UWS’s Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) Centre has won a prestigious industry award recognising excellence in knowledge exchange.
The Centre – a first-of-its-kind in Scotland – was successful in the knowledge exchange category of the CeeD Awards, recognising organisations demonstrating success through innovation and commercialisation partnership between industry and academia.
Dr Stuart McKay, Senior KTP Manager at UWS, said: “I’m delighted for my team and, by extension, our business, academic, associate and professional service colleagues across the University, without whom none of this would have been possible.”
“This win will continue to build on the ground-breaking work of the Centre; raising the profile of UWS and our award-winning KTP programme within the engineering community, which we hope will lead to further partnerships, all of which are having an important impact on society and our environment.”
KTPs are a flagship programme from Innovate UK and form a collaboration between a business, an academic institution and a graduate. Over the last four years, UWS’s dedicated KTP Centre has supported the University to rise through the ranks from outside the top 50 in the UK with three KTPs, to number one in Scotland by portfolio size – achieving a top three position in the UK in 2021, with 36 KTPs in total.
Having secured more than £10 million in funding during that time for the University’s business partner projects, with 50 awarded projects, UWS is also recognised as number one in the UK for an important KTP subset: management KTPs. These consist of partnerships with business schools to enhance management capability in SMEs to accelerate growth.
Professor Milan Radosavljevic, Vice-Principal of Research, Innovation & Engagement at UWS, said: “The KTP Centre at UWS continues to grow from strength to strength and this recent recognition further bolsters the University’s position as one of the most successful institutions in the UK for Knowledge Transfer Partnership activity.”
“Fostering innovation and collaboration between industry and academia for the good of our wider society is an incredibly important part of what we do here at UWS, and the KTP Centre’s success is absolutely key to this vision.”
