With £7.8 million funding from Innovate UK and CHF 9.1 million from Innosuisse, the Swiss innovation agency, the collaborative projects span various sectors showcasing a diverse range of innovative solutions.
Strengthening global partnerships
Building international relationships is essential for maintaining the UK’s world-class science and research capabilities and industry strengths.
In 2022 the UK and Switzerland governments signed a memorandum of understanding deepening the relationship between the two countries, harnessing the collective strengths of two powerhouse nations.
With a cumulative total of 10 of Europe’s top 20 research universities between them, the collaboration spans across three pivotal pillars:
- deep science
- industrial commercialisation
- international standards and regulation
This bilateral relationship represents a significant opportunity for both nations to collaborate on research and innovation. By combining resources, expertise and talent, the UK and Switzerland aim to achieve advancements that benefit both countries and drive mutual growth.
Diverse innovations
Projects in life sciences will explore areas such as remote stroke diagnosis and treatment, digital diagnostics services for Parkinson’s disease and innovations to improve future clinical trials that ultimately provide better treatments to bladder cancer patients.
In the area of net zero, one project aims to develop home energy storage technology aiming to cut consumer energy bills and accelerate decarbonisation of the grid. Another tackles carbon capture, preventing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions without any major infrastructure being needed, offering a cost-effective, low-energy solution with significant carbon reduction potential.
Enhancing bilateral tech collaborations
Janet Geddes, Deputy Director Global at Innovate UK said:
We are delighted with the high level of interest from UK and Swiss organisations to collaborate on research and innovation under our first joint funding call.
The projects we are supporting with Innosuisse range from space technologies, those focused on quantum and semiconductors to advanced therapies and medtech. We look forward to seeing how the collaborations develop over the next few years.
Further information
AMAZE: advanced MOF-loaded air-pollution control and zero-emission electrospun filters
NanoLayr UK Limited
Over 34 billion tonnes of CO2 are emitted into the atmosphere annually worldwide, 73.2% from the energy sector by burning fossil fuels. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and contributes to global warming, which is why the UK government as part of the Net Zero UN Coalition have set a target for all sectors to decarbonise to reach net zero targets by 2050.
The AMAZE project will produce a high-volume commercial filtration media that will capture CO2 at the point of source. Offering a game-changing innovation to the Carbon Capture (CC) market with higher adsorption capacity, and lower regeneration energy requirements.
Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) are highly functional chemicals that can be tailored to capture CO2 more efficiently and requiring less energy to be regenerated. Being a powder, the challenge is that they need to be supported on a highly breathable substrate so they can be reused.
Nanofibres are 500 times smaller than a human hair and collectively produce porous non-woven sheets. With extremely high surface areas and the ability to carry particles like MOFs, nanofibres are perfectly suited to the task. MOF-loaded nanofibres will revolutionise the current approaches to CO2 capture with a universal filter which offers a low-cost, high-efficiency alternative to current systems.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has highlighted Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage as a priority action in their Roadmap to Net Zero by 2050. Carbon capture reduces the CO2 produced during industry by capturing it before is enters the atmosphere. This captured CO2 then gets bottled up and either transported for permanent storage, or processed into a useful product, like plastics, chemicals, or new fuel.
Traditionally, capturing the carbon can be an energy-intensive process with chemicals that are hard to dispose of when depleted, which often defeats the original environmental goals.
Innovation and increased adoption of new and existing technology is needed to reach net zero goals. novoMOF (Switzerland) a pioneer and manufacturer of MOFs, and NanoLayr (UK) a developer and manufacturer of nanofibres, are integrating these two technologies to bring transformation to the Carbon Capture market and produce a commercial MOF-loaded nanofibre sheet.
The resulting sheets will be directly applicable to current high-volume air filters, meaning they can be used to stop CO2 from entering the atmosphere without any major infrastructure being needed. This cheap, low-energy solution has the potential to have a huge impact on the planet’s carbon problem.
An integrated value chain for the coffee industry
Trade in Space Limited
This proposal will consolidate a partnership between UK-registered business and research organisations, and Swiss SME Farmer Connect. All of the partners in the proposal have been in contact for at least two years, and in the case of Trade in Space (TIS) and Farmer Connect, the first stages of technical product integration under the framework of a commercial product partnership agreement have been explored.
All of our partners have developed software and services which add value to forest-commodity producers and enhance opportunities for sustainable production of the most widely imported agriculture products in both the UK and Switzerland.
Trade in Space has produced satellite-based services to monitor deforestation risk with agri-commodity supply chains, including coffee and cacao production landscapes. Farmer Connect has created highly innovative data-capture and distribution frameworks based on blockchain based architecture; the company is a global leader in the delivery of farmer-centric digital identity and product traceability services.
Other project stakeholders CABI and Assimila have created earth-observation data driven models to monitor pest and disease risk at coffee agriculture sites. The University of Leicester’s National Earth Observation Centre has developed an enhanced deforestation monitoring capability which increases the accuracy of industry-standard, open-source deforestation monitoring algorithms.
Together our partnership offers a chance to lead the world in deliver of deforestation monitoring services, whilst also adding value with supporting information on pest and disease risk, digital product traceability combined with opportunities to directly communicate and financially transact with smallholder farmers.
There is unprecedented commercial, environmental, and socially-driven demand for these services as the full weight of climate change, and climate change mitigation efforts are brought to bear on some of the world’s most fragile small-holder agriculture communities. By combining our services, we will offer an easily accessible route beyond simple compliance to globally emerging sustainability regulations.
The core elements of the project will include:
- technical integration and test of partners’ highly innovative software service products and creation of an combined service product offering
- further coffee pest and disease model validation of critical coffee pest and disease in new geographies and landscapes
- further validation and ground accuracy assessment of various satellite EO powered deforestation models, with ground verification of accuracy
- real-life deployment and test of integrated service characteristics with a coffee farming co-operative, raising research TRL to nine
- commercial roadmap to further develop project outputs and deepen collaborative product development opportunities.
Remote stroke diagnosis and treatment platform (RESDAT)
Brainomix Limited
Rapid diagnosis and treatment of stroke is critical in improving outcomes for stroke, which is the leading cause of serious long-term disability globally. Stroke is the fourth largest cause of death in the UK and costs £25.6 billion annually.
The most common type of stroke is a large vessel occlusion which is a clot lodged in a major artery in the brain. Multiple clinical studies to have shown that patients have the best outcomes when treated with mechanical thrombectomy. Thrombectomy is a medical procedure where a specialist physician removes a blood clot from a blocked artery by making a small incision in the groin or arm, and using a catheter (thin, flexible tube) to guide a device through blood vessels in the body to the clot in the brain for removal.
However, there are still many risks involved in mechanical thrombectomy for the patient and the clinicians. For the patient, there are risks of injury to the blood vessels. To address these problems, we want to create a robotic system that can improve the accuracy, availability, and safety of thrombectomy.
The system will provide the following benefits.
More accurate clot removal
Robots can be programmed to move with more precision than human hands, which can help to ensure that the clot is removed completely and can help to reduce the risk of damage that is caused during the procedure.
Widen access to underserved populations
Thrombectomies will not require the physical presence of a highly trained operator meaning that it will be easier and more cost-effective to enable access in remote areas at any time.
Less exposure to radiation
Clinicians are exposed to higher than normal levels of radiation to carry out these procedures that need to be carried out regularly to save lives.
Through this project, Brainomix, the leading stroke artificial intelligence (AI) company in the UK and Europe, and Nanoflex, a robotics spin-off from ETH Zurich, will partner to develop a novel platform to be able to delicately guide more effective devices through to clots.
iSurface
Munro Technology Limited
The aviation net zero emission targets for 2050 are the main driver to have a fresh look at aircraft manufacturing, operation, and maintenance to identify ways of reducing the carbon footprint of the industry.
The aim of this project is to develop a method of monitoring the health and performance of an aircraft structure using a novel unintrusive technique. This involves embedding series of nanoscale fibres capable of sensing the structural performance real-time.
It is proposed to create electrically conductive fibres based on MT’s product enTex. The project will bring together MT, ZP, the electronics, data acquisition and AI partner, and AT, the integrator end user, supported by FHNW, the verification and validation RTO partner.
The benefits of building sensitive structures using enTex results in structural robustness, savings in maintenance frequency, weight, fuel consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions. It will create a significant leap toward longevity, health and cost-effectiveness of complex cyber-physical structures.
Today, high percentages of advanced composite materials are integrated into the primary flight structures of aircraft. Composite materials technology has become key enabler of future electric aviation concepts including Urban Air Mobility (UAM) that heavily rely on light weight structures to improving fuel efficiency, reducing emissions and lowering the manufacturing, operating and certification costs in current and future aircraft.
The materials have a higher ability than metals to withstand fatigue loading. However, they are prone to hidden damage from low velocity impact, resulting in internal defects, which cannot be detected through a regular visual inspection.
Structural Health Monitoring and Analysis of aircraft structures can perform real time inspection, reducing costs and improving the reliability and performance of aircraft. The project partners propose a radically new approach to Structural Health Monitoring of composite materials.
FaVoRe: fast volumetric reconstruction
Disguise Technologies Limited
The past few years have seen a dramatic change across the creative industries. Live communication and entertainment have potentially undergone the most drastic evolution, with audiences demanding tailored, engaging and highly innovative approaches, able to reach them across new delivery platforms, always available at their will.
With FaVoRe, we will develop innovative tools to create post-show immersive content.
Leveraging the University of Lucerne world renown expertise in AI, Nimagna and Disguise, will develop ground-breaking innovations enhancing their respective product lines to respond to new market opportunities.
For disguise, this innovation will allow for any performance to be captured on stage so that it can be delivered as a rich and immersive post-event content. For example, produced to be streamed directly on a hand-held device, or virtual reality headset, or as a shared virtual experience, enabling high quality, engaging virtual performances and repeat viewing.
Concurrently, Nimagna will provide unprecedented quality for the corporate communications and presentations market, with enhanced capabilities to their live video capture workflow.
Levelling up: cultured meat bioprocess intensification for scalable commercial production
Roslin Technologies Limited
Cultured meat offers enormous potential for addressing concerns around sustainability, animal welfare and environmental impact of the traditional meat industry. However, technoeconomic challenges remain in scaling production to meet market demand, estimated to reach $20 billion by 2030.
Cultured meat is produced by directly culturing animal cells. This production method eliminates the need to raise and farm animals for food, meaning that cultured meat production has a considerably lower environmental impact than its conventional counterpart. Cultured meat consists of the same cell types that can be arranged in the same structure as animal tissues to replicate the taste, texture and nutritional profiles of conventional meat.
Producing cultured meat can be challenging due to longevity of most cell lines and their abilities to differentiate into required cell types, including muscle and fat.
Roslin Technologies (RTL) are the first and leading provider of high quality cell lines for the cultivated meat sector. We develop induced pluripotent stem cell lines (iPSC) that can differentiate into muscle and fat, supported by customised cell culture media and processes.
Our cells are well suited to the cultured meat industry as they are non-GMO, grow quickly, are genetically stable and can grow in suspension culture without the need for additional scaffolds. At RTL we have demonstrated our cells can grow in small-scale benchtop bioreactors, but the next step is to transfer this to industry relevant pilot-scale bioreactors.
With Innovate UK and Innosuisse support RTL are excited to partner with The Cultured Hub (TCH) in Kemptthal, Switzerland. TCH is a dedicated cultured meat contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO) that provides expertise in process intensification and scale-up. In this project RTL and TCH will work together to realise the full potential of RTL stem cells.
Researchers will work to optimise cell yields, quality and safety through media and bioprocess development. The data and know how generated by this project will help demonstrate the commercial potential of RTL cells and position TCH as a leading CDMO for cultured meat bioprocess development.
