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Inspiring innovations

The UK’s excellent science base supports companies across industrial sectors to innovate, bringing broad benefits for society and supporting economic growth.

These six stories about businesses using science in the UK demonstrate the diverse ways in which science inspires innovation, and how this supports businesses to turn new knowledge into industrial applications.

  • Engineering innovation in offshore power

    From a portacabin to the largest hydraulic drives in the world, Artemis Intelligent Power grew out of wave and tidal energy research carried out at University of Edinburgh.

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  • Going underground: computer vision for Crossrail construction

    The construction of Crossrail uses a new sensing system developed by Arup, costing 90% less than traditional methods of real time monitoring of century-old existing tunnels.

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  • Signalling progress: collaborations underpinning drug discovery

    The strength of the UK’s science base means that GSK continues to invest in UK academic research to support its own drug discovery programmes.

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  • Designing a ‘base paint’ to fight cancer

    Since 2000 Immunocore scientists have been harnessing the body’s own immune cells to fight cancer, based on science from Oxford’s Institute of Molecular Medicine. 

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  • Designing computer games in Dundee

    Supplying skilled graduates to the home of Scotland’s games industry – Abertay University, Sony and the Dundee computer games cluster.

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  • Managing insurance risk by modelling windstorms

    Insuring against natural disasters – how Willis created a global research network of 50 academic institutions to improve natural catastrophe modelling.

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