Topic Hub: Sustainability
Discover how Make Your Place, a place-based sustainable enterprise challenge developed at the University of Southampton, inspired participants to transform their communities. This innovative project was based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the EntreComp Framework, and the Gatsby Benchmarks. Participants joined this webinar to learn from case studies, explore lessons learned, and uncover opportunities and challenges. They saw the social impact of the regional focus and gained insights on engaging with local organisations and communities.
Speakers:
- Arnie King, AHSS CoP Coordinator, PraxisAuril
- Sian Campbell, Senior Enterprise Fellow: Strategic Lead, People and Place, University of Southampton
- Ruby Jackson, Future Towns Innovation Hub Coordinator, University of Southampton
- Steven Henderson
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Make Your Place
Make Your Place is a collaboration between Southampton Business School, the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, the Future Towns Innovation Hub, Southampton City Council, and Solent Partners, funded by UKRI HEIF from the Sustainability and Resilience Institute. The challenge works with students, pupils, businesses, and communities to encourage exploration of their local environment and the economy of their town or city. Through this exploration, participants develop consumer profiles and generate ideas for products, services, and activities to improve their place by making it more engaging, connected, and sustainable.
Recent inventions have included ideas for greening the roof of Southampton Airport and generating kinetic energy to power a shopping centre. Over 200 young people from Southampton took part in the challenge in its first year, and this year, participation has grown to well over 1,000 through workshops, events, and festivals. Additionally, a training and development program has been created to enable doctoral students to support and deliver these events. So far, over 10 students have been trained, with more in the pipeline.
Please find below the recording, presentations and useful links
Appleyard Lees partner and patent attorney Paul Beynon discussed analysis from the firm’s latest Inside Green Innovation: Progress Report, and provided insight into the state of innovation across green technologies related to energy production and storage, food production, bioplastics, and recycling technologies. Paul looked at geographic trends in these areas, identified the leading innovators worldwide, and examined how real-world policy may have influenced these trends.
Stephen Davison, Higher Education Lead for the Climate Champions Team and International lead for the UK Universities Climate Network, provided insights to generate discussion of the ‘field of use’ arising from the patents and highlighted the importance of fostering interdisciplinary collaboration between the humanities and STEM disciplines in driving sustainable innovation.
Speakers:
- Tamsin Mann – Head of Policy and Governance, PraxisAuril
- Paul Beynon – Senior Associate and Patent Attorney, Appleyard Lees
- Stephen Davison – Higher Education Lead for the Climate Champions Team and International lead for the UK Universities Climate Network
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Appleyard Lees
Appleyard Lees is a leading intellectual property law firm, with over 70 patent and trademark attorneys and IP solicitors. It supports clients from a broad range of industries, including chemistry, life sciences, electronics and software, engineering, and physics. Its UK and overseas client roster include start-ups and scale ups, SMEs, University spin-outs, as well as multi-national companies.
Climate Champions Team
The Climate Champions Team (CCT) is a global team, responsible for supporting the High-Level Champions (HLCs). This includes delivering the five-year plan of the Marrakech Partnership, in collaboration with the UNFCCC secretariat and other partners. The team is also responsible for turning the HLC vision and priorities into robust and sustainable work plans, executing on the work plans, and measuring impact. The Marrakech Partnership is basically the platform/community of Non-State-Actors.
Please find below the recording, presentations and useful links.
PraxisAuril and EAUC have embarked on a journey that celebrates sustainability, innovation, and collaboration within the education sector. As part of their commitment to promoting positive change, they proudly announce their reciprocal sponsorship for two prestigious awards, the KE Awards 2023 and the Green Gown Awards UK & Ireland.
EAUC’s Dedication to Collaboration and Net Zero
EAUC, known as the Alliance for Sustainability Leadership in Education, is a member-based non-profit organisation based in the UK and Ireland, with a global network of higher and further education professionals. Serving as the hub for the education sector, their work bridges gaps between knowledge and action in sustainability, bringing new perspectives, ideas and innovations into view.
