Events in Physics
Call opens 9th January 2017, briefing event 12th January.
The aim of this competition is to help companies overcome intractable product, manufacturing or process performance problems through advanced measurement and analytical technologies. The ultimate aim is to improve companies’ overall performance and productivity.
We are looking to fund projects that can show the negative business impact of an existing process or product variability.
Examples of the types of business problems include, but are not limited to:
- poorly understood structure and properties of emerging technology products where the business impact is high
- undesirable variation in product or process performance, where the root cause is not understood, but the negative business impact is high
- repeated unexplained product failures
- lack of precision in composition measurement or flow of multi-component systems, or processes
- lack of detailed understanding of structure, mechanism or function, preventing further product enhancements
The latest analytical technologies and data analysis approaches may be able to identify the root causes of problems. They may also be able to enhance control measures for products or processes.
Examples of technologies that could be made available under the scheme include, but are not limited to:
- ultra-sensitive elemental and chemical structure analysis techniques
- dimensional measurement of complex or miniaturised parts
- non-destructive inspection technologies and engineering measurements
- ultra-trace nucleic acid detection technologies
- next generation sequencing technologies
- advanced hyphenated mass spectrometry tools and techniques
- ultra-precise flow measurement of complex fluids
- advanced imaging tools and techniques
- analysis and modelling requiring novel sequential or parallel processing approaches
- environmental measurements
- electromagnetic technologies
- other technologies, as recommended by an expert panel
At stage 1, applicants do not need to know what analysis or measurement is required, or how to do it. They do need to have a commitment to work with one of our 4 co-funding partners; Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC), National Physical Laboratory (NPL), LGC or NEL; to overcome their business challenges.