Technology Transfer - Collaboration with Industry
£7 million Drug Development Programme
In last year's Annual Report we reported on collaboration with pharmaceutical companies worth £3.5 million plus the launch of cancer therapy company, Cyclacel, with an initial investment of £3 million.
This year a £7 million collaboration agreement between research and industry aimed at creating new drugs to combat major diseases including cancer, heart disease and diabetes was concluded between the University, the Medical Research Council and five pharmaceutical companies. A new laboratory devoted to signal transduction research will be established in the Medical Sciences Institute. The 18 scientists working there will bring the number of researchers working in this field to over 100, reinforcing the University's reputation as a top European centre in this increasingly important area of research. The new laboratory will be jointly directed by Professor Sir Philip Cohen, Head of the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit and Professor Peter Downes, Head of the Inositol Lipid Signalling Laboratory. The researchers will identify and analyse key regulatory enzymes that control a number of functions in the body and this will help the pharmaceutical companies to produce compounds that could treat certain cancers, diabetes, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis.
New Fabrication Technique: Space Truss System
Another development, reported in a previous Annual Report, which has successfully progressed from research concept to commercial application is a radical new metal jointing system for roofing large-scale buildings. Developed by Dr Ahmed El-Sheikh of the Department of Civil Engineering the new construction method is not only stronger than conventional space trusses but about 50% cheaper. An impressive prototype has been completed and a licence agreement has been signed by the University with engineering specialists Technitube. The first application will be in the construction of an industrial building in Cumbria where the system will be incorporated into both roof and walls to withstand the high winds experienced there. After that a car park building in Saudi Arabia and a project in Malaysia are planned and other projects tendered for include the roofing of swimming pools and bridge access platforms.
Helping Non-speakers to Communicate
The Department of Applied Computing has a world-wide reputation for developing systems to help disabled people communicate. Its CHAT facility increases the rate of communication by a non-speaker from 10 words per minute to 50 words or more by modelling aspects of normal human conversation and predicting typical speech patterns. The CHAT prototype was part of the Talk:About system, launched two years ago and marketed by a US company. Now two more CHAT-based systems have been launched commercially. These are TALK Boards, distributed by another US company, and ScriptTalker, marketed by companies in Germany, Holland and the UK. In addition to these versions in German, Dutch and English, negotiations are underway for ScriptTalker to be available for use in Scandinavian countries.
Virtual Lunar Surface
The European Space Agency (ESA) is funding Dr Steve Parkes of Applied Computing to generate simulated moonscapes to test possible vision-based navigation systems for the Euromoon 2000 lunar vehicle. ESA has to ensure that the lunar lander's navigation system will be capable of guiding it down to a safe landing spot. To do this it has to be tested on thousands of different lunar surfaces which can be done very cost-effectively using virtual reality techniques.
Dr Parkes was also responsible for the development of central processing technology for the visual telemetry unit on the Ariene 5 satellite successfully launched by ESA in October 1997.
Concrete Technology
The Concrete Technology Unit, Department of Civil Engineering, was one of two Scottish university departments commended by Scottish Enterprise Tayside for their success in building collaborative links with industry. One example of this is 'green concrete' produced by the Unit from recycled rubble and incinerator ashes. This research is funded jointly by the Department of Environment, Transport and Regions, Dundee City Council, Scottish Enterprise Tayside, and several industrial partners. A £0.5 million expansion of the Unit could make it a world leader in concrete expertise within 5 years.
One-step Chip
Professor Jim Cairns, Dr Jim Thomson and Professor Sandy Fitzgerald received a major award for their work on a process which could revolutionise the silicon chip industry. Their research, popularly known as the 'one-step chip' was presented to a conference gathered in Cambridge to celebrate the centenary of the discovery of the electron. The selection panel, which included several Nobel Prizewinners, chose the Dundee researchers' work from a field of 70 projects.
The manufacture of silicon ships, which are at the heart of most electronic products, relies on the ability to transfer, with perfect accuracy, the complex and tiny image of an integrated circuit on to the surface of the silicon. This is currently achieved by the use of a device known as a photomask - a quartz plate coated with a layer of material on which the circuitry is chemically reproduced. The process involves a series of steps, each of which must be very accurately controlled.
The Dundee team has devised a novel approach which promises the prospect of a single processing step at the photomasking stage of chip manufacture. Their idea is to produce the complex metal circuitry patterns by using a range of newly synthesised chemicals known as organo-metallic compounds which, when bombarded with electrons, deposit high resolution metallic tracks.
The Car in Front . . . is now more visible
Researchers in the Department of Applied Physics and Electronic and Mechanical Engineering are engaged in a multi-partner collaboration, with a number of UK and German companies and the European Commission, aimed at making vehicle rear lights more visible to the driver behind.
Dundee's role is to develop computer-based models to determine the effect of various environmental conditions on the visibility of rear lights. Later in the project Dundee will also have the role of writing the control algorithms which will take in the sensor readings measuring the various poor conditions, for example, fog, dirt on the rear lens, and produce a calculation of what to do to compensate, for example, switch on a lens cleansing system or increase the light bulb output.
Food Contamination
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries has awarded a grant of £350,000 to Professor Sandy Fitzgerald, Applied Physics and Electronic and Mechanical Engineering, and Dr Trevor Dines, Chemistry, as lead researchers in a team including staff at Laser Installations Ltd and at CSL Food Service Laboratory, Norwich. Over the next three years, using state-of-the-art techniques such as electron microscopy and mass spectrometry, the researchers will aim to establish a definite testing procedure sensitive enough to pick up the tiniest quantities of contaminants from packaging (for example, inks and dyes) entering the food it carries.
Advanced Mechatronics and Dundee Cat Update
Advanced Mechatronics is the technology behind automatic teller machines: sorting bank notes rapidly, assessing their condition, checking for counterfeits, are some of the projects at the 'smart systems' laboratory in the Department of Applied Physics and Electronic and Mechanical Engineering sponsored by world leaders in 'hole-in-the-wall' banking machines, NCR, whose R & D division is based in the city.
Testing of the 'Dundee Cat', the innovative all-palladium vehicle catalytic converter, is proceeding satisfactorily with industrial partner, Johnson Matthey, the world's largest manufacturer of exhaust catalysts, poised to go into commercial production.
£1 million Study of Housing Issues
A consortium of housing experts at the School of Town and Regional Planning and the School of Geography and Geosciences at the University of St Andrews won a three-year £1 million contract from the Housing Corporation in England, in the face of fierce competition, to examine some of the most pressing issues in the rented and low cost home ownership sectors of the housing market.
BioDundee
BioDundee is a world-wide campaign capitalising on the growth of life sciences at Dundee and aiming to build on that growth by encouraging the cream of the international biotechnology community to consider Dundee as a base for their development plans. The initiative is a joint venture between public, private and academic sectors supported by the European Regional Development Fund. The campaign is designed to consolidate Dundee's growing reputation as one of Europe's fastest growing centres of excellence in biotechnology and healthcare and currently employing around 1400 people.
Dundee Medipark
Situated between Ninewells Hospital and Medical School and the existing Dundee Technology Park the £1 million 25-acre Medipark will be the only dedicated science and medical business park in Scotland. Its development, backed by the European Regional Development Fund, Scottish Enterprise Tayside and Dundee Teaching Hospitals, aims to build on the city's reputation as a centre of medical and scientific excellence which is almost entirely due to the achievements of the University.
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