The projects focus on cultured meat safety will also provide valuable information to regulators and policy makers to help define UK CM quality and safety standards. We believe this will benefit cultured meat producers and the industry as a whole to reach mass consumer markets faster. Ultimately this will support a more resilient food system and contribute to Paris Agreement goals and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
SPIWACS: sustainable pIgments from waste cellulose streams
Sparxell UK Limited
Pigments add shine and colour to a multitude of daily products. They are ubiquitous in cosmetics, fashion, packaging, paints, and even food. However, as currently formulated, they contain a mix of problematic materials such as microplastics, mineral oxides, like titania and mica, and high GHG refined metals.
Extractive mining is a major environmental and social concern for which there are currently very limited technological alternatives that would offer plant-based, renewable and high performance metallic-effect colourants.
Without a fundamental design and innovation shift in pigment technology, direct pollution to the natural environment and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from existing processes and supply chains enabled by petroleum consumption and extractive mining will never be eliminated.
It is now clear that pigment materials have a negative impact on the environment across their entire life cycle and are not sustainable. They are associated with negative human health effects, are accumulating in the environment and have the potential to be toxic to animal and plant life. Therefore, there is an unmet need to develop truly sustainable alternatives.
The solution is now available: the project partners Sparxell (SX) and Impossible Materials (IM) are start-ups aimed at the commercial delivery of breakthrough sustainable pigments based on plants. Sparxell has developed unique new pigments using cellulose-derived nanocrystals to deliver metal-like effects without metal. Impossible Materials’ first product is a cellulose-derived white pigment, addressing one of the most environmentally problematic and high-volume pigments, titanium dioxide.
In this collaboration, we will build a new manufacturing process platform by transforming the primary waste cellulose stream from the production of white pigments (IM) into functional cellulose nanomaterials that are the main and sole ingredient of metallic-effect pigments (SX).
The overall process will be monitored and accompanied by a cradle-to-cradle life cycle analysis (LCA) performed by the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), University of Cambridge. This rigorous approach will guide the process design and choice of materials to ensure that the overall production process is significantly more sustainable than the separate manufacturing processes used today by IM and SX.
The overall aim of this project is to demonstrate the technical viability, commercial attractiveness and sustainability benefits of coupling Impossible Materials’ nanocellulose waste stream to Sparxell’s raw materials inputs to deliver a more profitable and sustainable supply chain for both organizations.
DISCO: display innovation, simulation, creation and optimization
Excyton Limited
Displays consume 50% of the battery in smartphones and other portable electronic devices. This is a problem for consumers, who must recharge their devices, and is damaging for the environment. Displays consume approximately 5% of all household electricity and produce up to 300 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year worldwide.
Excyton has developed and patented a game-changing pixel design called TurboLED, which can reduce display power by over 40%. Unlike standard OLED displays which have RGB sub-pixels, TurboLED displays have independent saturated RGB sub-pixels and unsaturated RGB sub-pixels.
The unsaturated colours are much more efficient than the saturated colours because of greater sensitivity of the human eye, and these can be used to render the majority of display images using proprietary algorithms developed by Excyton. The less efficient saturated colours are only used when necessary to render images with deep colours. Look around you. How many saturated colours do you see?
Excyton is working with Fluxim AG of Switzerland, a world leader in simulation software and hardware for the research and development of displays. Fluxim has developed a prototype Display Calculation Tool that can compute and compare power consumption for different display designs.
Using this tool, Excyton and Fluxim have demonstrated that a TurboLED display consumes 48% less power than the equivalent RGB OLED display in the iPhone 14 Pro Max. Excyton is also working with the renowned research group of Professor Andrew Monkman at Durham University to fabricate prototype TurboLED devices.
Proof-of-concept red, green and blue TurboLED prototypes were recently demonstrated alongside the prototype Display Calculation Tool from Fluxim at Display Week 2023, the flagship event of the global display industry. Excyton and the team won the innovation prize for its Novel Power Saving TurboLED Pixel Design and Algorithms and is in discussions with several leading OLED material and display companies to develop a prototype TurboLED display.
The proposed project aims to build on the initial success and established collaborations within the UK and Switzerland. Excyton will demonstrate a prototype TurboLED display at Display Week 2025 with over 40% power savings compared to a standard OLED display, Durham University will demonstrate red, green and blue TurboLED devices to use in the display and Fluxim will develop the world’s first Display Calculation Tool to ensure an optimized display design for maximum power savings.
Find more information about Excyton.
Watch an interview with I-Zone Honoree Excyton at Display Week 2023.
Find out more about Fluxim.
Development of digital diagnostics services for Parkinson’s disease
gaitQ Limited
Parkinson’s disease is the fastest growing progressive neurological disorder, affecting over 10 million people worldwide. Symptoms like rigidity, tremor, freeze of gait, and loss of balance significantly impact patients’ daily life, leading to early retirement, reduced activity, and a high risk of falling and associated injuries.
Monitoring the health status and disease progression of people with Parkinson’s (PwP) is essential for providing the best treatment to them. This may be via identifying changes to their condition and adjusting medication regimes or prescribing physiotherapy and assistance early to prevent possible falls. However, due to limited healthcare resources, most PwP can only have a clinical consultation every 12 to 18 months.
As a consequence, PwP’s conditions may have deteriorated in-between clinical visits, causing substantial changes to their daily life. Long waiting lists for essential treatments, like specialised physiotherapy, further compound the issue. Therefore, more frequent monitoring and assessment of PwP’s conditions is necessary to proactively adapt to their treatment needs as the disease progresses.
gaitQ has developed a vibrational cueing device which is used by patients in their daily lives to assist their walking. gaitQ’s early adopters have shown good compliance of wearing the devices in their everyday environment, thus allowing us to continuously collect movement data that can be used to provide more accurate longitudinal data to inform the patient’s health status and disease progression.
