Norwich Research Park, headed by former STC Chair Roz Bird, has announced its own ‘Explorer Funding’ to help researchers and businesses located there to explore potential collaborations.
Roz, now an STC ambassador, confirmed the funding during the STC’s annual Conference. This followed a successful introductory ‘Explorer’ meeting between Norwich Research Park researchers and STC members, including Performance Projects, KW Special Projects/Digital Manufacturing Centre and Delta Cosworth.
Norwich Research Park’s Explorer Fund can be used to assist businesses to conduct feasibility studies to explore new business opportunities. This forms part of the park’s wider enterprise strategy and focus on creating real world applications from research.
Roz, CEO of AIP LLP, responsible for the development of Norwich Research Park, commented, “Norwich Research Park has four separate research institutes, the University of East Anglia and Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital on the campus, along with 40 companies, in 100,000 sq ft and a further 1.5m sq ft of planning consent.
There are lots of great examples of collaboration, between them, and they all share one vision which is to maximise the potential of the research and innovation on site. So, I set up the Explorer Fund, as part of our Enterprise Strategy, to provide ‘pre’ pre-seed funding to encourage new collaborations and new business opportunities.
It is great to get the opportunity to continue to work with colleagues and friends, within the STC, again and help people from STC and Norwich Research Park to explore opportunities to work together.
I am really looking forward to seeing the potentially powerful results of the these new collaborations – don’t forget I know all these people and so I, more than anyone, can see the potential. Bringing people together like this is one of the best parts of the job!”
STC CEO Pim van Baarsen said: “This is another really interesting potential opening for our members, following on from programmes announced for the membership by the US Army, UK Space Agency and Amazon Web Services.
“It also highlights once more how impressive the Cluster membership’s abilities and specialisms are to other significant tech and life science organisations. We look forward to working with Norwich Research Park on this exciting opportunity.”
