ImpactQM project launches

Date: Monday 16 November 2009

Time: 3pm onwards

Venue: The Octagon, Mile End Campus

ImpactQM, Queen Mary, University of London’s ground-breaking new knowledge transfer project, has been formally launched today (Monday 16 November 2009).

With funding of nearly £3m from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) over three years, ImpactQM aims to create a new generation of science and engineering professional – one who is equally at home in both academia and in industry.

The launch event focussed some of the key issues surrounding knowledge exchange and impact in research today. Speakers included Professor Adrian Smith, Director General of Science and Research (BIS), and Professor David Delpy, Chief Executive of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

ImpactQM will link early career researchers with selected industry partners, allowing them to work on projects which transfer Queen Mary’s leading edge EPSRC funded research into business, exploiting our existing strengths in materials, electronic and mechanical engineering, and computer science.

In turn, the early career researchers will be mentored in the skills required to transfer research into economic impact for the UK, leading to a new breed of researcher with both the technical and business abilities to succeed in an increasingly competitive environment.

Professor Adrian Smith, Director General of Science and Research, added: “We need to explore longer-term, more strategic ways of linking universities to industry and government, and ImpactQM is an excellent example of how that can be done.”

Other speakers at the launch event included Dr Lincoln Wallen, Chief Technology Officer at Dreamworks Animation; Professor Christopher M Bishop, Chief Research Scientist at Microsoft Research; and Professor Peter Grindrod, Mathematician and Entrepreneur.

ImpactQM Project Director, Professor Ursula Martin, added: “We hope ImpactQM will make a fundamental difference to the way universities, government and companies look at the impact of world-class science and technology research.”

 

For media information, contact:

Siân Halkyard
Acting Head of Communications
Queen Mary, University of London
email: s.halkyard@qmul.ac.uk

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Notes to Editors

Queen Mary, University of London is one of the UK's leading research-focused higher education institutions with some 15,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Amongst the largest of the colleges of the University of London, Queen Mary’s 3,000 staff deliver world class degree programmes and research across 21 academic departments and institutes, within three sectors: Science and Engineering; Humanities, Social Sciences and Laws; and the School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Queen Mary is ranked 11th in the UK according to the Guardian analysis of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, and has been described as ‘the biggest star among the research-intensive institutions’ by the Times Higher Education.

The College has a strong international reputation, with around 20 per cent of students coming from over 100 countries.

Queen Mary has an annual turnover of £220 million, research income worth £61 million, and generates employment and output worth £600 million to the UK economy each year.

Queen Mary, as a member of the 1994 Group of research-focused universities, has made a strategic commitment to the highest quality of research, but also to the best possible educational, cultural and social experience for its students. The College is unique amongst London's universities in being able to offer a completely integrated residential campus, with a 2,000-bed award-winning Student Village on its Mile End campus.