Partnerships for Success: Human Security and Research Impact Conference

The Partnership hosted a conference in London on Monday 16 March 2015 to celebrate the launch of the Academic Marketplace, an online gateway to research with commercial promise.

The Academic Marketplace, developed in collaboration with the Security and Resilience Industry Suppliers Community (RISC), aims to support the delivery of new security products and services from researchers in the United Kingdom.

It enables academic researchers to showcase their work and highlight its significance to the security and resilience sector. The Marketplace currently features almost 40 projects across the areas of Countering Radicalisation; Cybersecurity; Identity Management; Intelligence Analysis; Security Assessments and Modelling; and Threat Imaging and Sensing.

The conference, entitled Partnerships for Success: Human Security and Research Impact, brought together more than 70 representatives from government, industry, business, civil society and academia, including members of the Academic Marketplace.

Through keynote presentations and panel sessions, delegates were encouraged to share insights and advice in order to maximise the success of academic researchers seeking to transform their work into products and services that will help make the world a safer place.

Presentations at the conference focused on the process of commercialising research, entrepreneurial skills, investor relations and product design and branding.

A panel discussion exploring public sector innovation was chaired by Chris Hankin, Director of the Institute for Security Science and Technology at Imperial College London with panel members Mat Hunter of the Design Council, Andy Nicholson of the Centre for Defence Enterprise, Chris Rampton of the Security Innovation and Demonstration Centre and Robin Williamson of the Defence and Security Knowledge Transfer Network.

A second panel discussion provided practical insights from investors and entrepreneurs. It was chaired by Mark Phillips of ADS with panel members Bruce Beckloff of Bloc Ventures, Elisabetta Zaccaria of CyberY, Martin Gill of Perpetuity Research and Sandy Westwater of PilotLite Ventures.

The conference concluded with a Dragons Den, which provided Academic Marketplace members the unique opportunity to pitch their ideas to a panel of experts, including Nadia Crandall of Harvard Business School Angels, Tom Ilube of Crossword Cybersecurity, Robert Wardrop of Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance and Peter Cowley of the Marlet Fund. The challenge was designed to support academics in overcoming some of the challenges they face in commercialising their research and bidding for funding.

Six members of the Academic Marketplace took part in the Dragons Den challenge:

Alan Johnston of University College London presented Facial Motion Analysis;
Fabian Campbell-West of Queens University Belfast presented LIOPA;
Gavin McWilliams of Queens University Belfast presented Physical Unclonable Functions;
Mike Jackson and David Park of the University of Nottingham presented Geospatial and Positioning Intelligence;
Richard Hartley of Cambridge Judge Business School presented Cytora; and
Jiangshan Yu and Mihai Ordean of the University of Birmingham presented CT-Mail.

Richard Hartley was awarded First Prize for his work on Cytora, Fabian Campbell-West was awarded Second Prize for LIOPA and Alan Johnston took Third Prize for Facial Motion Analysis. Fabian Campbell-West was also awarded People’s Choice.

Summary Report

Read the Summary Report which captures discussions and key recommendations from the conference.

What Participants Said

I found the conference to be both interesting and inspiring.

The sessions were very valuable and I gained many insights on the challenges faced by academics in this area.

It was an excellent conference. I’m very grateful for all I learnt and you have helped us onto a new pathway. We can now scale up.

The conference made it clear how hard the journey ahead is, but at the same time it’s motivated me to push forward.

Video

You can watch a highlights video from the conference using the player below. Please note, the views expressed in this video are those of the individuals and not necessarily the views of the organisations they represent.

Audio Recordings

You can listen to a selection of presentations from the conference using the player below. Please note, the views expressed in these recordings are those of the individuals and not necessarily the views of the organisations they represent.