Throughout this project, gaitQ will investigate the use of movement and ophthalmic sensors to accurately measure the condition of PwP. 100 participants in the UK and Switzerland will be evaluated in a controlled clinical or home setting, enabling the validation of these tools as an efficient way to measure patients’ health status.
Success of this project will enable PwP to receive much faster and better care. It will be more efficient and cheaper to monitor if PwP’s condition, to refer patients to the most appropriate care services and to determine if the current medication is working well. It will also alleviate the burden on neuroconsultants and Parkinson’s nurses, empowering them to remotely monitor their patients’ disease development and to rapidly identify patients in need of urgent care and interventions.
The collaboration with the Swiss partner (MachineMD) will not only allow us to collect more data sets for the algorithm development with variety in demographics, enhancing IP and product scopes, but also help us build network and raise business profile in the EU, supporting market expansion for gaitQ’s products.
RestoreDNA: development of scalable eDNA-based solutions for biodiversity regulators and nature-related disclosure
NatureMetric LTD
Businesses are more dependent on nature than previously thought, with $44 trillion of economic value generation moderately or highly dependent on nature. (World Economic Forum, 2020). More than 50% of bank activity in emerging markets directly depends on nature (Calice, et. al., 2023).
Biodiversity loss is also recognised by the world’s central banks as a source of systemic risk. Consequently, regulators increasingly expect industries to manage nature-related impacts and risks. More than 190 countries, including the UK and Switzerland, have committed to the goals and targets under the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
Globally, GBF and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) are bringing reporting and disclosure of business dependencies on nature and impacts to the forefront. However, scalable provision of reliable biodiversity data to fulfil the requirements for nature disclosure are still lacking.
Current methods for measuring biodiversity are often simplistic, focusing on a single component of biodiversity, not-scalable, relying on large scale manual data collection and costly. Digital biodiversity indicators are continuously developed to measure and monitor pressures or threats, but these remain not ground-truthed.
In the UK, several initiatives are working towards the development of simple decision-ready metrics (for example JNCC, Defra and CEH), but these are not available to industry at the scales required and remain strongly reliant on field data. Consequently, commercial instruments to provide biodiversity data and monitoring across industries, at reportable spatial and temporal scales, and able to adapt to upcoming frameworks for nature disclosure and underpin nature-positive impacts are yet inexistent.
UK-SME NatureMetrics and Swiss-Start-up Restor in close collaboration with Swiss-RO ETH Zurich and UK-RO Rothamsted-Research join forces to go beyond ground-truthing. Combining our synergic technologies, we will develop and commercialise robust and scalable methods and metrics applicable at managerial time-scales.
NatureMetrics (NM) is a world-leading innovator on biodiversity performance monitoring using environmental DNA (eDNA) and Earth Observation. The Crowther Lab\[ETH-Z\] have created SEED, a platform for the conservation and restoration of nature, Restor, and co-founded the Global Forest and Soil Biodiversity Initiatives. Rothamsted Research (RR) works to achieve economically and environmentally sustainable farming practices.
PayLoad: industrial research to link commercial vehicle Smart EV charging with advanced grid demand analytics
Aegis Energy LTD
The UK and Switzerland are pioneers in decarbonising transport, which in the UK was responsible for approximately 24% of all carbon-equivalent (Co2e) emissions in 2020 (BEIS). Reaching net zero emissions by 2050 necessitates significant transport infrastructure changes, including a 20-fold increase in electric vehicle (EV) chargers (Deloitte, 2022). On a global scale, the transition to electric vehicles calls for an investment of approximately £240 billion in EV charging, electricity production, and grid-balancing battery infrastructure (McKinsey, 2022).
This UK-Switzerland Bilateral: Collaborative research and development opportunity has encouraged project partners Aegis Energy, Innovum and AKTEK to develop a new initiative called ‘PayLoad’, to help address challenges facing investment into new public EV charging infrastructure. PayLoad seeks to unlock private investment for public commercial vehicle (CV) chargepoints by linking predicted electricity grid demand with chargepoint operator (CPO) control systems.
CVs in the UK produce roughly 10% of the country’s Co2e emissions (ElementEnergy, 2023). With the UK’s imminent bans on new fossil-fuel CVs, and the recently passed Swiss Net Zero 2050 law, the electrification of vans and HGVs is accelerating in both countries.
Complete electrification of CVs in the UK could demand 182-246TWh of new energy (Haugen-et-al, 2022), an amount equivalent to two-thirds of the UK’s entire electricity production in 2019. Department for Transport (DfT) commissioned research has highlighted the importance of optimising energy storage solutions and charging facilities to prevent risks to the grid and to secure investment (Haugen-et-al, 2022). The challenges facing Switzerland are similar as it seeks to reduce reliance on nuclear energy while rapidly decarbonising its industry (IEA, 2023).
PayLoad responds to these challenges by introducing enablers of CV electrification for both CPOs and end-user haulage and logistics fleets, linking:
- predicted grid-demand at public CV electric charging stations, with
- advance pre-booking of CV charging slots, enabling
- improved efficiency of automated CPO equipment and grid-balancing control systems
PayLoad benefits CV fleets and drivers, as well as EV infrastructure developers and investors. With a user-friendly app interface, PayLoad’s development will empower CV fleet managers to pre-book chargepoint slots, ensuring access to charging even at peak times. And by leveraging historical data and vehicle telematics, PayLoad allows CPOs and grid stakeholders to analyse grid use and vehicle movement patterns, layered with actual pre-bookings, to forecast demand.
This data-driven approach enables CPOs to evidence the business case to infrastructure investors, and to right-size chargepoint power requirements, ultimately optimizing energy consumption and reducing the costs and risks of grid overload.
Development of a comprehensive microbial immunotherapy platform with immuno-transcriptomic monitoring for treatment of bladder cancer (DOCMI-BC)
Prokarium Limited
Bladder Cancer (BC) affects more than 550,000 people globally every year. With the highest recurrence rate of any known cancer (80%), it is one of the most expensive for the NHS to treat, costing £65 million a year (CRUK). Current immunotherapy treatments based on the weakened strain of Mycobacterium bovis (BCG) present a significant challenge, with substantial impact on patient quality of life and high rates of cancer recurrence. Moreover, chemotherapy and other existing immunotherapies have significant side effects and generally poor response rates.
