£2.4 m to increase prosperity through knowledge transfer

Lancaster University has been successful in its bid to The Government’s largest funding awards yet to be given to support knowledge transfer from universities to business and the wider community.

Lancaster’s share of the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF2) award is £2.4m which will be used to support business ventures and third mission work linked to InfoLab21, the Lancaster Environment Centre and the Management School.

The awards, worth more than £185 million over the next two years, will help English universities and colleges across the country to carry out a range of knowledge transfer-related activities. These include:

· promoting networking between universities and businesses;

· developing the infrastructure and capability to transfer knowledge from universities into business and the community;

· seed funding to provide venture capital for early stage exploitation of ideas;

· contributing specialised knowledge to regeneration programmes

· a network of 22 new centres for knowledge exchange activity, with a wide geographic spread, that will be exemplars of best practice in skills development, training and how to engage with small and medium-sized businesses; and

· entrepreneurship training and continued professional development for students and academics.

The scheme is a major part of the Government's strategy to increase prosperity and provide high quality job opportunities.