As part of the EAUC’s mission to drive sustainability within the sector and recognise the vital role that collaborations play in achieving this goal, they are pleased to sponsor the KE Awards 2023 – Net Zero Collaboration of the Year category.
This category acknowledges the important role of partnerships in actioning Net Zero targets and encourages the knowledge sharing that these produce. Moreover, such collaborations enable a greater diversity in ideas and voices, which increases the scale of impact.
The EAUC is pleased to support the positive actions the sector is taking in reaching Net Zero, with hopes that these efforts will bring lasting collaborations and connections between sectors. They also encourage applicants in this category to sign up to the Race to Zero for Universities and Colleges and to apply for the Green Gown Awards.
PraxisAuril’s Commitment to Sustainability
In return, PraxisAuril is honoured to sponsor the Green Gown Awards UK & Ireland – Research with Impact, highlighting the remarkable sustainability initiatives universities and colleges undertake worldwide.
This category recognises the importance and societal impact of research and development by post-16 education as a driver of sustainable development and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.
By sponsoring this award, PraxisAuril seeks to acknowledge and encourage pioneering research initiatives that generate tangible impact, aligning with our core mission of advancing knowledge exchange and collaboration between academia and industry.
A Reciprocal Promotion of Excellence
We invite all eligible institutions to participate in both the KE Awards 2023 and the Green Gown Awards. By doing so, you can showcase your dedication to sustainability, collaboration, and innovation, leaving a lasting legacy for future generations.
EAUC is the Alliance for Sustainability Leadership in Education, a member-based non-profit organisation based in the UK and Ireland, with a global network of higher and further education professionals. As the hub for the education sector our work bridges gaps between knowledge and action in sustainability, bringing new perspectives, ideas and innovations into view.
As part of the EAUC’s mission to drive sustainability into the sector, and the role collaborations play in doing so, we are pleased to sponsor the Net Zero KE Collaboration of the Year category. This category acknowledges the important role of partnerships in actioning Net Zero targets and encourages the knowledge sharing that these produce. Moreover, that collaborations enable a greater diversity in ideas and voices, which increases the scale of impact.
The EAUC is pleased to support the positive actions the sector is taking in reaching Net Zero, which we hope will bring lasting collaborations and connections between sectors. We encourage applicants in this category to sign up to the Race to Zero for Universities and Colleges and to apply for the Green Gown Awards.
Useful Links:
The National Environment Research Council (NERC), Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) are jointly funding the Greenhouse Gas Removal programme. The Met Office and Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) are also supporting.
The programme will investigate how to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, the first of its kind. It is designed to coincide with the 2015 Paris Agreement aims of keeping global temperature rises well below 2°C.
Four interdisciplinary, multi-institute consortium and seven topic-specific projects have been awarded funding with roughly 100 researchers from 40 universities around the UK being involved.
For more information about the research, please follow the link.
The Translation and Innovation Hub at Imperial White City Campus recently held a Meet the Cleantech Pioneers event. Business leaders and Investors met with PhD student innovators and start-up companies who are developing low-energy and sustainable ‘clean’ technology. They were supported by Climate-KIC Accelerator, which has created 34 new businesses since 2012.
Six of the projects displayed were part of the Innovating for Sustainable Development programme. The programme supports start-ups, corporates, NGOs and policymakers to make contributions to sustainable development by partnering with research students from top institutions which includes Imperial, University of Reading, Surrey and College London.
Professor Joanna Haigh, Director of SSCP, Co-Director of the Grantham Institute, said: “These projects demonstrate the kind of innovation that is so vital if we are to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
For more information about the programme and the innovative ideas on display visit Imperial.
