Member Article

Nanotechnology firm borrow academic brains

The University of Southampton has formed a Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Hampshire-based Covesion.

The nanotechnology company will receive Tom Butcher, from the University’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), to work with CTO, Corin Gawith to improve manufacturing efficiency.

Mark Middleton, Managing Director of Covesion explains, “The NanoKTN is a great source of information with an easily accessible network of skills that we use as an extension to our business.

“One of the key advantages of the NanoKTN is that with their varying sets of experiences and expertise, they have an unrivalled knowledge base and have been very important partners in the growth of our company. One such example is helping us to secure this KTP with the University of Southampton and facilitating the deal for us.

“We found Tom through recommendations based on his specialist technology expertise from the ORC, which is very relevant to the products we are trying to develop at Covesion. Working with the NanoKTN we discovered that it would be a good idea to work with him on a KTP. This gave us a number of attractive benefits over and above just employing a new member of staff.”

Dr Alec Reader, Director of the NanoKTN added: “We are delighted to have been of help to Covesion. KTPs are an excellent way to help organisations improve their performance or business operations and the partnerships bring together the best resources from academia and industry to benefit all.

“The NanoKTN’s aim is to encourage collaboration and knowledge transfer between key players in industry and academia to support the UK supply chain and to create the continued economic wealth for UK industry.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .