b'ForewordThe National Biofilms Innovation Centre (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. We believe we are having significant impact acrossof these. In November 2021, we held our Biofilm all of these dimensions. As you will see in this report,Prevention workshop. This provided a unique forum NBICs intent remains to behave in a national, inclusivefor accelerating academic-industry partnerships to and transparent way to benefit our community. It wasallow prevention-based research approaches to be wonderful to see many of our academic and industrytranslated into innovation across multiple sectors. partners at our All Partner meeting in November 2021.With our partners at SETsquared we launched the first This was an opportunity for the NBIC community to review progress, successes, and challenges since ourBiofilms ICURe Sprint in March 2022. This programme is formation in December 2017, and to discuss how the UKdedicated solely to research teams developing biofilm biofilm community can continue to leverage its strength. innovations. Our first cohort have recently completed the programme and we look forward to seeing how the I am delighted that our membership has further grownteams develop their technologies.to 63 UK research institutions, and that these academic partners share our desire to collaborate and connectTRAINING with the (approximately) 250 companies; which weWe continue to build our cohort of PhD students across continue to engage with across a range of sectors. our four core universities for whom we are running a This year NBIC applied for further funding to build on itscore Doctoral Training Programme (BITE). In October collective strengths as the UKs national centre to drive2021 BBSRC awarded NBICs Industrial Advisory Board and expand its global leadership at the internationalan annual allocation of funds from their Collaborative forefront of research, training, standardisation andTraining Partnerships (CTP) scheme to support innovation in biofilm technologies, addressing the grandinterdisciplinary PhD studentships. The CTP scheme is challenges important to the UKs future prosperity. Wea doctoral training programme directed at industrial look forward to communicating the outcome of theresearch challenges, and delivered by consortia application and launching our next phase in 2023. led by businesses in collaboration with research We continue to deliver ambitious plans in our three keyorganisations. pillars:It is very clear that everyone involved in biofilms across RESEARCH the UK remains jointly committed to our vision of Our funding has allowed us to continue to supportdelivering both breakthrough science and technologies our cohort of Interdisciplinary Research Fellows (IRFs)to control and exploit biofilms, and to inspire the next across our four core universities. They are all activelygeneration of research leaders and entrepreneurs. engaged in a mixture of underpinning research and projects with industry partners. In June 2022, the NBICIn April 2022, Dr Mark Richardson stepped down as International Scientific Advisory Board evaluated ourthe CEO of NBIC. Marks dedication and commitment progress, future plans and the undertaken science,to NBIC and our principles has been instrumental deeming NBIC as, world-leading, delivering excellencein our successes. The Executive Management Team, in research, innovation and training. Operational Team and NBIC Governance Boards would INNOVATION like to thank Mark for his part in building NBIC to the Out of the 83 Proof of Concept Projects awarded, 62world-leading organisation that it is today.have now completed and we are working with the- PROFESSOR JO SLATER-JEFFERIES, NBIC academic and industry partners to capture the impactOPERATIONS DIRECTOR, AUGUST 20223'