 1996 Office of Science and Technology (OST) Competition for Industry/Academe Research Collaboration. The result of the competition was announced by Ian Taylor, MBE, Minister for Science and Technology, during Science Engineering Technology Week.

The object of this Competition has been to encourage growth in research collaboration between industry and commerce and university departments, by rewarding departments judged as having been most successful at building collaborative links, in this case, in the year to July 31, 1996. It represents the continuation of initiatives and policies started by the 1993 White Paper 'Realising Our Potential', which emphasised the need to forge stronger partnerships between industry, science and engineers, with the aim of improving the quality of life and furthering wealth creation.

The Chemistry Department, which incorporates inorganic, organic and physical chemistry, the Leverhulme Centre for Innovative Catalysis and 50% of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre (IRC) in Surface Science (shared jointly with Physics), had an extremely successful academic year in 1995-96 during which total basic/strategic research income increased from £2.62M (July 1995) to £3.84M (July 1996). Most of the increase resulted from a concerted approach to industrial concerns which raised the respective industrial contribution to the total income from £0.20M to £1.19M. It was in recognition of the strategy adopted for increased industrial collaboration, the research context and the financial outcome, that the panel of judges, which included Sir John Cadogan (Chief Scientist, DTI) and Sir Robert May (Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government) and senior industrialists, selected the Department of Chemistry from a very strong field of entries, as the winning candidate. A prerequisite of the award, which is worth £35,000, is that it should be used for investment in infrastructure.