SIN help launch the UK and China’s biggest research & innovation funding competition yet

As I write, 17 universities, research organisations and companies will be wending their weary way back to the UK after a week in Jiangsu and Guangdong that will hopefully remain an affectionate and inspiring memory for decades to come. It could be that they have found their partners in China that will develop and launch a ground-breaking technology that will become both global and disruptive. They will certainly remember the hospitality and camaraderie – hosts, the Ministry of Science & Technology (MoST) and the governments of Jiangsu and Guangdong looked after the delegation so well. It may sound something of a cliché, but the atmosphere was such that I believe true friendships will result.

With £16 million up for grabs from the Newton Fund Research & Innovation Bridges call, there are bound to be no shortage of bids. Innovate UK and MoST are expecting a healthy crop of bids by the first deadline in March. The effectiveness of the technology partnering events in Nanjing, Wuxi, Guangzhou and Shenzhen were without doubt the most efficient I have experienced to date. Key to that has been the hard work and pre-profiling of potential partners carried out by the Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) in the UK, and the Jiangsu International Technology Transfer Centre (JITTC) and its Guangdong equivalent in China. I am personally grateful to Nee-joo Teh and Jess Sully from the KTN in Cambridge, and Mr Wang Yu at JITTC for their seriously hard work in making this such a value-adding event. Happily, we should be able to reciprocate by supporting Wang Yu when he takes a return delegation to the UK in June. All good signs of Jiangsu’s (and China’s) relationship in innovation developing rapidly in this golden year.

So, will the next big breakthrough be a therapy to conquer COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), or to beat cancer on a truly personalised basis rather than the generalised treatments currently in use, or to manufacture on demand tissues and implants? Will it be retro-fitting China’s built environment to save £billions in energy costs, or revolutionising transport infrastructure in China’s and the world’s mega-cities? A bit too early to tell. But watch out for those UK-Chinese companies in a few years’ time. It might be worth investing in a few shares…