About the partners

Bretagne Valorisation

Founded in 2006, Bretagne Valorisation is an organisation that brings together Technology Transfer Offices from six Higher Education Organisations: four Brittany universities (Universitè de Rennes 1, Rennes 2, Bretagne Occidentale and Bretagne-Sud) - and three engineering schools (Ecole Nationale Supèririeure de Chimie de Rennes, Institut National des Sciences Appliquèes de Rennes, Agrocampus-Ouest and Ecole Normale Supèrieure de Cachan - Antenne de Bretagne).

Acting as an interface between researchers and their socio-economic partners, Bretagne Valorisation represents the prime route for depositing patents in Brittany and offers a professional environment dedicated to technology and knowledge transfer, innovative project maturation and collaborative research. Bretagne Valorisation technology transfer officers analyse companies needs, offer them appropriate products and/or services, put them in contact with researchers and follow-up the partnership process.

Bretagne Valorisation deals with four main activities: Collaborative research: developing academia-industry research partnerships; Intellectual Property: developing and managing the IP portfolio; Technology and knowledge transfer: patent licensing, knowledge transfer to industry, supporting start-up creations; European projects: developing European partnerships.

Ifremer

Ifremer is a French public institute of industrial and commercial nature created in 1984 and placed under the joint supervision of the Ministry in charge of Higher Education and Research, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Ministry of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Town and Country Planning.

Key figures:

an annual budget of 235 million euros
employees on 31 December 2007: Ifremer 1537; Genavir (ship manager) 376
5 centres (Brest, Manche/mer du Nord, Mèditerranèe, Nantes, Tahiti)
26 locations along the entire coastline of metropolitan France and in French overseas departments and territories
8 oceanographic vessels (4 of them blue ocean)
1 manned submersible (- 6,000 m)
1 deep-sea Remotely-Operated Vehicle (- 6,000 m)
2 Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (- 3,000 m)
a complete range of underwater equipment
a set of aquaculture rearing and experimental facilities
a full set of testing facilities

Activities:

monitoring, use and development of coastal seas

monitoring and optimization of aquaculture resources

promoting scientific knowledge on resources for sustainable fishing

exploration, knowledge and exploitation of ocean floor and its biodiversity

circulation and marine ecosystems: mechanisms, trends and forecasting

managing facilities, vessels and equipment for oceanography

As the French research institute for exploitation of the sea, Ifremer contributes, through studies and expert assessments, to knowledge about the ocean and its resources, monitoring of marine and coastal zones and the sustainable development of maritime activities. To these ends, it designs and operates observational, experimental and monitoring tools and facilities. Ifremer manages the French ocean research fleet and oceanographic databases on behalf of the entire scientific community.

Ifremer conveys and commercialises its research results to society at large and more particularly to the economic sector. Many different fields of industry benefit from the institute's know-how and competence: coastal and deep sea environment, underwater intervention, telecommunication, defence, offshore and oil industry, food industry, fishing and aquaculture, chemistry, cosmetics industry, health.

Marine South East

Marine South East is the regional marine initiative of the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) and was established in 2004 to address the needs of the marine sector in the South East of England, which employs over 105,000 people and has a turnover exceeding €7 billion.

The sector includes activities in leisure marine, commercial and offshore equipment, ports and shipping, marine services and contracting, ship building and repair, trade associations, research, education and training.

Marine South East sponsors key regional events and its website has been developed to support its members by providing a searchable database of regional marine companies, access to the latest research and technical reports, details of tender opportunities and links to support organisations.

Marine South East identifies projects of strategic importance to the sector's growth and works with sector teams and overseas and UK partners to support increased economic development of the marine sector in South East England, targeting activities that seek to achieve progress towards the following key goals:

Productivity improvement
Generating support for businesses and driving down unit costs, especially through innovation and workforce skills
Enhanced market access
Ensuring businesses can access well-targeted support to enable access to high-value world markets
Promotion of the whole industry
Generating an understanding within the public sector of marine industrial capability and economic significance, supported by an appropriate evidence base

University of Plymouth

Marine Institute

The Marine Institute was formed by the University of Plymouth in 2006 to consolidate the ongoing marine activities in the Faculties of Science, Technology and Social Science and Business into a coherent programme.

The Institute operates under a multidisciplinary science and technology plan to offer innovative solutions to the difficult issues facing stakeholders, including matters relating to today's seas and coasts. It builds on core research strengths, a policy of collaboration and an active knowledge transfer and innovation function. Its activities include holistic research encompassing catchments, coasts and shelf seas

The Institute aims to foster a thriving, interdisciplinary research community with world class capability, and through knowledge transfer, enable sustainable stewardship of seas and coasts and their natural resources, whilst developing existing University of Plymouth partnerships, particularly through the marine science cluster in Plymouth, and enhancing external and international links with stakeholders and other organisations.

The Institute embraces 150 academic staff and approximately 200 PhD students. Additionally, there are large and active research and masters student communities working across a wide range of marine subject areas. The Marine Institute also boasts a dedicated team responsible for knowledge transfer and innovation, with over 20 years project development and management experience, particularly in the coordination of and participation in EU Framework, INTERREG, ESF and ERDF programmes.

University of Exeter

Exeter is a research led top 10 UK university with campuses in Devon and Cornwall. The academic and administrative departments are organised into Academic Schools and Professional Services. Some of the schools cover a single discipline, for example Biosciences, and some cover several inter-related disciplines, for example Arts, Languages and Literatures.

The University secured new research funding of £48 million last year. It will add a further £83 million per annum to the economy by 2012 bringing the total to just under £400 million per annum. Research centres bring added benefits through collaborative and cross-disciplinary expertise. These areas of interdisciplinary research bring staff from Schools across the University together to tackle some of the most fundamental issues of the 21st century, from human as well as physical perspectives, and seek innovative solutions. The University has strength of depth in these areas which are closely aligned with international research priorities from climate change to conflicts in the Middle East.

The Research & Knowledge Transfer (RKT) team manages the University's RKT strategy and linked investments such as the science strategy. It also coordinates links with business and key project partners and provides intelligence and early warning of new initiatives, national and international developments and the priorities of the major funding bodies.

RKT offer a project management service for all academic schools and their partners to help them develop and handle large-scale collaborations, particularly across different disciplines and funding bodies. The team help the schools with proposals and support for EU funded projects, international projects, contract research, collaborative studentships, and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships. In 2008-09 RKT worked on more than 500 projects worth over £150m.

RKT help structure and manage commercial partnerships, joint ventures and commercial consultancy. We also manage the University's intellectual property policy and have specialist development capabilities in the exploitation of intellectual property and can introduce funding and development partners to help launch new ideas.

The eXeter centre for Strategic Processes and Operations (XSPO) is a Research Centre within the University of Exeter Business School. The centre's team, comprising permanent staff and Research Fellows, draw on extensive experience from research and consultancy projects in the UK, Europe and the USA. The Centre is research-led and aims to develop new knowledge in Business Process Management and Knowledge Management and to disseminate this research to companies in the form of joint research projects, bespoke executive education and consultancy support.

There are four main themes to the research:

identifying the relationship between managing processes and customer satisfaction
developing a set of rules and guidance for improved process design
linking value creation and process design to generate increased revenue
developing strategies for business process outsourcing
In each of these themes the team works closely with both commercial and public organisations. Their aim is to publish the research in leading academic journals and crucially to inform practice in organisations through executive education and consultancy.