Centre for Global Eco-Innovation Funding now available 

The £9.8M Centre for Global Eco-Innovation is a partnership between the Universities of Liverpool and Lancashire and an international commercialisation consultancy, Inventya Ltd.  They have recently received funds from ERDF to assist eco-innovation in SMEs within the North West.  The project will last until September 2015 in which time they will assist at least 285 companies. (Further details can be found here).

Over the next few weeks they are looking for 50 3-year research project ideas from SMEs in the region that will have an environmental benefit and will result in a new product, process or service that the business can commercialise, preferably with export potential.  These 50 projects will all start in September 2012 and continue until September 2015 (they are keen to recruit ASAP). Chemistry and chemical engineering are areas they are looking to improve collaboration with industry in. 

The Centre will match the required academic expertise at either Liverpool or Lancaster Universities or both if necessary, and recruit graduates to undertake the research.  The graduates will be paid £16k per year by through the funding.  All it will cost the business is £4k pa for PhD registration fees (i.e. £12k in total over the 3 years).  These are ineligible through ERDF funds. 

The application procedure is pretty straightforward comprising of a brief Expression of Interest to allow to expertise match, followed by a full application written by the academics, the SME, with assistance from a project business manager. 

There are some existing example projects on the website http://www.cgeinnovation.org/projects/ which have already been approved. These give a good indication of the range of projects they are looking for.

If you have any further questions on this please contact Dr Matt Fulton at the Centre for Global Eco Innovation on mfulton@liv.ac.uk