Prokarium’s therapeutics are positioned to overcome such limitations by leveraging the natural tumor-suppressive properties of proprietary Salmonella bacteria strain ZH9.
Prokarium have previously shown that ZH9 has superior effectiveness compared to the current standard-of-care BCG in early-stage BC. This has enabled an upcoming first clinical trial and, in collaboration with Switzerland based University of Lausanne and Novigenix, Prokarium aims to expand upon this work to support the further development of ZH9 for BC by exploring the efficacy and mechanism of action of ZH9 in more advanced muscle invasive BC (MIBC), both as a standalone treatment and when administered in combination with other therapies, either already licensed or in development for BC.
The incorporation of Novigenix technology will allow understanding of the mechanism of action of the therapy and identification of biomarkers of response that can be used to improve future clinical trials and ultimately provide better treatments to BC patients.
Arboricrop: next generation agriculture using real-time information from trees crops
Benchmark Control Ltd
The agricultural industry is undergoing a transformative revolution, leveraging new technologies and knowledge to increase yields while dramatically reducing environmental impacts, lowering production costs, and reducing waste. Plants have evolved many capabilities to detect and respond to stress long before visible symptoms appear, yet current agronomic methods rely predominantly on skilled humans detecting these issues once they become visible.
A tool that can tap into early plant stress response mechanisms will provide an invaluable source of agronomic knowledge informing growers, agronomists, or automated systems to apply interventions earlier, thereby minimising yield losses and maximising efficiency.
Plant electrophysiology is a unique approach to capturing plant-scale stress-related information. It has demonstrated promise in controlled environment agriculture, but its applicability to outdoor farming requires investigation. To make this technology widely adoptable, current electrophysiology sensors need adaptation to field conditions, including:
- miniaturisation to increase spatial finesse and crop attachment
- ergonomic design to aid farmer acceptance
- radio-frequency data communication and solar charging capacities for independence
- integration into digital agronomy systems to deliver precision control and value for the growers
To develop the next generation of plant electrophysiological sensors (NGES), we have assembled a multidisciplinary and collaborative team in the UK. The project will be led by Benchmark Control, an electrical engineering and product development firm that has expertise in sensor fabrication.
Adrian Scripps is a premier grower and distributor of UK fruit with a forward-thinking approach to sustainability that will provide orchard infrastructure for NGES testing. Hutchinsons is a leading agronomic consulting firm at the forefront of developing digital farming platforms that will integrate NGES outputs into a user-friendly strategic plan. NIAB, the largest UK research institute conducting applied research in horticulture will conduct the NGES orchard experiments and provide project management support.
Our research and development approach enables multiple rounds of NGES design and refinement, performance comparison to currently existing sensors, controlled trials of stress detection in orchard trees, and integration into existing digital farming platforms.
After successful completion of these tasks, our NGES will be directly marketable to growers of high-value perennial crops, such as apples, grapes, nuts, and citrus. In the UK, adoption of NGES will reduce costs by avoiding the application of unnecessary crop protection agents or nutritional supplements and increase profits by maximising yield potentials.
Ultimately, our radical approach to capturing plant-based information will help transform the agricultural sector into the sustainable version our society and environment needs.
Next-generation automation and PAT implementation for QbD and enhanced approaches for cell and gene therapy
Cell Therapy Catapult Services Limited
The therapeutic potential for cell and gene therapies is immense, with treatments approved for previously intractable diseases, for example Kymriah for blood cancers, Zolgensma for spinal muscular atrophy, and Luxturna for inherited retinal dystrophy.
However, the price remains prohibitively high. Limiting patient access to relatively rare indications or narrow patient populations. If cell and gene therapies are going to be used to treat highly prevalent diseases, then costs must come down.
Inefficiencies in manufacturing are a significant component of the current product cost. For example, currently, analysis of the process is a laborious manual process conducted by highly trained operators at single time points, leading to high costs, patchy information and increased contamination risks.
This project aims to address this problem by together UK and Swiss biotechnology consortium with world leaders in cell and gene therapy manufacturing, automation and modelling to implement improvement in the process analytical technology (PAT) used by the industry.
This project will develop new automation to improve the characterisation and control of cell and gene therapy manufacturing processes, ultimately with the goal of making the therapies more affordable and effective.
Usability and ergonomics of wearable robots
Montesnowdon Limited
Wearable robotics represent a rapidly evolving field with great potential from healthcare and rehabilitation to industrial labour, athletic training, and consumer goods. These innovative devices are reshaping the way we approach human mobility, motion augmentation, and overall physical capacity.
Within the medical sector, wearable robotics such as exoskeletons and advanced prosthetics are transforming patient rehabilitation, allowing individuals recovering from accidents or debilitating conditions to regain their mobility. In the industrial domain, exoskeletons are being employed to protect workers from injury and boost productivity by assisting with heavy lifting or repetitive tasks.
Emerging markets also showcase the expanding reach of wearable robotics, with devices designed for athletic performance enhancement and consumer applications beginning to gain traction. These products, offering benefits from fitness improvement to immersive gaming experiences, highlight the breadth of wearable robotics’ potential.
Despite these advancements, the high cost of devices, regulatory hurdles, and issues of social acceptance must be addressed for wearable robotics to achieve widespread adoption and utilization.
As part of our project’s innovative focus, we aim to elevate the ergonomics, aesthetics, and user experience of wearable robotics. Recognizing that a device’s practicality and visual appeal significantly impact user acceptance, we are developing designs that prioritize comfort, ease-of-use, and stylish aesthetics.
