£1million grant boosts academia-business links

The BioPortal is an innovative new project designed to further enable Tayside research institutes to form stronger links with the Scottish life sciences industry.

Links between Tayside’s internationally renowned Life Sciences research institutes and businesses across Scotland are being strengthened through a funding package of more than £1million.

The University of Dundee, the University of Abertay Dundee, Dundee City Council (through the BioDundee project) and The James Hutton Institute (formerly SCRI and the Macaulay Land Research Institute), have been awarded £1,015,000 grant funding through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Scottish Government’s SEEKIT programme.

This award will fund the ongoing work of the Innovation Portal, based at the University of Dundee, and BioDundee and is also backing a new project, the BioPortal.

The BioPortal is an innovative new project designed to further enable Tayside research institutes to form stronger links with the Scottish life sciences industry by providing a match-making service of intellectual property and skilled postdoctoral researchers with needs of small-to-medium sized businesses, or SMEs.

The BioPortal project has been designed and developed by Research and Innovation Services at the University of Dundee to address specific barriers that prevent effective transfer of innovation from research institutes to SMEs. Barriers include the element of risk associated with technology development, the financial, human and skills shortages often experienced by SMEs, and the ability to identify and access novel technologies, which is a particular resource constraint for many small companies within the sector.

A key facet of the project will be to increase the ease of access by Scottish SMEs to the intellectual property of the Universities and The James Hutton Institute by introducing risk sharing and no- or low-entry costs to reduce the barriers to innovation for the companies. This new project has also created a new opportunity that will allow postdoctoral researchers to more readily move from academia to industry, generating a skilled workforce, and most importantly retaining that workforce in Scotland.

More information

Read the full news release on the University of Dundee website.