Transnational R&D funding

The Technology Strategy Board (TSB) is to invest nearly £4m in 18 British small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to help facilitate research-and-development (R&D) ties with partners across

.

The British companies will link with partners from 17 different European countries to undertake R&D in areas including biotechnology and healthcare, transport, energy and electronics.

Graham Mobbs, European operations manager at the TSB, said: ‘The Eurostars programme is the first European funding and support programme to be specifically dedicated to small and medium-sized companies. It seeks to overcome one of the major barriers to high-quality transnational research and development led by SMEs – the lack of guaranteed public-sector funding.’

One of the projects to be funded through the Eurostars programme is Maritime Carbon Capture and Storage (Maritime CCS), in which the UK partner is London-based Process Systems Enterprise.

The TSB will invest more than £300,000 in this project, which is aimed at developing and screening alternative designs for carbon capture and storage (CCS) on board ships in transit, investigating the chemical capture of CO₂ and its temporary storage until discharge at a port.

The TILACSys (Through-Ice Location and Communication System) is a Eurostars project that will see Wireless Fibre Systems partner a Norwegian company.

The project, which is to receive nearly £450,000 of TSB investment, will involve the development of a wireless system capable of locating and communicating with autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).

According to the TSB, TILACSys will enable a surface vessel, helicopter or unmanned aerial vehicle to communicate with the AUV through the ice. The system is said to offer major benefits to polar operations in the environmental, oil-and-gas and security sectors.