By integrating these features, we intend to create a new class of wearable robotics that not only enhance physical capabilities but also seamlessly blend into users’ lifestyles. Our vision centres on symbiotic designs, where wearable robotics become natural, attractive extensions of the user’s body. Through this approach, we aim to revolutionize the wearable robotics landscape, elevating the industry standard and promoting broader societal acceptance.
ML assisted film post production
FilmLight Limited
Machine Learning and AI are showing that efficiency gains and cost savings can be made if these technologies are applied appropriately.
One area where there is still a lot of manual effort is in the post-production or finishing of films, commercials, and television programmes. Here operators need to keep track almost manually of what they’ve done, and what needs doing. There is a lot of drudgery in the loading of the required material for a session, and checking afterwards that a deliverable package contains the ‘right’ versions of all of the files and formats.
By working with Cinegrell PostProduction GmbH and the FHNW research institute, both in Switzerland, we will demonstrate and quantify the time and cost saving made.
Telecom wavelength high-repetition-rate quantum light source
Aegiq Ltd
For numerous emerging quantum technologies, including those in the communication, photonic computing, microscopy and sensing fields, a high-quality source of quantum light is a critical enabling component.
Semiconductor quantum dots have been shown to be exceptional single photon sources in the near infra-red, but a high performance commercial source operating directly in the telecommunications c-band (1530-1565nm), and therefore compatible with existing fibre networks, has yet to be demonstrated.
In this project, the consortium’s goal is to develop a complete field-deployable prototype using quantum dots for the efficient generation of single photons directly in the telecommunications c-band.
We will achieve this by leveraging Aegiq’s expertise to develop fiber-packaged, deterministic sources emitting at 1530-1565nm and capable of operation at up to GHz repetition rates. In parallel, Menhir Photonics and Université de Neuchâtel’s Laboratoire Temps-Fréquence (LTF) will develop a tailored picosecond laser to optically trigger the single photon source, with underlying engineering principles of rugged, reliable and scalable operation. The prototype system will be completed with compact pulse shaping and efficient spectral filtering systems developed within the project.
Project TelQuant will support the development of a new collaborative partnership between Aegiq and Menhir Photonics, while building upon an existing fruitful collaboration between Menhir Photonics and LTF at Université de Neuchâtel. The bilateral consortium envisages significant future commercial growth through the development of products and services for the burgeoning quantum technologies sector.
SENTINEL: securing age estimation and digital IDs against presentation and injection threats
AVID Certification Services Limited
With a tsunami of global legislation demanding that the Internet becomes ‘age-aware’, the demand for online age assurance will continue to grow exponentially. AI-based age estimation, with age discerned from biometric or behavioural features, is a critical means of age assurance, particularly for children and other vulnerable groups without documentation or records. But these methods are increasingly becoming vulnerable to AI-generated attacks, and the perception of vulnerability to them, which could allow users to fake their age online and seriously undermine faith in age assurance technologies.
It is well established that biometric systems are vulnerable to presentation or spoofing attacks (PADs) and injection attacks (IADs). However in the last 12 months, increasingly sophisticated systems available on consumer devices and applications have begun to make it easier for anyone to conduct basic AI generated facial (deepfake) and audio spoof attacks on systems. Indeed, there were over 80 deep fake apps found online in 2023 and they are observed to be improving in quality all the time.
Previous research has been conducted by our Swiss research partner, IDIAP, on various attack vectors and synthetic data, and by AVID on the standardisation of testing. We want to build on this research and advance it to create defences against these attacks, not only for our Swiss Age Verification partner, Privately SA, but also to share the general lessons learnt with the AV industry as a whole through their trade association, the AVPA.
This project will develop technology identifying AI-generated presentation and injection attacks across emerging methods of age assurance, including facial analysis, voiceprint analysis and game play. It will then standardize methods to test the defences AV Providers implement against them.
AVID’s comprehensive testing procedures and state-of-the-art technology will protect the integrity clients of the industry as a whole from allowing inappropriate access to underage users and the legal, commercial and ethical consequences associated with that, while the AVPA consults with other providers in the industry to ensure a joined up response to this threat which could undermine credibility in all forms of online age assurance
This new technology will help provide children enhanced protection from exposure to goods, content or services that may cause them or others harm, and comes at the perfect time as global regulatory changes mandate effective and accurate age assurance systems to protect children from harm.
LOTIS: lidar for detailed inspection of underwater structures
Sonardyne International Limited
High resolution 3D maps are required for an increasing number of key subsea applications from installation and operation of offshore wind energy, asset decommissioning, environmental monitoring, and defence. Quantum photonic detection technologies can offer a step change in the resolution, accuracy, coverage, and speed of generation of these maps compared to existing acoustic or traditional imaging solutions.
The approach proposed in this project differs from other techniques, as it relies on state-of-the-art single photon detection technologies, which allow for three-dimensional imaging with extremely low light level return, typically less than one photon per pixel (in the so-called ‘sparse-photon’ regime), that corresponds to high underwater attenuation.
Single-photon detection is a quantum technology which has recently been exploited for light detection and ranging (LiDAR) applications. One major advantage for underwater imaging is that it is in the ideal spectral region for CMOS SPAD detectors, which have made significant recent advantages in functionality of large efficient SPAD detector arrays.
This project is led by the marine industry and addresses current industry requirements and will utilise SPAD arrays and laser sources for subsea infrastructure mapping. It is expected that the project will lead to other underwater applications. This project will act as a pathfinder to more widespread deployment of single-photon imaging in the subsea inspection and mapping industry.
This project brings together key Industrial and Research institutions with world-class backgrounds to collaboratively develop a commercially viable subsea imaging system based on the time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) imaging technique. The key objective is to deliver a complete imaging system based on novel 2D spatial single photon array detector technology, which can be deployed to a subsea vehicle and robustly generate 3D images and maps at large stand-off distances or high altitude above the sea floor.
