13 April 2012
Award-winning innovation celebrated at Dundee
Photo opportunity: 1pm on Tuesday, 17th April at Dalhousie Building. Professor Pete Downes, professor Jason Swedlow and Dr Malcolm Skingle will be available for pics, along with other participants.
Innovation in Life Sciences will be celebrated at a major event to be held at the University of Dundee next week.
Dundee is renowned as a centre of Life Sciences excellence, where innovation has seen the University carry out world-leading work in many areas of research and give birth to a burgeoning local industry employing thousands of people and achieving a significant global impact.
Leading figures from academia and industry will come together at the University on Tuesday, 17th April for the 'Celebrating Innovation: How do you innovate as a University?' event, which will examine the impact of innovation in terms of knowledge exchange, the development of industry, and the public good.
The pioneering work carried out in Dundee in forging links between University research, industry and the technological sector will be explored, while ways of building on these relationships will also be discussed.
Dundee's reputation as a citadel of science was recently bolstered with the announcement of three prestigious awards from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
The College of Life Sciences received the BBSRC Excellence with Impact Award, while Professor Jason Swedlow won the Social Innovator of the Year and Overall Innovator of the Year Awards for his work on the Open Microscopy Environment (OME) - a revolutionary venture into open source software.
Professor Swedlow said, "This event is a celebration of Dundee's role in pioneering innovation and we will also look ahead to how we can best capitalise on our research excellence and translate it into social and economic benefits."
Speakers on the day will include Professor Sir Philip Cohen, Director of the University's MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit, and Dr Malcolm Skingle of GlaxoSmithKline, one of the leading pharmaceutical companies collaborating with the Univerity.
Professor Cohen is recognised as one of the world's top scientists, and he has played a vital role in the growth and development of Life Sciences at Dundee, helping to attract top international scientists to the city.
The event will also feature presentations from successful commercial start-ups spun out of the University and highlight the University's successful development of a world-leading informatics programme in the basic and clinical sciences.
'Celebrating Innovation' will be hosted by Professor Pete Downes, the Principal of the University, who is a distinguished biochemist himself.
"Our universities are a rich source of internationally competitive life sciences discovery and innovation," he said. "Consequently, we sit on a sizeable bank of scientific knowledge with the potential to provide solutions for unmet medical need and job creation.
"This event will allow us to highlight the pioneering research in Dundee and capitalise on successful partnerships to stimulate collaborations of the future. We will explore how to and the whole United Kingdom by building on our recognised strengths in research, innovation and translation."
The Life Sciences industry now accounts for 16% of the economy of the Tayside region, and the University of Dundee has an impressive track record of attracting inward investment, creating spinouts and out-licensing to multinational corporations. It currently collaborations with the majority of the world's top pharmaceutical companies.
The event will bring together representatives from life sciences research, local government, industry and pharma for what promises to be a celebration, a networking opportunity and showcase for life sciences innovation in Dundee.
'Celebrating Innovation' takes place at the Dalhousie Building from 2-6pm on Tuesday, 17th April.
For media enquiries contact:
Grant Hill
Press Officer
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384768
E-MAIL: g.hill@dundee.ac.uk
MOBILE: 07854 953277 |
