Avenue Spring 2021

Successful collaborations with business

Four UofG projects have been shortlisted for the Scottish Knowledge Exchange Awards 2021. The awards celebrate and recognise the exceptional impact achieved through academic and business partnerships.

Powerful partnerships

Professor Fiona Macpherson and Dr Neil McDonnell from the Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience have been shortlisted in the Powerful Partnerships category for their collaboration with leading Scottish immersive technology company Sublime. They have created ‘Edify’, a virtual reality learning platform that allows students to access the benefits of virtual reality teaching from their own homes. The project catalysed a new company and has already created 21 new jobs.

CENSIS, the Scottish Innovation Centre for sensing, imaging and the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, which is hosted by UofG, has also been shortlisted in the Powerful Partnerships category. Working in collaboration with Thales UK, the University of West of Scotland and Police Scotland, the project has developed ground-breaking artificial intelligence technology, which could save lives by identifying missing and vulnerable people.

Multiparty collaboration

The Scotland 5G Centre is a finalist in the Multiparty Collaboration category. The Centre’s founding partners, University of Glasgow, University of Strathclyde and Scottish Futures Trust, have brought together industry, the research community and Scottish Government to accelerate the deployment and adoption of 5G in Scotland.

COVID-19 collaboration

A new award category this year will celebrate those who collaborated in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, either in the medical and health battle against the disease or the ongoing economic recovery.

The Lighthouse Laboratory in Glasgow, hosted by the University at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital Campus, has been shortlisted in this category. This major COVID-19 testing facility, operated on behalf of the UK Government to support the national COVID-19 response, was established with BioAscent and the University of Dundee, and subsequently developed and managed by the University in collaboration with high-throughput industry experts BioClavis. The Lighthouse Lab recently reached a significant milestone, processing over 10 million tests, phenomenal achievement in supporting the country’s national COVID-19 testing effort, in Scotland and across the UK.