ENORMITY: performance benchmark of Ramon Space nustream with Klepsydra AI
Ramon.Space UK Ltd
The industrial research project ENORMITY shall investigate enhanced AI-based data processing on-board satellites and spacecraft. Such data processing requires on one hand radiation hardened (rad-hard) Space computer and storage systems and on the other hand AI software to efficiently process the data on this computer hardware.
The combination of the high-performance rad-hard space computer from Ramon.Space (UK) with the high-performance AI software from Klepsydra (CH) (in collaboration with ETH, CH) will result in new capabilities of satellite systems, such as on-board feature detection and cognitive instrument for Earth Observation satellites, AI based navigation and landing capabilities for planetary missions, and increased autonomy for In-Orbit Service missions.
ENORMITY will enable Space systems to benefit from capabilities AI can provide to autonomous and remote-controlled satellites and spacecraft. Today, satellites cannot fully benefit from AI, as either AI accelerator Integrated Circuits (ICs) are unable to withstand the harsh radiation conditions in space, causing processing errors and re-boots of on-board computers and terminally failing after short lifetime, or the available rad-hard processing ASICs are difficult to program due to their very specific architectures.
ENORMITY will for the first time combine an easy to program and easy-to-use software (SW) framework with powerful rad-hard Space-resilient processors. ENORMITY addresses the growing market of Earth Observation services as well as the nascent market of commercial lunar missions.
In addition, the ENORMITY Hardware and Software (HW/SW) combination will be very useful for future scientific missions for ESA, NASA, JAXA and other Space exploration agencies. ENORMITY also opens the path for new capabilities such as enabling Vision Transformer AI models using the same HW/SW architecture.
CURB: compact urban battery storage system for residential apartments to support demand side response and reduce energy bills by 50%
Allye Energy Limited
With the cost-of-living crisis families are struggling to keep the lights and the elderly are struggling to keep warm in winter. This is the reality facing people in the UK and across Europe as energy bills have surged. Most of the Swiss population live in rented apartments as do an increasing number in the UK, there is little chance they can take advantage of solar technology to help lower bills, which in the last 12 to 18 months have doubled for many.
We live in an increasingly urbanised world. In 2021, 38.9 % of the EU population were living in a city. Europe’s level of urbanisation is expected to increase to approximately 83.7% in 2050. This places a challenge on services, properties and local infrastructure. As more people live in apartments, due to the cost of rent and a squeeze on incomes, the strain on the energy network increases as local electricity demand increases.
At the same time, the grid is already under strain. The UK aims to fully decarbonise the power sector by 2035 through the installation of renewable energy sources including wind and solar. The challenge with renewables is the intermittency of supply and matching that to demand. It requires a significant investment increase in grid infrastructure to cope with increasing urbanisation and the balancing of supply and demand of electricity.
This project aims to develop cutting-edge home energy storage technology that will enable the installation of sophisticated, compact, movable battery systems in apartments and houses to smooth out the demand curves for consumers thereby reducing their bills by over 50%. Smart batteries could also provide a range of balancing services, primarily extra storage, for the grid to reduce costs and decarbonise the grid at a faster rate.
The technology could reduce consumer electricity bills paid by 50% saving £1200 a year or more for a typical four-person usage (based on typical usage data and current costs for electricity).
This bilateral project between Allye in the UK, Negal in Switzerland, and OST, a Swiss research institute, will create a ultra-efficient bi-directional AC-DC converter using technology generated in Switzerland, plus a sophisticated battery system incorporating machine learning which will be designed and built in the UK, has the potential to bring down the cost of energy across the country with a specific focus on apartments and small homes (including renters), while helping to accelerate decarbonisation of the electricity grid.
Ultra-scalable clock and carrier sychronisation for optical and wireless networks using sequentially-locked optical frequency combs
British Telecommunications Public Limited Company
All telecommunications systems, which transmit data from device to device, whether through optical fibre between continents or through the air between mobile phones and radio masts, fundamentally rely on:
- carrier synchronisation, determining the frequency used to send the data (whether that be visible, microwaves, or radio waves)
- clock synchronisation, determining the data transmission rate
Consequently, both types of synchronisation are critical to modern telecommunications system performance. Additionally, clock and carrier synchronisation is key to accurate time synchronisation, which is essential for synchronising the UK’s critical national infrastructure (CNI), including power stations in the National Grid, our railways and our mobile and broadband networks.
Our proposal aims to address a key issue impacting the UK’s CNI. Our CNI is currently clock synchronised by global satellite navigation systems (GNSSs), such as GPS and Galileo. This is a major vulnerability. Synchronisation provided by GNSSs may be lost due to solar storms, cyberattacks, jamming or volcanic ash obstruction. An alternative is to distribute highly accurate clocks through our existing optical fibre infrastructure. However, this brings two major research challenges:
- scalability: a single highly accurate clock can currently only reach up to about 1000 endpoints
- optical fibre variation: distribution of clocks through optical fibre introduces inaccuracy due to variation of the fibre medium due to, for example, temperature change
There is also a major commercial challenge of how to address research these two challenges at low cost.
To address these challenges, we propose using coupled optical frequency combs, which each output a ‘comb’ of light of different frequencies, all synchronised together. In this approach, thousands of comb frequencies from a central extremely high clock accuracy but expensive comb each synchronise a downstream inexpensive optical frequency comb through 100 km optical fibre.
These downstream optical frequency combs each have thousands of comb frequencies of their own, each of which clock synchronise an endpoint, allowing synchronisation of millions of endpoints from the central highly accurate frequency comb, addressing the scalability challenge.
We address the optical fibre variation challenge by exploring new digital methods of measuring and compensating for the optical fibre medium variation. We address the cost challenge by exploring the miniaturisation of ultra-fast laser-based optical frequency combs.
We would demonstrate our approach in a field trial optical fibre link between an extremely accurate optical frequency comb hosted by BT and low-cost ultra-fast laser-based frequency combs hosted at UCL and developed by Menhir Photonics.
