NBIC Annual Report 2023
The National Biofilms Innovation Centre (NBIC) Annual Report 2023 is now available to download. This report covers our key achievements to date and our future plans.
Foreword – A few words from our CEO, Professor Jo Slater-Jefferies
In December 2022, the National Biofilms Innovation Centre (NBIC) received additional funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Innovate UK to continue our important work. NBIC remains focused on supporting and connecting the industrial and academic biofilm community across the UK and with our international partners. We judge ourselves by our ability to harness and translate the capability, knowledge and technology in the prevention, detection, management and engineering of biofilms across the UK.
In last year’s report I stated that, “we believe we are having significant impact across all these dimensions”. This year I can report the extent of this impact. NBIC’s total economic impact has been calculated as part of an external economic impact assessment to be £204m over the first 4 years of our operations. NBIC’s intent remains to behave in a national, inclusive and transparent way to benefit our community. This year we will be launching a membership scheme for industry partners and we will bring in additional academic partners that share our desire to collaborate and connect with over 260 companies, which we continue to engage with across a range of sectors.
Over the next year we will deliver some of our ambitious plans in our three key pillars:
NBIC ANNUAL REPORT 2023
Research
Our funding has allowed us to continue to support our cohort of Interdisciplinary Research Fellows (IRFs) across our four core universities. They are all actively engaged in a mixture of underpinning research and projects with industry partners.
Innovation
We will launch our first Proof of Concept/translational funding call and will continue to provide a unique forum for accelerating academic-industry partnerships to allow biofilm research approaches to be translated into innovation across multiple sectors. We are working with regulatory bodies to enable the development of standards that enable claims for biofilm-focused products.
Training
We continue to build our cohort of PhD students across our four core universities for whom we are running a core Doctoral Training Centre in Biofilms Innovation, Technology and Engineering (BITE). In October 2021, BBSRC awarded NBIC’s Industrial Advisory Board an annual allocation of funds from their Collaborative Training Partnerships (CTP) scheme to support interdisciplinary PhD studentships. The CTP scheme is a doctoral training programme directed at industrial research challenges and delivered by consortia led by businesses in collaboration with research organisations. Our call for project applications is currently open, so if you are interested, please visit our website to find out more.
It is very clear that everyone involved in biofilms across the UK remains jointly committed to our vision of delivering both breakthrough science and technologies to control and exploit biofilms, and to inspire the next generation of research leaders and entrepreneurs.
Publication date: 08/09/2023. Author: The National Biofilms Innovation Centre. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5258/biofilms/012