The green paper covers a wide range of issues affecting the future of universities and their supporting institutions. As an organisation devoted to excellence in Knowledge Exchange and Commercialisation of outputs from publicly funded Research Organisations, including Universities, we would like to comment specifically on the implications for the health of the UK Knowledge Exchange and Commercialisation Community, and the role of its members in delivering economic and social impact for the UK from University Research and Education.
PraxisUnico welcomes the clear agreement in the Green Paper and the Nurse Review, which the Green Paper references, that preservation of the dual support system continues to be vital in preserving the successful research and innovation landscape in the UK built around universities, PSREs and innovative businesses. The importance of great “discovery science” as characterised by Sir Paul Nurse is fundamental to the success of this endeavour, and we are pleased that the preservation of this national jewel in the UK’s crown is a high priority for government. The Green Paper also rightly notes that “levels of collaboration between business and academia are increasingly important to the economy”.
We are dismayed, however, that knowledge exchange and commercialisation is absent from the discussion in ‘Fulfilling our potential’ and that the role of HEFCE and RCUK in this important element of university activity is not fully recognised alongside their funding of research and teaching. It is vital that the KE-related expertise and experience held in these organisations is preserved in any reorganisation that attempts to reduce ‘complexity and bureaucracy’.
We are concerned that the progress that has been made in developing this vital part of the system is not lost in the larger changes that are afoot. Specifically, the HEFCE Research and Knowledge exchange capability which underpins the REF (including the REF impact case studies) as well as managing and monitoring HEIF – which has been shown to generate almost a tenfold return for the economy[1] – must be preserved in the new structures that emerge from the Green Paper and the Nurse Review.
Universities UK has already noted that:
“ The Green Paper is silent on the future of the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF), which supports universities to deliver a wide range of innovation activities and delivers a significant return on investment. It currently sits within the research function of HEFCE. Careful consideration will need to be given to its future governance to ensure that this critical funding stream continues.”[2]
In this time of change we would like to draw attention to the efforts of universities and their funders in HEFCE and the Research Councils over the last two decades in building capability and support structures for effective knowledge exchange and commercialisation. This has been a combination of incentives. Alongside HEIF there is REF Impact; Research Council Pathways to Impact; Impact Acceleration Accounts; Catalyst awards and other, specialised, initiatives such as support for social enterprise. These activities have been essential in creating a culture change towards impact and enterprise in universities that did not exist before and which is now recognised as world leading by the World Economic Forum.
“The government’s ambition is that UK universities will continue to increase their collaboration with industry to drive research commercialisation, and increase the income they earn from working with business and others to £5 billion per annum by 2025”.[3]
We would note that the dual support system has been effective not just in delivering excellent research, but in delivering increasing collaboration and commercialisation, as demonstrated by annual HE-BCI returns. HEFCE have provided support and studied activity at the institutional and national level, while the Research Councils have provided funding and infrastructure at the disciplinary level. PraxisUnico believes that both are essential in delivering the returns that the Government wishes to see.
Preserving the dual support system must go beyond the mechanics of the funding streams and make sure the two different cultures are preserved: one underpinning the health of research disciplines and the other the health of universities. Both of these missions are critical to preserving the excellence of our national system and both must be carried forward into the new structures that emerge.
[1]HEFCE research 2015, ‘Assessing the economic impacts of the Higher Education Innovation Fund: a mixed method quantitative assessment’, a report to HEFCE by Tomas Coates-Ulrichsen, and ‘Evaluating the Non-Monetisable Achievements of HEFCE Knowledge Exchange Funding’, a report to HEFCE by Public and Corporate Economic Consultants (PACEC), demonstrated that HEIF funding leverages at least £9.70 from users for every £1 of public money invested, of which £7.30 economic benefit and £2.40 non-financial benefit.
[2] UUK briefing on the HE Green Paper, November 2015 http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/highereducation/Documents/2015/GreenPaperResearchFunding.pdf
[3] ‘Fixing the foundations: creating a more prosperous nation’ July 2015 (section 8)