PHILARIS: probing by heavy ions and lasers for an assessment of radiation-hardness in integrated semiconductors
Radtest Ltd
Single-event effects occur when one highly energetic space radiation particle, such as a cosmic ray, hits an electronic chip and causes it to malfunction or even be destroyed. Designers of rad hard devices strive to counter these effects by testing in large particle accelerators but there is insufficient beam time to go round and this slows down developments and increases risk for missions.
Using a pulsed laser has recently been shown to deliver similar effects on a device and the aim of this project is to demonstrate the effectiveness of the technique for a real space application.
By bringing together a leading radiation test house and manufacturer of laser test systems, a designer of complex rad-hard semiconductors and a respected cyclotron irradiation facility, this project provides a rare opportunity for the industry to make a significant step forward in the field of radiation effects.
Establishing laser testing as a viable option during the development of rad-hard semiconductors will speed up developments, reduce risk and allow the facilities to be used for the final verification of successful products, rather than random tests.
Combining two unique AI platforms for the discovery of novel genetic therapeutic targets and preclinical validation of synthetic biomolecules to treat Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML)
AMPLY Discovery Limited
This project is focused on the discovery of first-in-class drug candidates for the treatment of Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) based on a novel approach to identifying novel genetic targets.
AML is a high-risk hematologic malignancy with a high unmet need. Limited treatment options exist, particularly for patients who are ineligible for intensive chemotherapy or experience relapse. AML is rare, making up around 1% of all cancers. In the UK around 3,100 patients will be diagnosed with AML in 2023 (CRUK).
Incidence rates are typically higher for those over 45. Mortality in older patients is high, around 2,700 patients in the UK will die annually from AML. The five-year relative survival rate for people over twenty with AML is 28%. Poor outcomes due to drug resistance and relapse is common in patients with AML.
This project will combine the unique AI-based bioinformatics platforms and expertise of two SMEs, based in the UK and Switzerland, to tackle the problem of AML using AI, machine learning and synthetic biology to advance new disease understanding, novel target identification, and novel drug discovery.
Novel techniques of percutaneous sonography – guided surgical operations (SonoSurgery)
Sovereign Medical Ltd
A Swiss company, Spirecut, has developed an innovative way to treat carpal tunnel and trigger finger using patented instruments (Sono-Instruments) and an incisionless technique conducted under ultrasound. Patients can be treated in an outpatient clinic in under 10 minutes, with no stitches and can resume normal activities immediately.
In the current climate, with great strain on NHS resources and growing waiting lists for routine operations (over seven million on NHS waiting list), this novel technique has the potential to reduce costs, improve NHS efficiency and get patients back to work faster, helping the economy post-Covid. In this project, a collaborative UK-Swiss team will work to extend the Spirecut approach to other patient groups.
The UK distributor of the Sono-Instruments, Sovereign Medical and health economists at the University of Southampton will work in partnership with Spirecut in Switzerland to conduct research on the extension of this technology for other conditions, such as Dupuytren disease, De Quervain and tennis elbow.
Sovereign Medical will lead on recruiting to a joint UK-Swiss panel of expert advisors, including orthopaedic surgeons and interventional radiologists, who will assess suitability of the Spirecut technology these additional uses. The advisory group deliberations and consultations with a wider group of clinicians in a Delphi exercise will be used to assess the technical feasibility of the potential indications, and the economic impact that adopting these techniques would have on health services and medical innovation.
The health economic team at Southampton will develop a model to aid decision making about further research and investment. The model will provide estimates of market value for each indication from a commercial perspective and estimates of budget impact and cost-effectiveness for the NHS. These estimates will be based on published information, real-world evidence sources and expert opinion, and will be updated as results from the Swiss clinical studies become available.
This will provide a foundation for a future submission to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) with the aim of obtaining a recommendation for NHS adoption.
Innovations in SiC power MOSFET gate technology through the use of ALD oxides
Oxford Instruments
Silicon carbide (SiC) power metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) are being widely adopted in electric vehicle (EV) power conversion applications. After adoption by Tesla, Hyundai, and many other OEMs, SiC MOSFETs have been proven a more efficient alternative to legacy silicon power devices, leading to the rapid expansion of the SiC industry.
Hitachi Energy Switzerland (Hitachi) has a proven track record of developing automotive grade SiC power MOSFETs with a reputation for products with novel MOS interfaces. Oxford Instruments Plasma Technology (OIPT) have developed a novel oxide deposition process that uses a remote plasma source in a commercial atomic layer deposition (ALD) system.
It was demonstrated that this process is highly suitable for the formation of gate oxides in wide bandgap semiconductors. A research team at the University of Warwick (UoW) has recently developed an ALD silicon dioxide (SiO2) deposition process on SiC that has the potential to be commercialised. This project will bring together the three groups and their relative expertise to demonstrate the potential of ALD oxides in the formation of EV-grade 1.2 kV SiC MOSFETs.
The motivation behind this project is to address one of the most pressing issues in the adaptation of this technique by fundamentally changing the way of forming a crucial part of the device, the gate oxide. Conventional dielectric and SiC interfaces are suffering from high density of defect states, hampering the further uptake of this technology.
This proof-of-concept project will demonstrate the viability and advantages of utilising ALD deposited oxides (SiO2 and high-k dielectrics such as aluminium oxide, Al2O3) in a commercial SiC MOSFET device.
Key outputs of the project will include:
- the first demonstration of a commercially relevant planar 1.2 kV SiC MOSFET that contains OIPT’s remote plasma ALD-deposited silicon dioxide (SiO2) and high-k dielectric (for example Al2O3) gate oxides
- a demonstration of the excellent interface quality (for example high channel mobilities due to low density of interface traps) in these structures through extraction of key performance indicators such as specific on-resistance or channel mobilities
- demonstration of process benefits by benchmarking with existing commercial products
- long-term reliability testing on the demonstrator MOSFETs will demonstrate whether the ALD oxides remain stable over the lifetime of a commercial automotive semiconductor product
- integration of the novel ALD oxidation process into a research-grade trench MOS capacitor and trench MOSFET structure
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