NBIC's Mission

Translating Biofilm Research Into Innovative Solutions

Driving global leadership in biofilm research, training, and innovation by tackling key challenges crucial to the UK’s future prosperity.

research partners

Industry Partnerships

Our Vision

The National Biofilms Innovation Centre (NBIC) merges world-class interdisciplinary research with industry partnerships to advance biofilm science and technology. We aim to establish a pioneering national centre by uniting the initial core partner universities (Edinburgh, Liverpool, Nottingham, and Southampton) and a partnership that has now expanded to include 59 research institutions and over 260 companies. We are committed to fostering inclusive collaboration with new companies and research institutions to drive breakthrough innovations in biofilm control and exploitation.

A Centre for Innovation & Knowledge

The National Biofilms Innovation Centre (NBIC) is an Innovation and Knowledge Centre (IKC) funded by the BBSRC and Innovate UK. At NBIC, we connect biofilm specialists across the UK and provide a platform for our research and development partners to address their unmet needs through collaboration with our academics.

Addressing Challenges & Unmet Needs

Biofilms are central to our most important global challenges, such as antimicrobial resistance, food safety, and water security, which impact our economy, society, and environment. Launched in 2017, NBIC aims to tackle these issues by uniting top UK researchers and businesses to transform biofilm research into innovative solutions.

Ambitions

Microbial biofilms have a global impact across multiple industrial sectors, valued in excess of $5tn per annum. NBIC will capitalise on its role as the UK’s national centre and deploy its interdisciplinary research power, critical mass, connected infrastructure and energised innovation ecosystem to deliver future ambitions.

UK Biofilms Programme

NBIC will collectively drive a UK Biofilms Programme to tackle the biggest open research and innovation questions in the field and deliver global leadership and breakthrough science and innovation to Prevent, Detect, Manage and Engineer (PDME) biofilms.

Policy Parterships

NBIC will enter into active partnerships with government and policy makers to deliver step-changes in standards and regulations for novel biofilm solutions.

Global Leadership

NBIC will assume global leadership via enhanced interactions with established global centres, while nucleating new relationships and networks with countries with rapidly expanding economic and healthcare challenges.

Training the Next Generation

NBIC will educate and train the next generation of leaders and entrepreneurs by delivering a co-created programme of training that addresses key skills gaps identified by our industrial and academic communities.

Driving Innovation and Growth

NBIC will accelerate and translate knowledge-rich solutions to industry and the market via academic-industry collaborations, driving innovation and growth in multiple industrial sectors, nucleating new industries and spin-outs, and contributing to the Place agenda via close engagement with regional partners.

Active Consultation

NBIC’s delivery and ambitions will remain agile, informed by active consultation across academia, industry and end users, alongside evolving national and global priorities and challenges.

Our Four Strategic Themes

NBIC addresses four strategic themes: Prevent, Detect, Manage, and Engineer biofilms. By leveraging world-class research and infrastructure, NBIC tackles sectoral challenges identified with industry partners. Our Interdisciplinary Research Fellows support fundamental research and training strategies and conduct focused proof-of-concept collaborative industry projects.