College wins £1.2 million Business Gateway funding

The College aims to enhance its interactions with industry by setting up a new Business Gateway.

A £1.2 million grant from the HEFCE's Higher Education Reach Out to Business and Community (HEROBaC) fund, will help it promote liaison between higher education and its commercial partners.

The Business Gateway will work closely with the academic community, careers advisory service, centre for continuing education, research contracts offices, IC Innovations and ICON.

Four new appointments will be made to help develop existing and new opportunities in the following key business sectors: chemicals and biotechnology, information technology, engineering including materials, and finance and management consultancy.

The deputy rector, Professor Bill Wakeham, said: "The College already has extensive interactions with industry that are the envy of other institutions because we have been creating innovative opportunities for some time from our close affinity with industry.

"This new funding allows us to develop a slightly different form of interaction which looks outwards to sectors of industry and allows those sectors to look inward at the College as a multidisciplinary whole, rather than at individual departments. This novel approach is intended to keep us ahead of our competitors."